The Buie Knife

Iranian Revolution Is Twittered, and You Tube'd As Mainstream Media Coverage Fails

Watch this on Youtube.com

Despite Iranian officials' best efforts to shut down free speech coverage of the election, dramatic communication continues via Twitter and You tube and BLOG. Though U.S. cable news coverage of the Iranian elections (especially CNN) has been LOUSY, blog coverage is GREAT.  AndrewSullivan.com is offering fascinating dispatches. He observes:

That a new information technology could be improvised for this purpose so swiftly is a sign of the times. It reveals in Iran what the Obama campaign revealed in the United States. You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before.

The authorities may crush the revolt and the yearning for democracy. But, as Sullivan points out, "the genie has escaped this Islamist bottle."

New Right Learns from Obama, Organizing Activism Through Social Networks

"By the standards of the Obama campaign or MoveOn.org, the (anti-tax) Tea Parties happening all across the country are not very organized," writes conservative online activist Patrick Ruffini. "The lack of coordination is a sign of a still-young movement that's just learning to organize online in earnest."

Update: Nate Silver, the inestimable political numbers man at FiveThirtyEight.com who has no ax to grind, did a fairly sophisticated count of more than 300,000 protesters across the country on April 15, 2009. (An estimated 30,000 Americans showed up at February rallies around the country, Washington Post reported.)

Mass email lists are less powerful than they were a few years ago. The only stuff that's forwarded in a mass way are humor and outrageous, scurrilous memes such as "Obama's a Muslim."

With viral distribution through Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, it's a lot easier to get a message out from an organizational baseline of zero. Riffing off Clay Shirky, it's the power of organizing without organizations. In the Age of Email, those who could aggregate large lists had all the advantages when it comes to organizing. This is still somewhat true, but word can spread faster through networks of influentials with hundreds and thousands of Twitter followers than it can one-to-many through a large list.

Drill Deeper:

• Social Media, Social Networks, Online Neighborhoods and Electronic Democracy Blog
• Google search: impact of anti-tax tea parties
• http://www.herecomeseverybody.org

Fundraising from Cell Phones Shows Promise for Nonprofits

2008 was the first year it was possible to make donations via cell phone. The new tool made an impressive debut. More than 100,000 new donors gave half a million dollars in $5 and $10 donations through the Mobile Giving Foundation, or Mgive.com. Mobile giving outperformed the first year of online donations in 1997, according to an Mgive press release. (Much more about giving via mobile phone here.)

Online donations have grown from a mere $300,000 in 1997 to $10.44 billion in 2008. The precedent-shattering model in 2008 was, of course, the Obama campaign, which raised $500 million online from 3 million donors. Six million of the 6.5 million donations received were $100 or less. That last link is to Ted Hart's presentation on online fundraising.

Another innovation is to use Facebook to identify potential donors. The Nature Conservancy in 2008 set up a Facebook Cause page and a fan page, and members helped the organization raise $48,000 on Facebook in six months.

How Will New Online Organizers Help Obama Govern and Help the Country?

During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama built an electronic database of more than three million donors and more than 10 million supporters and volunteers. He created the largest field organization in the history of American politics. Now he's mulling how to use this network to govern. "Just imagine what happens when a congressman comes back to his district and 500 people are lined up for his town hall meeting because they got an e-mail from Obama urging them to attend," said Thomas Gensemer, managing partner of Blue State Digital, which designed Obama's campaign Web site and change.gov. -- "On Obama Team, Web Is Key Player," Associated Press.

Christopher Haas, one of the Obama headquarters bloggers at http://my.barackobama.com, has continued to post daily since the election, sparking hundreds of comments. On November 14, he posted the video above. On November 13, he quoted from Obama's election night victory speech:

"Above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand."

Within a few days of the election, the Obama transition team had set up www.change.gov, to keep people abreast of the transition, of jobs available in the new administration, and to provide a forum for citizens to tell their stories of working in the campaign and their vision "for what America can be, where President-Elect Obama should lead this country."

In the long run, what will be fascinating is how Obama's experience as a community organizer and his campaign's powerful use of community organizing will be used to bring about a more responsive democracy. I've thought that what John Edwards tried to do, build online communities for real-world action, to "offer a helping hand, lift up our fellow citizens, and build the one America we all believe in..." might be one model for Obama's volunteers and community organizers moving forward. Edwards' One Corps partnered with Second Harvest to deliver food items to the needy, and set a goal of a monthly day of action. (The idea was aborted when Edwards' campaign ended.)

Another idea is to create something like the New Deal-era Civilian Conservation Corps as a way to combat rising unemployment.

Zack Exley, a pioneer in online organizing, offered a hint of what's to come when he took a close look at the Obama campaign's Internet operation for The Huffington Post:

The "New Organizers" have succeeded in building what many netroots-oriented campaigners have been dreaming about for a decade. Other recent attempts have failed because they were either so "top-down" and/or poorly-managed that they choked volunteer leadership and enthusiasm; or because they were so dogmatically fixated on pure peer-to-peer or "bottom-up" organizing that they rejected basic management, accountability and planning. The architects and builders of the Obama field campaign, on the other hand, have undogmatically mixed timeless traditions and discipline of good organizing with new technologies of decentralization and self-organization. Win or lose, "The New Organizers" have already transformed thousands of communities—and revolutionized the way organizing itself will be understood and practiced for at least the next generation." Read the whole thing.

Related:

• Diary of an Obama field organizer

Optimists Vs. Pessimists On How Internet is Changing Society

Fascinating evaluation of recent books and articles. Which side do you think makes the more compelling case?

Related:

• Internet Takes Us Back to the Future
• A Political Reawakening: Internet Takes Us Back to the Future

Electronic Democracy: Next Step Is To Build Online Structures That Mirror Real-Life Political Structure

The Personal Democracy Forum is a annual gathering of (this year in New York) more than a thousand bloggers, online activists, Internet advocates, and digital journalists. It's also a movement, writes Matt Leighninger, author of The Next Form of Democracy: How Expert Rule Is Giving Way to Shared Governance -- and Why Politics Will Never Be the Same. The Internet, in his words, has irrevocably changed the way "candidates raise money, recruit volunteers, and reach voters," and "the ways in which people meet their neighbors, talk about public problems and opportunities, organize activities, and interact with local officials."

"Online technology," Leigninger writes, "can bring the political system closer to the people, can dramatically enlarge the number and diversity of people who participate in public life, and can help them participate in much more intensive and productive ways."

Andrew Rasiej, founder of PDF, says the organization's mission is to "reinvent democracy for the 21st century." It started in 2004. Back then, "people didn't understand what personal democracy meant," Rasiej told ABC News. "By 2008, with the pervasiveness of the Web with platforms like Facebook and MySpace and YouTube, it's obvious that you can be involved in political life in a meaningful way by using the Internet to inform yourself, to share your opinion and more importantly, to organize with others to change results."

At PDF online, you can sign up, and through an online community, "meet the people who are making that change happen, discover the tools powering the new civic conversation, spot the early trends, and share in understanding and embracing this dynamic new force."

Though I have not yet attended a meeting of PDF, I've been intrigued and involved in electronic democracy efforts since the mid-1990s. To me, the next step in creating a new democracy online is to build online structures that mirror real-life civic and political structures, but in ways that are flexible,  fluid, intuitive and understandable enough to encourage participation AND accountability.

That means:

• every NEIGHBORHOOD with an online forum or email list, a Facebook directory, and neighborhood-based bloggers.
• civic and party activists and precinct workers who electronically identify their allies in each neighborhood, meet face-to-face, listen to each other, discuss and debate and mobilize on local , statewide and national issues, are aware of who in the neighborhood needs a nudge to vote in primary and general elections. These cyber-precinct workers or ward-healers are tied into online databases like the Voter Activation Network (VAN), and work together on letter-writing campaigns, get out the vote efforts, and other forums of civic activism and engagement. Alliances are fluid: two people who may be in the same political party and who work together on a national political campaign may take opposite positions on local issues, and vice versa. Two people who may take diametrically opposed positions on national political issues may agree passionately on local issues. That is the essence of democracy and why civility and mutual respect must rule. 
• these neighborhood-based online groups tie into city and county-wide online communities, which in turn tie into statewide multi-user blogs that are managed by journalists and seek to be a fair  representation of opinion in the state.
• the city and county-wide online communities in turn link to, tie in to and have representatives of a plethora of national political campaigns and civic organizations and networks, so that a citizen can enter the online democracy at any point in the loose-knit structure and begin to engage on the local, statewide or national level.
• Inevitably, citizens will find that their voice is heard most easily at the most local level. Online as well as off, government and civic entities are most likely to be most responsive on the local level.

Building electronic democracy is about civic engagement. It is not a partisan exercise, though the political parties and advocacy groups that best build and utilize online networks and structures and PARTICIPATE will probably have the most success off line, in the real world.

Drill Deeper:

• Online Neighborhoods Recreate Village Atmosphere
• Skype Teleconferences Bring Leaders Closer to the People

Internet: Key to Obama's Primary...and General Election Victories?

Given the closeness of the Democratic nomination contest, there can be little doubt that the Obama campaign's superior use of the Internet to organize supporters in key states (or to allow them to self-organize online) and to inspire an unprecedented 1.5 million donors to give more than $265.4 million (through the end of April) was a key factor in his victory.

If I were a McCain supporter, I would be deeply worried by my candidate's lack of Internet savvy (he doesn't even use a computer), as revealed in this Personal Democracy Forum clip, in which an advisor defends McCain by saying "he's AWARE of the Internet." On Facebook and MySpace, Obama has six times more supporters than McCain does (Obama has more than a million supporters on Facebook alone), but McCain's advisors don't seem to care: "We don't need Facebook; they're not our voters," one advisor told the PDF.

If Obama wins in November, the Internet is likely to have been as important if not more important to his victory as television was to John F. Kennedy in 1960.

Drill Deeper:

• Is This the Fated Internet Election?
• Obama's Organization and the Future of American Politics, by Micah Sifry of the Personal Democracy Forum
• Republicans admit Obama is winning online (UK Guardian)
• "Obama's Secret Digital Weapon: Blue State helped create the Web machine that brought in the bucks and built the buzz. Now it's looking to sign up more corporate clients," in Business Week.
• "Will Obama Feel the Sting of Social Networking?" by Mike Stark
• "A Glimpse at the Obama Web" by Politico.com
• "Can McCain Compete With Obama Online?" by Politico.com

Skype Teleconferences Bring Leaders Closer to the People: Elizabeth and John Edwards Skype From Their Living Room to the Personal Democracy Forum

I didn't make it to New York for the Personal Democracy Forum, but I'm enjoying the video clips, the articles and blog reports online. The mission of PDF is to "reinvent democracy for the 21st century." Elizabeth Edwards, who wowed the crowd in 2006 with her knowledge of the Internet and passion for online communities, charmed the audience again when she teleconferenced from her living room in Chapel Hill using Skype. (The transmission included a surprise appearance by her husband John.) The video images and sound transmissions from this free software were extraordinarily good, providing a great demonstration of how public figures and audiences can interact face to face in this new era without all the time and expense of travel. I wonder if "to Skype" will become as common a verb as "to Google."

K.C. Jones observed in Information Week:

"As a member of the audience, I found it a lot more interesting to see Elizabeth Edwards in her own surroundings -- on a yellow couch with a pink rose print, in front of oak furniture, pottery, and a grandfather clock in the background -- than it would have been to see one more speaker behind a podium and under a spotlight. And, without the technology behind Skype, I doubt I ever would have seen anyone nominated for vice president come home from work without the self-consciousness and self-editing that usually comes from knowing you're on camera."

Kathy Gill of About.com made some interesting observations about the "twitter" conversation among audience members while Elizabeth spoke.

Micah Sifry offers interesting background on how the Skype teleconference came about rather spontaneously, with a MAC user from Chapel Hill going to the Edwards' house to set up Skype.

Related:

• Internet: Key to Obama's Primary and General Election Victories?
• Is This the Fated Internet Election?
• Obama's Organization and the Future of American Politics, by Micah Sifry of the Personal Democracy Forum

Thriving Online Community in Chatham County. How About in Your County?

Having written extensively about the potential power of online neighborhoods nationally, I'm pleased to see the extent of electronic democracy in Chatham County, NC, where I now live. Though Chatham is a relatively rural community, it seems to have thriving online communities.

"I look at it like neighbors talking across the fence, but instead of the fence being in your yard, it's all the way across Chatham County," said Gene Galin, in a 2002 Independent Week profile, when he was given a "Citizen Award" by the paper for his efforts online. He's the creator of the Chatham Chat e-list, the Chatham Journal, the Chatham County Bulletin Board, not to mention ChathamNCBlogs.

Chatham County has recently added an e-mail service to let people know about important happenings and events.

These online lists don't include discussion groups for specific Chatham County neighborhoods.

I bet such examples of electronic communications on the county and neighborhood level are springing up across the country. Do you know of others?

Is This The Fated 'Internet Election'? YouTube As Campaign and Advocacy Tool

Since the mid 1990s, I've predicted that the Internet would at some point reach enough critical mass to decide an election, like television did in 1960 when John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon on TV (though radio listeners to JFK's debates with Nixon thought Nixon won). Since the 2000 election (the last time there was an open seat) was effectively a tie, it looks like 2008 could actually be the fated Internet election.

"How the Web Contest Predicted the Real Thing" is an article by Jose Vargas in The Washington Post. He quotes Peter Leyden, head of the New Politics Institute, a liberal think-tank analyzing the Internet's impact on politics. "The web called it early," he said -- if you looked at Internet traffic and enthusiasm  in the summer of 2007 you could have predicted that Obama's campaign would capture the public imagination. Obama targeted the web early on, posted far more online videos to YouTube.com than Clinton or McCain or the other candidates, and mobilized far more of his supporters online, through social networking sites and cell phones, he observed. 

Morley Winograd and Michael Hais essentially predict 2008 is the Internet election in "Millenial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics." The authors contend that we're seeing a major shift in American politics and government, most likely favoring the Democrats and public policies associated with that party, in 2008 and beyond.

("Why Are These Democrats Smiling? It's Cyclical," NYT review; WSJ Book Excerpt; "Politics May Never Be The Same," Michael Barone's review in the WSJ; "Next Generation is Shaping Politics through Social Networks," Mercury-News interview with the authors; "Bring on the Next Civic Generation, the Millennials," Detroit News review; the book's home page.)

Winograd and Hais identify the Millenial Generation as those "born between 1982-2003, the largest and most diverse generation in history, numbering roughly 100 million, or a third of the total U.S. population." They: 

-- Are more optimistic and upbeat than Gen-Xers or Baby Boomers before them, they believe they have a greater chance of bringing about social change.

-- Are Technology-born and bred on YouTube, Google, Napster, Facebook, MySpace and other innovations.

-- Have "confidence in the federal government" and have no fear of having a role in it.

-- Two-thirds say things in America are currently "off track."

-- Place greater significance on their feeling about the Republican and Democratic parties.

-- Voted for Democratic house candidates over Republicans by 60 to 30 percent. (Source: San Francisco Chronicle)

"There are good reasons to think that 21st century politics will be better than politics was in the 20th century," writes Tim Lee in the Techdirt Insight Community. "The rise of blogs, YouTube, and other participatory media has gotten more people engaged and invested in the political debate, which in turn makes them more likely to open their wallets." 

I suspect we'll see more and more candidates and advocacy organizations using YouTube.com to get their message out cheaply. Dan Besse didn't win his campaign for NC Lt. Governor, and he didn't have a lot of money. But his two-minute video, "Dan Besse for a safer, cleaner, more livable, NC," though it didn't use any "production values" except an artist and a sketch pad, garnered 9,976 views between the day it was posted, Feb. 17, and primary election day, May 6. (Hat tip to "Under the Dome.") Nearly 10,000 hits without paying a red cent to a television station or cable TV company -- that seems pretty cost-effective to me.

Previous:

• Online Innovations in the 2008 Campaign
• 10 Good Reasons to Learn About Online Campaigning
• Obama Campaign Builds Unprecedented Grassroots Internet-based Movement