Dr. DigiPol

In…. Out of the Way of Fair Pay

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I have been fielding a lot of questions from reporters on how Obama will incorporate his social network into governing. Most recently, I was asked if the movement that got him elected could “fell him.” Will they stay loyal as he tries to govern from a progressive, pragmatic, common good approach that looks a lot like governing from the center?

Here are some preliminary thoughts I provided to one reporter on this question:

I generally believe that the nature of the relationship Obama has created with his supporters via social networks increases the likelihood that dissension among the ranks would not cause upheaval in his administration. Where President Bush’s approach of governing in a detached manner, where in many ways he is insulated from the public and he has created barriers to keep the public from knowing what he is doing, Obama’s approach is the opposite (so far)… very transparent.

When citizens are in the dark about what their government is doing and when they feel unable to be heard and unable to influence the government, they become more of an opposition force. But when citizens are included in the decision making process, at least in terms of seeing it transpire and having a clear opportunity to engage with government leaders in the process of the policy formation, they become more connected and more supportive.

Even when they oppose the policies of a government, if they feel that they have a real channel to engage in the process, they will be more comfortable and accepting of the outcomes, even if it isn’t exactly what they wanted. We saw this happen among Obama supporters who used MyBarackObama.com to create a 25,000 person strong group opposing Obama’s vote on the FISA bill. He allowed the opposition to flourish, engaged them, and won their hearts even though he still maintained his position on the issue.

At the core, democracy is about compromise and working together to solve problems for the good of the whole society. When the whole of society feels they are part of the process for solving the problems of the day, they become shared stakeholders, rather than opponents.

I see a recurring theme that everyone is living beyond their means. People are over-extended on their credit cards and mortgages. The government runs in deficit and the national debt is huge. The U.S. auto manufacturers has too much overhead and is losing money like crazy. The investment banks have over leveraged their investments in bad mortgages. And mortgage lenders were giving loans with insufficient collateral and security for the credit.

And now we have no credit flow. Is that the symptom or the antibody?

Just askin’.

This is just too weird. Check out Jimi Hendrix at about 3:00 into Voodoo Chile (part 1). Right after he says “fly on” he says Obama. That’s crazy stuff.

As we transition from the presidential campaign to an Obama administration, the looming question is, "What will become of all those people networked via My.BarackObama.com (MyBO) and Obama’s massive email list?" Is there a place in government for the swarming grassroots masses? And can we capitalize on its collective intelligence in order to make its contribution meaningful?

I see two non-mutually exclusive tracks Obama can take. Track one is to keep MyBO alive as a political community outside of government. Track two is to turn Obama’s massive grassroots community into a vehicle for a more transparent and connected democracy.

Regardless of how Obama pursues using these new technologies in the coming years, there will be technological and legal challenges to overcome. The laws separating the two domains and the technological challenges of bringing federal government systems up to date will shape how social networking technology gets incorporated into the mix. And in addition to the challenges of bringing the social network inside, there will also be the challenge of making government more transparent. In an ideal world, the government will provide an easy to use interface for citizens to access government data and an open access to the raw data so others can use them in other ways.

Track one: keep the community alive
For years, I have advocated that elected officials should keep their campaign website going in between elections. Doing so would allow them to call on their political supporters to help promote the officials’ legislative and regulatory initiatives. For Obama, this means he could mobilize millions to write Congress, send letters to editors around the country, comment on blogs, and a host of other grassroots activism activities. Additionally, keeping the community alive means it will grow and be vibrant when it is time to run for re-election.

Beyond keeping MyBO alive, Obama is also sitting on top of an extraordinary network of supporters on several social media websites, including MySpace, Facebook, BlackPlanet, MiGente, Eons, Asian Ave, Eventful, Twitter, Digg, Flickr, YouTube, MyBatanga, Glee, FaithBase, LinkedIn, and DNC Partybuilder. Throw in other emerging advocacy-oriented social networks like the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s IAmProgress.org and AARP’s online community, and the potential for cultivating a dynamic and powerful grassroots advocacy base to enhance MyBo and spread the progressive message is enormous.

Track two: transparent and connected democracy
This track is a little trickier, but no less important. By creating an official White House social network that invites all voters in and opens the doors to the governing process, Obama has the opportunity to reinvigorate Edmund Burke’s delegate model of representative government. Instead of guessing from Washington what the people want, such a platform can more accurately reveal the public will and make it easier for government to reflect that will.

For years we have talked about how Washington is disconnected from Main Street. With these new technologies and the millions already connected through them, that disconnect can be put to rest. But the challenge of making sense of millions of people clamoring to be heard is huge.

One approach to raising the quality of the public voice is to integrate collaboration tools into the social network platform. Rather than letting individuals each offer their selection, which would create an email overload that dwarfs what Congress faces, the network can be organized into affinity groups and given tools that allow them to build collaborative documents that are supported by more consensus or the approximation of consensus. These affinity groups may be geographically based, issue based, demographically based, or based on any meaningful group of people with a shared interest. Each group can work together, if provided the right tools, to create a coherent policy recommendation to pass up the line.

One tool recently launched to help these matters is MixedInk. MixedInk combines the well-established wiki collaboration approach—most commonly recognized on Wikipedia—with a social ranking system similar to Digg. MixedInk also allows users to borrow language written by other collaborators and integrate it into their own document. The approach is really quite ingenious. As a user starts typing, the software pops up in a side window similar text from other users. To use that text instead of your own, just click on it and it moves over to your document. The assembled document makes it easy to figure out who wrote it—each piece of text is tagged with the name of the original author—and the document as a whole (and in parts) can be voted on by other users.

Emergent governance
The notion of emergence, where intelligence is manifested from a collection of minds, is a core concept in chaos theory and the underlying principle in James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds. Scientists have long noted that, on average, the assessments of a crowd are more likely to be correct than the proclamations of an individual expert. From Elisabeth Noelle Neuman’s work on predicting election outcomes (The Spiral of Silence), to the central limit theorem that underlies statistical sampling methodology, the emergence of intelligence from large groups has been well established.

The exciting opportunities for governance presented by social networking and collaboration technologies are palpable. The election of a president who understands this potential portents a new golden age for democracy. Perhaps.

I will be joining a panel of internet strategists on Thursday, November 6 in DC from noon-1:30p to look back on the election. The event is called Look Back & Ahead: Best Practices in Online Communications. For more information, click here.

Are you afraid of dying? Not dying yourself, but having your president die? And if that president is John McCain, that would make Sarah Palin president. Now are you afraid?

Danny Elfman is. The avant-garde rock star and composer is making his first ever incursion into politics. While the Simpsons are gearing up for their Halloween special, their theme song composer Elfman has launched Our Greatest Fear.

Our Greatest Fear is a online/offline campaign with a simple message: McCain is very old and very likely to die in office. That would make Sarah Palin president. And that is Elfman’s greatest fear.

Elfman has created an ad featuring McCain aging, then morphing into Palin. Central to the campaign is a fundraising ask to help run the ad in as many media markets as possible (on TV).

This campaign focuses more squarely on McCain’s age and the consequences of his selection of an inexperienced running mate more than almost any other campaign out there.

So, Elfman would ask, are you afraid?

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Mobilizing online activists is the bread and butter of many advocacy organizations. But successful campaigns need to go beyond signing petitions and sending emails to policymakers. Yes, these remain important elements to any campaign, but it is equally important to use the internet as a persuasion vehicle. While campaigns are driving activists to take action, they should also be working to spread the message of the campaign across the web.

One way to achieve this is to incorporate a fundraising appeal specifically designed to raise money to run online ads for the campaign. Online ads are not only affordable, but they can also be very effective at persuasion and shaping the language of a policy debate.

We have been using this approach recently at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Our two current campaigns, How Did This Happen?, a campaign to educate the public about how conservative policies and ideology are the root cause of the current financial crisis (HowDidThisHappen.org), and the Golden Pledge to protect Social Security from privatization (GoldenPledge.org) each supplement an action request with a fundraising appeal to help run online ads promoting the campaign’s message (see the ad images below).

While funds raised in this manner may be modest for some campaigns, it doesn’t take much to make a difference. For example, running the ads on blogs, rather than major media sites, can be very cost effective. For each $1,500 raised, an ad can be served nearly a million times. That is enough exposure to reach tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of new eyeballs; people who are not already on your email list.

And if you build a tell-a-friend feature into the campaign, so that anyone taking action or donating funds on your website is prompted to send the link around, you have the potential to reach even more people.