How might the example of digital democracy in the US serve as a model for other countries?

• Guest Speaker: Sarah Schacht (BizNik profile), Knowledge As Power (beta)
• Discussion Leader: Katie Hall
• Election Night Blog (is your info captured here?)
• Reports: group and individual projects (Catalyst WebQ For Teams)
• Catalyst CollectIt Link for final project
• Closing Thoughts

Gavin Newsom (SF Mayor)
YouTube Channel

Posts of Note:

• Alvin, Who Watches The Watcher?
• Chris, On Howard and Data-Mining
• Jody, Intersection of News, Politics and Community
• Keichii, Blogosphere As Mediator
• Marc, On Trippi, The Revolution Is Combined
• Margery, Repackaging Political News Stories
• Rebekah, The Dark Days of Democracy
• Ziwen, Viral Video

Internet & Politics Timeline

• 1996 – Publicity, one-way communication (Web 1.0)
• 2000 – Organizing tool
• 2004 – Form of political communication (blogosphere)
• 2008 – User-generated-content (YouTube) and community (Facebook, Twitter)
  :: Advocacy: ChangeCongress
  :: Transition conversation? Sen. Daschle Responds Also – see WordCloud
  :: Transparency: OMB Watch
  :: Transition: Open-Government.us

Issues/Questions

On engagement – from epolitics.com:

Now let’s look at the Obama numbers and see how they break down. Thirteen million people on the email list, three million online donors. Five million “friends” on the public social networking sites, two million profiles on MyBarackObama.com. Three million individual donors, 70,000 people creating their own fundraising campaigns via MyBO. If we had more information, I bet we’d find similar trends throughout the Obama online army: of those 400,000 blog posts on the campaign site, how many were written by a small core of prolific contributors? The basic rule applies: as you move up the ladder, each rung requires more commitment, creates more value, and will tend to hold fewer people.

• Tension between $ and “public good”
• Datamining – cellphone numbers (Obama campaign – who acted consciously?) – BlueState Digital – See what Doc Searls wrote in August
• How close are we to citizens being able to know what they need to know?
• What is the role of privately owned public spaces like FB and YouTube?
• How true is this statement today?
  
• Do digital tools exacerbate or reduce the fear of a tyranny of the majority?
• Tools: UK – Fax Your MP (for free), PublicWhip (UK vote tracking)
• Publications: How the Internet Has Changed Citizen Engagement and E-mail Overload in Congress: Managing a Communications Crisis
• Other professional firms: Capitol Advantage, Convio, vShift

Historically, political campaigns (elections or advocacy) have been financed primarily through large-ish donations from a small number of people. How are digital technologies changing this equation? How much do these campaigns cost (budgets)? And what is the role of money in election campaigns.

• Discussion leaders:
  Ziwen
• Money and Politics
• General Discussion
• Project Time (remember blog posts need a class category and categories in side navigation)
• Updated gradesheet

Campaign Finance Not On Our Radar

How Does Campaign Finance Reform Work?

Mitt Romney on Campaign $ in 1994
(candidate for U.S. Senate)

John Edwards on Campaign $ in 2006
(candidate for presidency)

Ever Try To Give $2 to a Candidate Online?

Money, Politics & Post-Election Transition + Cool New Tools

• State transparency: FollowTheMoney
  Washington state overview … “winner’s money” v “loser’s money” …
• Federal transparency: OpenSecrets.org
  Donor Lookup … Barack Obama …. John McCain … Leadership PACS …
• Federal transparency: MapLight
  How much did commercial banks and holding companies “invest” in the 2008 presidential campaign? What bills did they support and oppose?
• NYT Campaign Finance API
• Are PACs inherently “bad”? (See ActBlue) Related to ChangeCongress pledge
• How Obama reinvented campaign finance
• Reform: disclosure, public financing
• And is blogging “lobbying” (or contributing) – Maury

Important campaign finance vocabulary:

• Soft Money – given to party for party-building
• Hard Money – given directly to candidate for election
• Independent expenditure – unlimited funds; cannot coordinate
• Disclosure – reporting
• Contribution – money given (limited for individuals)
• PAC – political action committee

“Transparency” means … what in this context?

1. Transparency: OpenCongress.org, OpenSenate, OpenHouse, Change.org
2. My Political Notebook, Head-to-Head Voting Comparison (Obama-Clinton, 110th Congress)
3. Sunlight Foundation on Transparency, Letter to Obama Administration
4. GovTrack.us
5. Governance & Privacy

Turning to the transition …

• MSNBC – Transition Tracker
• Newsday – Transition Tracker
• Firedog Lake online campaign for Sen. Obama’s replacement (see screenshot of email)
• RE CJR article, see Election Night 2006… McCain and Obama On The Web … How The Press Reported The 2008 Election

New Tools & Sites:

• Twine (“a smarter way to track interests”)
• RedWire (for entrepreneurs)
• America.gov (US Dept of State)
• World’s Biggest Problems
• 350.org
• mySociety.org
• TheyWorkForYou.com
• EveryBlock.com
• RawReplay
  

In Small Groups:

• Post-election website: BarackBook
• Just $6 (small group analysis – plus/minuses/suggestions – make a comment on this blog post)
• See ChangeCongress survey on public financing:
  “This isn’t a gimmick – the whole team, including Lawrence Lessig and Joe Trippi, will be reading through every single response during the first week of December. Your ideas and comments will guide us as we put together next year’s plan.”
• Civics Quiz (troubling?)

OTHER YouTube

(1) Developments In Campaign Finance: Choosing The President in 2008
(Berkeley, long)

(2) Campaign Finance Reform W/Charlie Rose
(long)

(3) On Another Note …. Did You Know?
Thinking differently about the Digital Divide

(4) Change The Web 2009

One of the democratic institutions under great financial stress due to digital technologies is journalism. What might the future of political journalism look like? How do citizen journalists develop the “credibility” needed to have access “to power”?

• GoogleDocs GradeSheet
• Guest speaker, David Cohn, Spot.us
  David is a Knight Foundation award winner who is exploring a form of micro-financing for political journalism. He’ll share the results of a San Francisco election project, via Skype.
• Discussion leaders:
  Roni, Tharaa

Themes/Questions

• Role of the press in a democracy
• Role of power in a democracy
• “Speak truth to power” – whose responsibility?
• What are the issues around media financial viability? Why do we care if newspapers go out of business or if we have cross-ownership in a media market?

Posts to read (and comment on) this week:

1. Alvin, FCC Transition Team Wants More Diversity In Media
2. Jody, The Election’s Over, Now It’s Time To Govern
3. Katie, Why Isn’t eGovernment All The Rage?
4. Maury, Is Nothing Sacred
5. Rebekah, Media: Determining Authority and Values

WordPress Workshop

• Kathy demonstrates “more” and talks about why this is a good practice
• Kathy demonstrates making a word or a phrase a hyperlink
• Everyone: add “more” to all posts from this quarter
• Everyone: categorize all blog posts from this quarter
• Everyone: modify design to include these elements on sidebar:
  pages, categories, archives, blogroll, meta.
  Do that here: Location -> Dashboard ->Design ->Widgets
• If you’ve already done these things, please help a neighbor!

Closing Assignment

• Think back to the beginning of the quarter and your understanding of or thoughts about “digital democracy.” What has changed? What has stayed the same? Why? Within 24 hours of the end of class, post a short reflection on these questions. This exercise will help prepare you for your final reflection for the quarter.

How (and why) elected and appointed officials are using digital technologies to communicate with the electorate. What does this mean for citizens and public officials? What about the digital divide and other marginalized populations? Specifically, how has Washington employed these technologies to enhance citizen deliberation?

• Guest speaker, Beth Hester and Gary Gibson,  The Seattle Channel
  Seattle’s digital government outreach is nationally-recognized. Beth and Gary will share the hows and whys.
• Discussion Leaders:
  • Margery
  • Chris
  • Marc
  • Rebekah

Discussion: DigitalDemocracy08 (and cross-posting)

WordPress Workshop

• Set sidebar: pages, categories, archives, blogroll, meta. Location -> Dashboard ->Design ->Widgets
• Select design (theme) that is readable: dark on light (not reversed type) and preferably ragged-right, not justified, type
• Populate “about” page
• See WiredPen for customized sidebar (txt file here as PDF)

Comment on someone else’s post!

Project time (or time to ask me questions)

• We will share projects (whether final or not) in Week 10 in class.
• All projects should be promoted as a blog post; there will be a Collect-It for PPTs, WordDocs, etc.
• People who are working as a team will also complete a team member assessment survey.
• Final project deliverables are due Tuesday of finals week.

RebuildTheParty.com is an effort by under-40 Republicans to take control of the direction of the G.O.P. An effort of Patrick Ruffini (and others) that was launched last week, the plan includes goals like “40 under 40″ to infuse life into the party: “at least 40% of our challenger and open seat candidates for Congress are under 40.”

In response, the GOP launched RepublicanForAReason.com to solicit input that feels very, umm, one-way. One site is in-your-face slick and the other is approachable. Guess which is which? Right.

The younger group tips its hat to the Obama campaign and demonstrates that it understands that digital communication technologies have fundamentally changed how political parties and their members and supporters interact:

Obama’s winning strategy was built on the back of an inherently conservative idea: that we the people, acting together outside of government, can accomplish great things…

Just as Republicans must trust individuals and families with their own money, we must trust the volunteers who walk into our headquarters and train them to take responsibility for entire neighborhoods. We must trust the online grassroots who want to take action on our behalf, and who need a decentralized, peer-to-peer volunteer community supported by our campaigns to really be successful. That will require giving up some control — more control than our traditional institutions are used to giving up — in exchange for an exponentially larger and more effective volunteer/donor/activist ecosystem…

Because of the Internet, “us” becomes a force more powerful than any in politics. The ability to donate or volunteer instantaneously online gives the millions of “us” more leverage than even the most connected group of insiders. Only “us” will be powerful enough to fund the first $1 billion Presidential candidate. By embracing the Politics of Us, the Republican Party can rediscover its roots as the party of individual liberty and build a truly modern political army.

It’s clear from the demographic vote last week, where young Americans overwhelmingly voted for Obama, that the Republican party must figure out a strategy for wooing this group.

The leading “user submitted idea” on RebuildTheParty.com is indicative: “Reach out to Ron Paul and the Campaign for Freedom.” It has 2574 votes. Remember, the RNC would not let Ron Paul speak at the convention. Symbolic but reflective of very different world views, not just different approaches to communication.

The big question remains: Is either effort too little, too late? Is the cultural divide too great to overcome?

Only time will tell. But I don’t think that the RNC website, which feels very “Obama-like” or “Clinton-like” (as contrasted with McCain’s fairly vanilla site) reflects a break with the past as much as it is way to derail the true grassroots effort. What about you?

A mash up from the Newseum and Amazon Web Services yields this webpage with images from the front pages of 700 newspapers from around the world, trumpeting Obama’s win.

Click on any newspaper image and you’ll be able to read that front page. Be patient — the site is getting a lot of traffic!

The NYT Times: “Not since 1960, when John F. Kennedy won in part because of the increasingly popular medium of television, has changing technology had such an impact on the political campaigns and the organizations covering them.”

There’s a widespread clamor for crowdsourced documentation at the polls this election: the NY Times “polling place photo project” … the PBS/YouTube “Video Your Vote” campaign … and the techPresident Twitter #VoteReport. Each project relies on the distributed network of connected and engaged voters.

Not one of these efforts would have been feasible in 2004 — that’s how much technology (ease of use, access) has changed in four short years. Remember, in 2004 there was no YouTube!

LinkedIn applications went live Tuesday night, “productivity applications” that let you share business information with your network.

This is not your father’s LinkedIn! Nor is it a Facebook clone — these applications are clearly business-related: share large files with Box.net, show the world what Twitter companies or phrases you are tracking, embed presentations with Slideshare.net or Google Presentation, create a private workspace with Huddle. You can also add blog posts to your LinkedIn profile (a la Facebook), advertise what you’re reading via Amazon Reading Lists or share your travels (TripIt).

The big question: how well do they work?

Initial reports suggest some bugs, but hey, the apps are “beta”! (Life is now permanently beta, thank you, Gina Neff.) That said, I had zero problems integrating my existing Slideshare account into my LinkedIn account.

The Industry Standards says that they are “too little, too late” and wonders about the closed API. I don’t know about you, but I find most of the Facebook applications enabled by an open API to be… timewasters.

What I like about the LinkedIn apps is that they allow me to (hopefully, easily) integrate content that I have created at other sites, content that is related my business network. Or my “resume,” as the ReadWriteWeb notes. I think The Industry Standard is too enamored of “one size fits all” — a model that doesn’t work in the offline world so why in the world would it work in the online world?

Historically, political networks have been geographically-based or managed via an organization (political parties). Digital technologies are disrupting these patterns of control. How do digital technologies impact third parties, polarization.

• Overview/Housekeeping
  • See a feed of all blog posts on FeedRaider
  • First Reading Essays
  • FactCheck Washington
• Framing tonight’s topic (ppt)
• Guest speaker, Beth Kanter, nonprofit consultant
  Beth will share case studies of her work with nonprofit organizations and how they have leveraged emerging digital technologies for fundraising.
• Discussion leaders
  • Alvin – Non profit organizations uses of the Internet
  • Garrett – Aristotelian Logic and 3rd Party Movements in the United States
  • Keiichi – The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election: Divided They Blog
  • YenChing -
• Small group discussion
  • “The Internet is a medium in which low-resource groups are profoundly more competitive.”
  • “Political organizing is all about finding those people who think like you do and drawing them into your organization any way that gets them involved… while at the same time trying to get your message out to the people who haven’t decided yet.”
  • Why does Trippi call eBay a community instead of an ecommerce site? Do you agree or disagree, and why?
  • Would the Bush attack ad on Dukasis be as effective today as it was then? Why or why not?
• Next week’s assignments (comments)
• Technology Tutorial (WordPress)
• Time For Project Work

PEW: More than a quarter of voters read political blogs

• How would you feel if your candidate lost? Obama supporters: 37% angry, 33% depressed; McCain supporters: 18% angry, 17% depressed
• Confident your vote will be accurately counted? 57% “very” confident, 10% “not too” confident

“Special Interest Groups”

• Presidential Youth Debate
• NRA Commercial – 1986
• Sierra Club PSA
• Bush-Dukasis – “Tank” Ad
• Bush-Dukasis – Willie Horton Ad