What is the Internet useful for in political campaigns?

The general consensus of many of the “old guard” political consultants that I have come in contact with is that the Internet is not a successful tool for driving messages. This group believes that the best way to promote a campaign’s messages is through earned media and paid advertisements on television, cable, radio or print media. Messaging is considered the top priority of campaigns and is central to the majority of their actions. Part of this disbelief regarding the Internet’s potential among “old guard” consultants certainly derives from a fear that they can’t control their message online (something that has been debated online since the Dean campaign). However, many consultants believe that, regardless of online message control, it is impossible to convince people of anything through Internet tactics.

There isn’t a political consultant in their right mind who would advocate completely ignoring the Internet. However, the Internet is not considered to be the top priority in lower budget campaigns because political consultants don’t see evidence that the Internet can convince people that their candidate/cause is better than their opponent’s.

The real question boils down to this: What kind of medium is the Internet? Is it a reach medium? Or is it a reinforcement medium?

To clarify, I consider a reach medium to be one where a message distributed on the medium reaches and is consumed by a population of people. Thus, if the message is effective and the consumer is receptive, the message will impact the person’s opinion on the matter at hand. Television and the radio are the best examples of reach mediums. They both amass large audiences and more importantly they affect the opinions and decisions made by those consuming them.

Whereas, a reinforcement medium is one where people explicitly seek out opinions similar to their own and through consumption strengthen those opinions. Niche publications and ideologically affiliated publications are the best example of reinforcement media. There is certainly an argument to be made that certain television channels and radio stations are reinforcement media. However, as a whole I view media to fall on a spectrum falling somewhere in between a pure reach medium and a pure reinforcement medium.

“Old guard” political consultants would argue that based on people’s online habits, they use the Internet to reinforce preexisting opinions, rather than seeking out information from both sides of an issue in order to choose a stance. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been an academic study based on whether or not the opinion of “old guard” political consultants is accurate on this issue.

As such, one of IPDI’s next major research projects will be to look into the political information consumption habits of people. I believe any research must combine survey data similar to the Pew Internet & American Life Project with a controlled experiment that specifically watches people’s consumption habits.

We are looking for input on how such a study could be conducted. My current thoughts entail giving people a news story about a topic such as the economy, global warming or foreign affairs. Following the article the research subject would be provided with a list of stories from a variety of ideologically coded news sources, which they would be required to click on at least one. The experiment would be preceded and followed by a questionnaire regarding their views on the issues at hand, in order to determine how their opinion changed over the course of the exercise.

Do you think an experiment in this style would work? Do you have any ideas to improve the study? Please email me at akellner@ipdi.org.

Caveat: If the Internet is jus t a reinforcement medium, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There is fairly substantial anecdotal evidence that the Internet is very successful at rallying the base and invoking them to take action. A recent example is the number of people who have volunteered for the Obama campaign that was initiated and often carried out entirely online.

It’s 2008. We call this the digital era. Yet, in the United States we seem to lack political leaders with a vision for technology, much less an interest in the ways technology can make all levels of government services more efficient, effective, and accessible to regular voters.

Yes, indeed, the rumblings are starting to get a little louder – snuggled, as they currently are, within our niche community of tech-savvy politicos and politics-friendly techies. Is a technology transformation upon us?

For some, the transformation begins when elected officials use technology to listen. There’s a word – listening. In the middle of an election season that has seen a glut of staged conversations, online and offline. Andrew Feinberg rants about some of these so-called listening exercises today at Capitol Valley. There’s a difference between talker at voters and listening to them.

Talkers get headlines. Listeners get things done.

Like fixing potholes and handling case work, increasing the efficiency and efficacy of government programs. A year ago, IPDI published Constituent Relationship Management: The New Little Black Book of Politics, which looks how political campaigns and elected office can use online and offline feedback loops to run case management and constituent communications. Many elected officials and political candidates already use database platforms to help this process.

The next step? Government institutions that employ tech-enabled feedback loops to deliver better goods and services.

In their Politico column, Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry write about some of the ways in which foreign citizens and governments are using technology to listen and act, including e-petitions in the United Kingdom and the government of New Zealand’s wiki for a new Policing Act. As Rasiej and Sifry put it, you can use the Internet to file your taxes, but you can’t use it to make suggestions on how your tax dollars ought to be spent:

Imagine then, that the next time you file your taxes online, your government asks for your feedback on how those tax dollars are being spent. Or it takes your suggestions on how to make a law more understandable. Or it helps you find groups near you that are doing things that benefit your community. It may sound mundane, but today in America, it would be the equivalent of a revolution. How much longer do we have to wait to bridge yet another digital divide?

What about tech policy?

At the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, Robert D. Atkinson writes,

we need a debate in America that focuses on the most important issues like to get fast broadband networks to all Americans; how to use IT to transform our health care system, transportation system, education system, and government; and how to encourage all organizations to become digital, thereby driving productivity and income growth and a better quality of life.

Atkinson thinks that better private-public partnerships can help create an environment of “digital transformation.”

Over at Open Left, Matt Stoller blogs about the successful efforts of blogger and member of the California Democratic Party platform committee, Dante Atkins, to get Net Neutrality in the party platform:

California Democrats, in order to promote vigorous free speech, a vibrant business community, and unfettered access to all information on the Internet, support policies to preserve an open, neutral and interconnected Internet. California Democrats strongly agree with recent rulings by the Federal Election Commission that political communications, including blogging, which take place independent of a political party, committee or candidate, receive a media exemption from campaign finance regulations. California Democrats further reaffirm their support of the right to free speech as expressed in the First Amendment, including the right to critique any elected official or comment on any and all public policy, whether during war or peace, without fear of reprisal.

 Perhaps it is time that we — voters that we are — begin to expect more from our elected officials and encourage digital leadership on our blogs as well as in our voting booths.

In case you weren’t at the IPDI’s 2008 Politics Online Conference, we released the March 2008 Politics and Technology Review, our newest regular publication.

In this issue, David Faris looks the way citizens used social networking sites and mobile phones to spread political rumors in Egypt. James Valentine questions whether the wisdom of crowds can produce creative thought. Lowell Feld Nate Wilcox analyze the online Draft Jim Webb movement in 2006. In our research section, David Karpf measures influence in the political blogosphere, while Christine Williams and Girish Gulati look at the political impact of Facebook on the 2006 elections and the 2008 presidential race. The full list of authors and articles are below and click here for the PDF version.

Drafting an American Hero
Lowell Feld (Editor, Raising Kaine, Editor, Badlands Blue, Netroots Coordinator, Judy Feder for Congress)
Nate Wilcox (Senior Advisor, WebStrong Group)

The Political Impact of Facebook: Evidence from the 2006 Midterm
Elections and 2008 Nomination Contest
Christine B. Williams (Professor of Political Science, Bentley College)
Girish J. “Jeff” Gulati (Assistant Professor of Political Science, Bentley College)

Uncreative Commons?
James Valentine (U.S. Coast Guard)

No Time, No Emails, No Problem: Translating American Online
Strategies into a Successful Latin American Campaign:
Rodrigo Lugones (Executive Director of Duran Barba & Asociados)

Measuring Influence in the Political Blogosphere: Who’s Winning, and
How Can We Tell?
David Karpf (PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania)

Cyber-libertarians: The Internet Unleashed, A Government
Challenged?
Christopher Wimbush (The Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet)

The Web, the Cell Phone and the Mubarak Death Crisis of 2007
David M. Faris (PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania)

Scandal and the Possible Emergence of a Fifth Establishment:
The influence of partisan blogs and the mainstream media in political scandal
coverage
Alex Kellner (The Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet)

P.S. We made a mistake in the publication and forgot to include the bio of one of our fantastic authors, Lowell Feld. We’ve included it below and we are very sorry that it didn’t make it to the publication.

Lowell Feld runs *Raising Kaine*, the largest Democratic political blog in Virginia. In December 2005, Feld co-founded the Draft James Webb movement, which was integral to the defeat of incumbent Sen. George Allen, widely believed to be the Republicans’ leading 2008 presidential contender. After helping Webb win the Virginia Democratic primary in June 2006, Feld joined the Webb for Senate campaign as its netroots coordinator. In this capacity, Feld helped the Webb campaign raise more than $4 million online m(out of $8 million total), and coordinate its “rag-tag army” of nearly 10,000 grassroots and netroots activists. Today, Lowell is a political consultant, blogger, and author of the forthcoming book, “Netroots Rising: How a Citizen Army of Bloggers and Online Activists Is Changing American Politics.”

We’ve pulled together a group batch of IPDI Fellows for Winter/Spring 2008. Over the next six months, their research will look at practical applications of technology in the political space.

They will all blog on this site, and their research will be profiled at future IPDI events. You can even see most of them at our 2008 Politics Online Conference next week.

Meet the first batch of our 2008 Fellows:

• Charles Ellison
• Mindy Finn
• Judith Freeman
• Alan Roseblatt
• Lisa-Marie Von Raepke

Charles Ellison

Mr. Ellison is a widely-known and reputable public policy analyst, media and government relations expert with over a decade of experience. Based in Washington, D.C., Mr. Ellison serves as a Senior Advisor to the Center for African American Policy at the University of Denver (CAAP-DU). He is also a CAAP Senior Fellow in Public Policy and Chief Editor of the center’s popular flagship website Blackpolicy.org, providing key government relations support on major policy issues important to the Center. He is Chief Editor and Contributor to the ASCENT Journal of Public Policy at AscentPress.org and served as managing editor for the 2005 release on modern political development titled “Standing in the Gap - Leadership in the 21st Century” by ASCENT Press.

Mr. Ellison is a critically-acclaimed author, co-host of the weekly Blackpolicy.org LIVE on XM Channel 130 (POTUS ‘08) and a frequent analyst for XM Radio. He is considered a leading expert on the use of technology in modern politics; e-governance; African American political development; the intersection of media, pop-culture and politics; modern American political and public policy trends; the U.S. Congress; state, local and federal political campaign trends. His highly anticipated political thriller, TANTRUM, is scheduled for release in February 2008.

A former local news radio correspondent and 2000 recipient of the Washington, D.C. “Top 40 Under 40” Award, Mr. Ellison is a former Congressional staffer, award-winning Internet content executive and former public relations director for Mt. Nebo Records, catapulting it from small, independent status to international rotation and recognition. He is a former associate producer for C-SPAN Networks and former marketing and public relations director for Votenet Solutions, Inc. As a commentator and lecturer, he has been featured in numerous television, radio and publishing venues, including: XM Radio, BlackAmericaWeb.com, The Source, Salon.com, BET, ABC News, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Washington Business Journal, Roll Call, National Journal, George Magazine, Pacifica Radio and National Public Radio, among others.

Mindy Finn

Mindy Finn is well known in grassroots politics for her work in leveraging technology to promote democracy at the legislative, campaign and political committee level. Most recently, she served as the Director of “e”Strategy for the Mitt Romney for President campaign.

Finn was selected by Campaigns & Elections as a Rising Star in American politics in 2007 and was recently profiled in a cover story for the Washington Post as part of its Political Operatives series. She has appeared on Hardball, PBS’ the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, NPR, BBC Radio, among others speaking about the use of the role of new media and technology in the political process.

In her role on the Romney campaign, she directed the effort to maximize technology and the web to best communicate the candidate’s message, raise money and mobilize a strong base of support. Tactics included web video, social networking, blog outreach, user-generated content gathering, email list building and online advertising. Through her team’s efforts, the campaign was recognized for such innovative efforts as Sign Up America!, MittTV, mini-Mitt, the Create Your Own Ad contest, and the Five Brothers’ Blog.

In 2006, Finn served as Director of New Media & Technology for U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, where her job also included guiding the campaign’s use of microtargeting to contact and turn out key voters.

Her team helped Senator Santorum recruit over 50,000 active volunteers, provide outreach vehicles to more than 20 affinity groups and raise more than $1.2 million over the Internet, more than any other candidate in cycle. Finn was recognized by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review for being the Republican’s best cyber campaigner in the nation and recognized by PoliticsPA for being one of Pennsylvania’s most accomplished political operatives 26 and under.

Prior to serving Santorum, Finn served as Deputy Director of the Republican National Committee’s eCampaign and Deputy Webmaster for Bush-Cheney ’04. Both entities won the Golden Dots for their superior websites.

Finn resides in Washington, D.C. and Boston, MA and originally hails from Houston, Texas. She has a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and is pursuing an M.S. in Political Management from George Washington University.

Judith Freeman

Judith Freeman is the co-founder and CEO of the New Organizing Institute. Previously, she was the senior political strategist at the AFL-CIO. During the 2004 presidential election, she worked on the Kerry campaign’s internet operations. She advises political and non-profit campaigns on organizing and campaign strategy and technology infrastructure. She worked for 5 years as a Network Engineer and Systems Programmer for the Network Security Center at the University of Chicago.

Alan Rosenblatt

Alan Rosenblatt, Ph.D. is the Associate Director for Online Advocacy at CAPAF. He is a frequent speaker and author on digital media, advocacy, and politics, including social networking, blogging, grassroots, and mobile advocacy strategies. He is the founder of the Internet Advocacy Center; an adjunct professor at Georgetown and American Universities, where he teaches Media and Politics in the Digital Age, Internet Politics, and Internet Advocacy Communications; and a blogger at TechPresident.com and DrDigiPol.com. Alan is also a founding team member of Media Bureau Networks (MBN), a pioneer in streaming media services; a contributing editor to Politics Online; and serves on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals dedicated to the study of the internet, politics, and government. He taught Political Science at George Mason University for nine years. Alan Rosenblatt has a Ph.D. in Political Science from American University, an M.A. in Political Science from Boston College, and a B.A. in Political Science and Philosophy from Tufts University. He lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Lisa-Marie Von Raepke

Lisa-Marie is a Fulbright Scholar from Germany and is currently pursuing her Master’s of Political Management at GSPM, specializing in campaign management. She graduated in August 2007 from the University of Applied Sciences Bremen, Germany, with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Management. As part of her program, she studied a semester abroad at Malmö Högskola, Sweden, as an ERASMUS scholar (sponsored by the European Union) in early 2005, and interned in 2005/06 with the Public Relations Department of the Malaysian-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Lisa-Marie was an active participant for the Young Social Democrats of the University of Applied Sciences as well as a member of the Student Council of her department during her undergraduate studies. Furthermore, she interned with the Public Relations Department of the Social Democratic Party of Hamburg, Germany, in 2003, and attended the 2nd International Summer Academy on Political Consulting a nd Strategic Campaign Communication in Mannheim, Germany, in 2006.

Lisa-Marie wrote her Bachelor’s thesis on the Americanization of German campaigns with a special focal point on how American grassroots tactics modernize German electioneering. Her work as a fellow at the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet will continue her research on German electioneering, particularly online campaigning in the upcoming state as well as federal elections.

For those of you attending (or thinking of attending) the upcoming Politics Online Conference, consider attending two panels I have assembled: Social Networking/Media Strategy of the Presidential Campaigns and Open Source Advocacy. While it may be too soon to say that this aspect of online campaigns is the “be all, end all” of online strategy, there have been some great innovations in this space this campaign cycle.

Social Networking/Media Strategy of the Presidential Campaigns

The panel includes Justine Lam, eCampaign Director for Ron Paul; Amy Rubin, former Deputy Director of New Media for John Edwards; Katie Harbath, Deputy eCampaign Director for Rudy Giuliani; and Michael Turk, former eCampaign Director for Bush-Cheney ‘04 and my fellow blogger at techPresident.com.

The panel will explore two contrasting views of using the social web for campaigns: it has not been useful (for some) and it has been essential (for others). I suppose where you sit is where you stand.

In any event, come join us at 3:30p on March 4 and join the debate.

Open Source Advocacy

On March 5 at 3:00p, I am chairing a second panel on Open Source Advocacy. This panel will explore how open source software, software that is free to use, though not necessarily free to implement, can help advocacy organizations. The panel includes Michelle Murain, who blogs on Non-profit technology at the ZenofNPTech.org; Ryan Ozimek, President of PICnet and a core Joomla developer; Michael Haggerty, President of Trellon and a core Drupal developer; and Jo Lee founder of CitizenSpeak, an open source advocacy campaign tool that integrates with CiviCRM.

Both panels should be very interesting and I encourage all to attend.

This week, I wandered the exhibit hall of the State of the Net conference, waiting for Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack’s keynote address, when I happened upon a booth advertising OneWebDay. There I met Susan Crawford, who founded OneWebDay in order to encourage people to value and protect the Internet.

According to Crawford,

I decided that the Internet needed its own day so that people wouldn’t take it for granted. I modeled it on Earth Day, and just started.

The first OneWebDay was held in 2006. In the two years since then OneWebDay has grown to include celebrations around the world, including events in Africa, Asia, and outdoor celebrations in New York City’s Battery Park and Washington Square Park.

IPDI is interested in partnering with groups in Washington, DC to host a celebration on the next OneWebDay, September 22, 2008.

By the way, the Mary Bono Mack’s keynote was combined an appreciation for technology with an element of humility. Congresswoman Bono Mack argued that elected official don’t know technology. Yet, this knowledge and appreciation for technology, she continued, are essential to crafting good technology policies. At the same time Bono Mack held her own during the question and answer session, in a room full of suited men representing various sides of the peer-to-peer file-sharing debate.

Not the forecasters.

George Anders recently looked back at some of the predictions Wall Street Journal published about what technology would look like in 2008. It looks like the crystal balls of five and ten years ago failed to predict one major trend in the way we use technology: our desire for interaction and interactivity.

The most elusive insight: the public’s desire to move beyond passive consumption of digital technology, in favor of active creation and sharing of personally shaped content. Forecasters didn’t foresee anything resembling the rise of YouTube, Wikipedia, MySpace and incessant blogging.

In fact, Ambuj Goyal, then vice president for systems and software at International Business Machines Corp and one of the technologists interviewed by WSJ ten years ago, put it most correctly:

We have predicted the hardware speeds and feeds very well. We haven’t done nearly as well in predicting how these machines will be used.

This brings me, yet again, to what I have already noted on this blog as one of my favorite panels at the 2008 Politics Online Conference. The panel is called Pervasive Politics, and it looks at the ways in which ubiquitous, pervasive computing (think microchips embedded in watch, constant online surveillance, etc.) are shaping politics and public policy. We’re combining techno-futurists, like Adam Greenfield (author of Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing), Genevieve Bell (IBM) and Alex Pang (Institute for the Future) with representatives from the Beltway set (Garrett Graff and Tanya Tarr).

We see the writing on the wall. Thanks to the efforts of groups like Young Voter Strategies (we used to share the same roof and department at GW), which recently merged with Rock the Vote, there’s no doubt that young voters will impact the 2008 election.

That’s why I’m very pleased to announce that IPDI has joined forces with Outburst!, a multi-city interactive lecture series and form about political and public policy launched by one of our IPDI fellows, Charles Ellison.

Outburst! will stage events at both conventions this summer, as well as at each presidential debate location. Outburst! just launched its official website at http://www.outbursttour.com/live/.

Next Thursday (February 7^th) IPDI and GW’s Graduate School of Political Management are hosting a postmortem Super Tuesday discussion that will look at

• How has this primary session challenged and confirmed the expectations of pollsters, political analysts, and the media?
• How has technology shaped the way the primaries will unfold?
• Did Super Tuesday change the political game?

Speakers include Mike Allen (Politico), Ana Marie Cox (Time.com), Charles Ellison (BlackPolicy.org and IPDI), Frank Greer (GMMB), Mark McKinnon (Public Strategies and President of Maverick Media) and Maya Rockeymoore (Global Policy Solutions). Ron Faucheux, a faculty member at the Graduate School of Political Management, will moderate the discussion.

Details:

Thursday, February 7, 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

The Jack Morton Auditorium, located on the first floor of GW’s Media and Public Affairs Building, 805 21^st Street, NW (Corner of 21^st and H Streets), Washington, DC 20052

RSVP is required. RSVP to ipdi@ipdi.org. More details here.

Speaking of events, check out the lineup at our annual Politics Online Conference. Tickets are filling up extraordinarily fast, and we’re one month out. Register soon!

I can’t pass up the perfect opportunity to use a Who quote to title a blog post and this is as good a reason as any.

Earlier today, F. Christopher Arterton, Dean of the Graduate School of Political Management, announced that Julie Germany will be the new director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet. Julie has been with the Institute as the deputy director since 2003 and played a key role in developing the Institute over the course of the past four years.

Julie, who has served as the fearless leader to the research assistants in IPDI labs, was the perfect choice for the position. She brings a passion for politics and technology unrivaled by anyone else I have met, combined with the fresh ideas that are necessary to bring about innovative projects and research. Beyond that she knows more about the Institute than the rest of us here at IPDI combined.

I met Julie in August, while I was still an undergrad. It was my sixth interview in four days and I was incredibly burned out by the job search. I sat down and we just started talking about a variety of topics related to the Internet and Politics. Within five minutes I was sold. I had to work at IPDI.

Since that conversation, my interactions with Julie have further inspired me to make an impact on the poli-tech community. And without asking them, I would bet the rest of my fellow IPDI-ites feel the same way.

Just in the last couple weeks, we have been discussing some changes to take place in IPDI and a handful of very innovative ideas for IPDI to venture into. These will be announced in the next several months, but I can reasonably guarantee that the next 12 months will see some very positive changes and growth within the Institute. Needless to say, we are in good hands.

Congratulations Julie- this was well deserved.