Got Starbucks This Morning

But the guy didn't compliment my hair like last time.  Fail.

In more important news- Obama > McDonnell.  At least for today.

MobileActive

Michael Stein outlines strategy for conducting mobile campaigns in his Strategy Guide #2: Using Mobile Phones for Advocacy Campaigns.  To start with, I appreciated the international focus of the guide.  It's nice to see an author addressing how campaign methods should and do vary according to varying cultural needs or circumstances.  We know that in some parts of the world, the majority of citizens log onto the net via cell phone, not through a desktop computer, and for this reason I can understand the importance of studying and harnessing the ability to conduct mobile campaigns.

I worry somewhat about the technology needed to conduct these campaigns, and that it will be ultimately out of the price range that many smaller advocacy groups can afford (at least for some time).  When you add up all the various costs-- consultants, vendors, tech experts, programmers-- it seems impossible that many smaller organizations will be able to conduct advanced mobile campaigns, and I worry that these groups will be put at a disadvantage.  What we don't want to see are major political parties with corporate backers using this technology to influence elections, leaving smaller nonprofits or advocacy groups unable to counter their campaigns due to lack of funds.

But I am looking forward to class tonight.  We'll see what everyone else has to say about this.

Ps- Sex and the City 2 comes out this weekend!!!  Remember how long it took Carrie to get a cell phone?  Something tells me she wouldn't sign onto a GreenPeace petition via text...

Oh, Bobby...

Why??

Matt Bai's Book Cost Me 99 Cents on Amazon.com

But after reading it, I've decided that I would have paid a lot more.  Beyond my enjoyment of his detailed caricatures of well-known political figures, I found it to be a compelling analysis of a small bit of political history.  It not only demanded  a need for a solid progressive argument, but also suggested that the the people themselves should be contributors in shaping this argument (as has been the case in past movements.)  The Internet has allowed us to speed the process up, and has allowed numerous people to partake in the discussion that, otherwise, might not have been able to.

A running theme throughout the book referred to the overall chaos brought about by any and all attempts to redefine (or, perhaps, define) the new progressivism.  There was chaos among the Washington insiders, there was chaos among the billionnaire funders, and there was chaos among the bloggers.  The Democracy Alliance seemed the least able to identify a coherent argument of progressive America.  While they were floundering about, however, the bloggers took it upon themselves to engage one another in serious discourse, so as to define an agenda that needed to be accomplished.

What the blogosphere didn't solve, of course, was the culture of Washington insider-ness.  Bai acknowledged the echo chamber that the top bloggers (Kos, etc.) lived (live) in.  Yet still, their existence is a step in the right direction.  Rahm Emmanuel, brilliantly characterized in this book with his no-nonsense, "you don't know shit about politics" rants seemed particularly frustrated by methods (by Dean and the bloggers) to re-establish the Democratic party as a national party.  I think this tension between Emmanuel and Dean (and the bloggers to an extent) came fairly close to summarizing the heart of book's central theme -- that though the blogosphere has done quite a bit in terms of injecting alternate or varying viewpoints into Beltway discourse about politics, etc., it is not necessarily the best or most realistic means by which to reinvigorate a party on a nationwide level.  The establishment of a solid progressive argument could do this, but the chaos created by the blogosphere, which in a sense relies heavily on dissenting opinion (even between members of the same party), makes this establishment difficult.

Just tweeted.
Learned how to use the @ sign from my readings.
Soon I will be a Twitter celebrity..

DigiWhat?!

I really appreciated this 1-D, 2-D, 3-D stuff.

Here's my deal. I get 1-D and I get 2-D, and now I'm supposed to embrace 3-D. I was reading Dr. Digipol's articles on campaign dimensions, and I think think I've finally figured out my problem -- I generally don't care about what most people have to say. Keyword here being "generally."

This tendency of mine is something I've been aware of for um...ever, but I'm only now seeing that it might help to explain my otherwise seemingly unfounded distaste for social media advocacy. Perhaps my own nonsensical obstinacy has once again clouded my ability to think rationally.

I'm coming to see that this a significant barrier to my being in any way successful at online advocacy communication. 3-D platforms are meant to encourage and utilize discussion among participants. The problem is that I like to talk, but I really don't like to listen. This has proven problematic to me at many moments in my life, tweeting being the least significant.

But really it's not that I entirely don't care what people have to say -- it's just that there are few people's whose opinions I consider legitimate. I'm aware that this is a really unattractive personality trait, but I just can't seem to get rid of it.

But then again, maybe Twitter will help? I'm going to tweet something. My first ever. I hope no one tweets back. Could be awkward for me...

Internet *Love*

In an attempt to counter the extreme Internet hate that has been emanating from this blog in recent days, I have decided to spread some Internet LOVE.

Things I love about the Internet:

1. MODG. Because it's my life dream to meet my future husband while drunk and at a tailgate, downing orange and maroon jello shots like it's my job.
2. YouTube videos that let me listen to songs on repeat that I don't own.
3. Good Morning Emails that read "Ugh, I'm wearing these green H&M pants that my skinny hot bitch roommate gave to me b/c she's too skinny for them and they were hers during her "fat years" in college. Fuck it. They're a size 8 and I'm just counting down the seconds until they literally burst at the seams. It ain't pretty. Whatever."
4. True Love.
5. J/k Real True Love.
6. Cheesy forwards from Shefali's mom/my grandma.
7. Advanced Patriarchy Blaming for some mid-day hating.

Yet, in other sad Internet news. I have yet to tweet. Can't make my finger hit the button. Help?

This Isn't The West Wing. It's Real Life.

When I was a little girl I wrote stories that I kept neatly organized in a pink 3-ring binder. I hid them in my closet beneath piles of shoes and clothes so that no one knew where they were or could access my secret stash of Pulitzer-worthy unicorn tales. This trait of mine has, unfortunately, carried on into adulthood. It is perhaps a quality that I developed as a result of my upbringing in a rather large family, a quality spurred from a total lack of privacy or feelings of ownership -- a selfishness born from a desire to have a secret or two that belong to only me. But as I have matured, this tendency to guard my writing has also become less a need for privacy and more a realization of the value of the written word -- that it is a powerful medium for expression and that there is surely something to be said for carefully considering what we make, produce, or distribute for the world to consume. In all honestly, I'm incredibly uncomfortable writing on this blog. I'm doing it because I was told to for class, but every bit of me is resisting. I'm sure that everything I post I'll want to immediately withdraw. I care deeply about the thoughts and ideas I distribute to the world. I have no desire to hazardously post a thought that I may very well wish to rescind in the days, weeks, or months to come.

This, however, is my own perspective regarding the blogosphere. And as a result, I am forced to remind myself that it should not govern my overall opinion about the benefits to be gained by society as a whole from new mediums of communication, or, to the other end, the possible negative effects of such mediums. If I gained any insight from Clay Shirky's book, Here Comes Everybody, it's that there are positives to be weighed against the negatives, but that the most important realization regarding Internet communications is the following: Love them or hate them -- they're here to stay.

I found the book to be well-argued and convincing of certain possibilities of Internet advocacy, and I certainly appreciated his effort to address the qualms of Internet-skeptics such as myself. There were a few arguments I took issue with, however, and I suppose here is the place to address them.

The first portion of the book discussed how the Internet is re-shaping journalism as a profession and as an industry. Shirky addresses the possible downsides of this (polarization of readers, lack of a gatekeeper to provide quality assurance), but ultimately argues that increased access to news and other positive results of this transition tend to outweigh the negatives. When the public is able to influence its own agenda and highlight its own new stories, we are not subject to control by any news agent backed by those with certain interests (be they monetary or political or both). I can agree with this to a certain extent. Shirky discusses the idea of filtering news/commentary before it is published (traditional journalism) vs. filtering of news after it is published (by readers in the Internet-age). Certainly both have their pros and cons when considering their ability to contribute to any democratic state. But honestly I just don't feel like getting into all that, and this is MY blog so I'm going to get to what really got me in a mood.

My greatest amount of skepticism stems from ideas about the potential to organize without organizations via online social media and other mediums made possible because of the Internet. Shirky writes "now that it is possible to achieve large-scaled coordination at low cost, a third category has emerged: serious, complex work, taken on without institutional direction." My beef here comes with the various definitions of "cost" that might be applied to this theory of organization. Certainly there are multiple "costs" to participating in online campaigns, though not necessarily organizational or monetary. Any individual wishing to access the abundance of commentary made available on the web and then utilize that gained knowledge to participate in advocacy for a given issue needs three things: time to access information on the web, an ability to understand web content, and time to participate in Internet advocacy. While these factors are accessible to a good number of Americans, the honest truth is that there are plenty of us who don't have those things.

I think this is what I was getting at in class the other day. Though I certainly understand the potential for the Internet to open up means by which the average citizen can access information and opportunities to advocate on their own behalf, I am more convinced of this possibility on a local or state level than on a national level. D.C. is historically exclusive, and I don't see social media as being the means by which to transform this problem. Especially given Shirky's own assertion that the Internet favors reactive behavior rather than proactive behavior. It's easier to convince the masses to get angry about any given injustice after it happens, it's less simple to convince the masses to care about a problem before it's shoved in their face. Therefore, what you're left with is the ability to possibly mobilize people when and if a catastrophe arises, leaving the D.C. policy elite to mess around for the rest of year doing "business as usual," as Obama is so fond of saying.

The power for the Internet to transform federal policy won't come as a result of influence over officials because of pressure via Facebook or Twitter, but as a result of access to information about previously-hidden government workings. In order to promote access to Washington, we need to de-celebritize this city. Government insider-ness shouldn't be sexy. It just shouldn't be. Shirky makes this point:

"The surprise held out by social tools like weblogs is that scale alone, even in a medium that allows for two-way connections, is enough to create and sustain the imbalance of fame. The mere technological possible of reply isn't enough to overcome the human limits on attention...Egalitarianism is possible only in small social systems." (Shirky, 94)

In light of this, I recommend that real believers in Internet advocacy get out there and promote the following:

1. Education and literacy among the public (b/c do you know how many people in this country have no idea what the f*@! Mattt Yglesias is talking about?)
2. The promotion of government officials and legislators as public servants, not celebrities. Working in government needs to be less about remaking the world in your own image, a narcissistic endeavor pawned off as social servitude, and more about promoting the public good as a regulator of systems that effect the everyday lives of citizens.
3. A movement away from this crap. You're a Harvard grad- stop fetching David Alexrod's coffee. And if you must, that's fine. But can the Times please stop glorifying it? This isn't The West Wing. It's real life. Thx.

Warning- Boring School Post

To my one follower- STOP READING NOW. This post will be boring, and you shouldn't waste you're time. Go read up on Suri Cruise or something.

To the rest of the Internet who is not following this blog, let's talk about last night's readings. Ben Rigby outlines a simple formula for Internet advocacy that reads a little bit like an introduction to the Internet, in general. I found myself skipping over paragraphs thinking, "what fool doesn't know this?" My boredom, however, might speak to the book's overall purpose- to frame Internet advocacy as a tool that all people, even technologically incompetent oafs like myself, can use to illicit change. (I just learned you could hide people on your facebook mini-feed. Changed my life.)

Colin Delany's "Online Politics 101" repeats many of the same mantras proposed by Rigby, and by reading them together we can see how Internet advocacy should be understood as only one component of an overall strategic campaign, albeit an effective one if used correctly. Delany(great name), however, stresses an additional point that Rigby was less likely to harp on, which is that advocacy via online mediums works best when subjects are pursued relentlessly. Rigby implies (most likely via his connections to Rock the Vote) that youth cohorts, in particular, will jump at the chance to be involved in campaigns or issue advocacy, while Delany stresses that response rates to online communications are often depressingly small and that persistence is the key to success.

These opposite viewpoints represent what communications strategists have known all along- that there is no full-proof strategic element to any campaign that guarantees success. It all depends on what you're trying to do and who you're trying to talk to. It seems to me that academics and professionals who study the Internet and its effects on culture, politics and daily life range from extreme optimists to extreme pessimists, and I have to say that I lie somewhere near the middle of that spectrum. And I don't mean that to sound like some sort of uneducated cop-out, like I was some undecided voter in the week leading up to the 2008 presidential race. I really just mean that I can understand the short-term advantages to be gained from utilizing online campaigns, especially in certain circumstances where you're dealing with people that are largely already motivated to take action or care about a particular issue. But online campaigns are only a part of that. Before people can log in and get involved they have to be 1- able to afford a computer, 2- know something about politics, and 3- give a shit. And 1 to 3 seem like the hardest parts.