“We’re still looking at this through the perspective of blocking and censorship. Our metrics of “free” vs. “not free” exert a phenomenon effect: we’re only understanding what’s going on through the one frame. What are we missing? We’re missing the parts of the web in these countries that are being used for the public sphere and good governance. We need to get beyond the metaphor of dissidents and governments because we miss a broad landscape of changes, including vibrancy, communalism, nationalism, and the changing nature of discourse online. . . We need more evidence-based studies, not anecdotal studies that correlate (or don’t) social media and political change.”

“We need to test claims about the impact of new media on behavior and attitudes. Where is the causal relationship?”

(cross-posted at GSPM Blog)

Can web videos really expand the reach of your advocacy issue or candidate? How would you even begin to measure their impact, beyond basic YouTube metrics. Why are so many of them so controversial?

Yesterday a half dozen web video and online messaging experts caucused at the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Internet Advocacy Roundtable for a discussion on video strategy for advocacy, led by Alan Rosenblatt.

Sean Gibbons, Director of Media Strategy, Center for American Progress, said that CAP has focused much of its video resources on streaming video from all of its events because it helps extend the many conversations held within its walls.

Gibbons and his colleague, Joseph Finneran, said that it took two years for CAP’s video production facility to develop from concept to where it is now. In the beginning, they focused on basic training in order to create a productionpipeline and culture — in other words, developing good habits within their organization for using web video well.

“We can find an audience that is ten-fold online, compared to the number of seats in the room. This room seats 125 people at most, and we’ll get as many as 1,000 unique viewers once the video is posted online.”

GSPM alumnus Justin Germany , who directed web video for the McCain campaign, said that most organizations and campaigns on his side of the aisle don’t have the resources to build their own web video production studios and processes. Germany instead focused on developing a hybrid way of providing on- and offline media for the McCain campaign.

“What works with advocacy and video? Controversy. You want to create something for very little resources and generate a lot of attention and media to it.”

GSPM alum Justin Germany on Web Video for Advocacy

Germany focused his video shop at the McCain campaign on producing three genres — or what he calls “tracks” — of video:

• Positive spots profiling the candidate and especially the candidate’s supporters (think the I Am Joe the Plumber ad).
• Negative spots, like The One and Celeb.
• Oddball spots, like Lipstick on a Pig.

Chris Royalty, former Deputy Director of Online Video at Obama 2008, said that he focused on using video to frame events during the 2008 election cycle. His group worked to produce and posts clips of every event two hours after itoccurred in real life. He showed a clip of Obama talking to volunteers at a phone back in Missouri.

“Press aren’t going to show real interaction between the candidate and people. Our event videos had no hard ask. They weren’t for TV, but they were real.”

Chris Royalty talks about Web Video for Advocacy

Phil de Vellis, creator of one of the most viewed web videos of the 2008 election season, Vote Different, and current Vice President of New Media at Murphy Putnam Media talk about the often unrealistic expectations that most advocacy and political clients have concerning web video.

“Most people tell you they want an ad done with the highest production values by tomorrow for no money.”

De Vellis voiced what seemed to be a common frustration with the panelists. Because web video lowers many barriers of entry into political media, and because it costs much less than traditional, broadcast-driven ad production, most clients assume it takes no effort, requires no time, and shouldn’t cost them anything. A good webvideographer , however, should be given the time, the resources, and the ability to produce creative, cutting-edge content that reinforces his or her client’s message.
Alan Rosenblatt, founder of the Internet Advocacy Roundtable, emphasized that authenticity is one of the most important production elements of good web video.

“In the long run, what shows with good web video is the story, message, elements the team wants to convey, and what they tie it to within a candidate or organization.”

Alan Rosenblatt on Web Video for Advocacy

The 2008 Defending the American Dream Summit happened over the weekend at the Crystal City Marriott. Put on by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the event looked to bring together conservatives from across the country for the second annual conference.

Part pep-rally, part substantive policy discussion, the summit highlighted some of the luminaries of the conservative movement. On Friday night at the Ronald Reagan Tribute Dinner, George Will
Dinesh D’Souza, U.S. Senator James Inhofe (OK), Edwin Meese III, and Dr. James C. Miller III spoke.

No matter your political persuasion, you can see this was a power packed night of political discourse. Each man gave a succinct analysis of the current situation in America and how Ronald Reagan would approach the current political challenges.

The crowd on Friday night ate up every word from the speakers and maintained their enthusiasm the entire dinner.

This type of gathering brought together conservatives of all stripes. Values voters, fair tax conservatives, environmental conservatives all gathered to exchange ideas and try to advance their collective cause. These type of conferences attract a diverse group of bloggers and traditional media.

Conferences like the Defending the American Dream Summit may be the future of political gatherings. Small targeted groups of people interested in a certain political persuasion, not necessarily a political party.

Overall it was a well attended and informative conference no matter your politics. Though the Republican Party is struggling nationally, conservative groups like Americans For Prosperity are trying to keep the Conservative American Dream alive.

Chris Boyles is a world-class decathlete. He and I went to college together, and we both advised a non-profit called Young Champions that encourages young people to make good, healthy life choices.

Awhile ago, Chris signed an online petition for Team Darfur, an organization trying to rally athletes around the crisis in Darfur. Like many people who sign e-petitions on political and human rights issues, Chris didn’t really think much about it at the time, until he and other athletes, including Olympic speedskater Joey Cheeks, had their visas revoked by the Chinese government for signing the petition.

From aspiring (but injured - Chris has to sit the games out, but is their helping his team members train) athlete to political dissident? Read Chris’s interview on ESPN.

Colin Delany at ePolitics just released the second edition of his classic handbook, Online Politics 101. It’s a handy (and free) guide to using the Internet in politics, updated for a post-Twitter, pre-AI political world.

BTW, Colin is speaking at Personal Democracy Forum next week.

May the force be with you, Colin.

It looks like a lot of people are unhappy with their communications with Congress, according to a new report by the Congressional Management Foundation called Communicating with Congress: How the Internet Has Changed Citizen Engagement.

• 92% of Internet users who contact Congress through email, web forms, etc. want a response.
• Only 63% recall receiving a response.
• Almost half (46%) were dissatisfied with the response.
• More than half (64%) say the response did not address their concerns and that the response was too political biased.

It gets (a little) worse: only 39% of those who contacted Congress (and 36% of those who had not contacted Congress) thought the information they received from their Senators and Representatives was trustworthy.

More than half said they did not think their Members cared about what they had to say (55%) or were interested in what they had to say (62%).

That’s a lot of disgruntled voters, but there is a silver lining, according to Kathy Goldschmidt and Leslie Ochreiter, authors of the study. Despite their dissatisfaction, voters want their Senators and Representatives to update them on their activities and the policy issues they are addressing in Washington. As Goldschmidt and Ochreiter reveal, almost half of Americans contacted a U.S. Senator of Representative in the past five years (44%), providing elected officials with an opportunity to create more positive moments with constituents who communicate with their offices – if they use the technology effectively.

This is where Communicating with Congress transitions from being just a research study into a handbook. Goldschmidt and Ochreiter spend half of the publication reviewing the implications their research has on Congress and suggestions tactics to help Congressional offices better communicate with constituents – and help the advocacy community better communicate with Congress.

One recommendation asks Congressional offices to “reconsider the tone of your responses”:

many [Congressional offices] use their responses solely as opportunities to talk up the Senator or Representative and explain all the actions and votes he or she has taken on the issue. These messages often sound like press releases or marketing materials. When people express their views and opinions, responses which “sell” the Member may not be the best approach, as it amounts to an exchange of opinion without a meeting of the minds. Congressional offices may want to consider how to craft response with the primary goal of acknowledging constituents’ key concerns and a secondary goal of conveying the Member’s accomplishments.

This may go some (but perhaps not all) of the way toward turning potential dissatisfied constituents into satisfied constituents.

While I focus on satisfaction in this post, some of the Goldschmidt and Ochreiter’s most interesting findings look at the role advocacy play in citizen communications with Congress. You can find a copy on the Congressional Management Foundation website.

Some of the most creative stuff comes from conservation and animal protection organizations, like this piece from the WDCS (Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society).

Yup, that’s a full size whale.  And if you wait long enough, you get to see a lot of it. Discretely, but just so cleverly tucked into the top left-hand corner is a box to “click here and close” the application. I accidentally rolled over it, and the following slogan popped up:

Think before you close this window. This might be the last life size whale you will ever see.

With a link to their website, http://www.stopbloodywhaling.org/.

Granted, when I clicked on the link, it didn’t actually go anywhere. Still, clever, very clever.

Someone or some group has started an Anti-Romney for VP online petition. Like any online petition, I’m not sure how successful this one will be. I read over some of the comments and chortled.

A few favorites of mine: “Get a conservative or get lost”, “Romney would make a great VP. Don’t listen to the inbreds.”, and “Please, not that guy!”

There were more than a couple of entries that do not merit repetition. From the Democratic perspective, it’s good to see the Republicans haven’t fully embraced/coalesced around McCain yet.

IPDI’s very own financial director, Chris Brooks, who moonlights on campus as the chairman for the George Washington University College Republicans, made CNN last week. In a short three-minute video you can see here, Chris and a few other GW students managed to get their two cents in about college-age voters’ use of the Internet.

Chris, like most of us here at IPDI, is a compulsive Web surfer and admits as much in the video. While this expression of love for 24/7 access to the candidates might scare off a few Luddites (mostly because that’s all that is really left of that movement…just a few), Chris is a good example of how plugged-in young voters can enjoy greater breadth of knowledge about the candidates than our parents’ generation could through newspapers and once a night newscasts just by heading over to the dot-coms for the news networks or junkie sites like RealClearPolitics.

And I am not just saying this because Chris is the guy who fills out my paycheck…although a small blogging bonus could never hurt!

One of the great, shiny ideals that organizations like IPDI espouse is the belief that the Internet is a tremendous tool for political and civic engagement. And my-oh-my has there emerged a delightful abundance of sites that attempt to inform and enable voters.

Here’s a shortlist of sites I am cruising this week:

The National Presidential Caucus (NPC) is an organization trying to engage voters in a day of discussion and deliberation preceding the 2008 presidential primaries. As Myles Weisleder put it when I spoke with him yesterday, “If there’s a national primary, then should be a national caucus to discuss issues before the vote. People deserve more.” IPDI pledges to hold its own caucus in December.

Connect2Elect asks each user questions about his or her political beliefs, and then matches the users up with the presidential candidates who most closely match. What matches Connect2Elect different (and a bit more fun) than other sites is its lack on multiple choice questions. Instead, users drag and drop values into different columns, a practice that is rather addicting.

RangeVoting.org uses an algorithm to eliminate some of the ills of redistricting: “huge amount of gerrymandering, artificially manipulated spoiled ballots, and ludicrous ballot access restrictions.”