March 20, 2008
Lessig Launches Change Congress: Political Reform a la Creative Commons and Wikipedia
Today at the National Press Club, Professor Lawrence Lessig launched the Change Congress project. Created in conjunction with Joe Trippi, the project intends to employ the strengths of the Internet to end the impact of PACs and lobbyists on congressional policymaking. What's really fascinating about this initiative is that he's taking the lessons learned from creating the Creative Commons copyright initiative and applying it to political reform in a way that's never been done before.
In his speech, Lessig gave several examples of policy changes that should have taken place but didn't because of the influence of money, such as combating global warming or limiting the recommended allotment of sugar in our diets. These are policies that should have been no-brainers, but industry influence upended the process. He noted that when the country's forefathers talked about independence, it wasn't just about independence from Britain, but independence from improper influence as well. In that sense, he argued, their goal of achieving independence has failed.
But Lessig thinks it's still possible to remove this dependence between Congress and money once and for all. The Change Congress project will take a three-step approach to the issue.
First, he wants members of Congress and the public to go online and pledge their support for up to four different goals: no longer accepting money from lobbyists and PACs; banning earmarks; supporting public financing of campaigns; and achieving total transparency of how Congress works. Users will be able to do this in the same way you select a Creative Commons license for your website. Their website will have a form that lets you select which ones you support, and it'll generate a code you can put on your own site. This code will contain metadata driven by the semantic Web - essentially, a collection of URLs, each defining which of the policy goals you support. (update, 4:20pm: when I wrote this paragraph, the site's badge generator wasn't up and running yet, but now that it is, it seems that the code generated for users doesn't contain Semantic Web metadata yet. Update 4:37pm: I'm now told that Semantic Web metadata might be rolled into the badges very soon, possibly later this evening or tomorrow; a volunteer is working on the code and hopes they'll use it. -ac)
Embedding this code into your website, whether you're a policymaker, a candidate or a member of the public, will let them reach step number two: tracking who supports what. In the same way that search engines can pick up websites that employ different Creative Commons licenses, Change Congress will be able to pick up which sites support each of the four policy goals. They'll then be able to map out where support is strongest and where it's weakest. Then, they'll deploy crowdsourcing, just like on Wikipedia, to get an army of volunteers delving into the details to see who's just pledged support and who's actually supporting the cause in measurable ways. This information, too, will be mapped for all to see and scrutinize.
Step number three will be to employ these tools for raising money. The public will be able to make small donations - even just five or 10 dollars - to candidates that share the same policy reform beliefs as they do. This will allow for grassroots fundraising to take place, not unlike Emily's List or the Obama campaign. Taken all together, he describes his project as a "Silicon Valley approach" to policy reform.
Lessig admitted there will be naysayers, particularly those who feel there are other problems more important that reforming Congress and the flow of money. To them, he gave the example of the alcoholic. An alcoholic faces many problems - loss of family, employment, health, etc - but none of them can be solved until the underlying problem - dependence on alcohol - is addressed first. To Lessig, before we can solve all the major policy issues of our day, we must first eliminate Congress' dependence on money and outside influence. Once this can be done, the real work of implementing important policy solutions can take place. Harnessing the power of the Web and its seemingly endless community of concerned citizens, he may just be on to something here. -andy
Tags: Change Congress | Congress | corruption | Creative Commons | crowdsourcing | influence | Joe Trippi | Lawrence Lessig | lobbyists | PACs | reform | Semantic Web
Posted by acarvin at 2:42 PM
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March 12, 2008
Get My Vote: NPR's User-Generated Political Commentary Initiative
Eighteen months ago this week, I started working at NPR as senior product manager for online communities. I've spent a lot of that time working with shows on social media experiments and educating NPR staff about the role Web 2.0 can play in journalism. But I've also spent much of the last year working on a big project - one that would have NPR dive head-first into user-generated content. The project is called Get My Vote, and we've just launched a public beta of the website.
As the name suggests, the project is based around a basic premise: what will it take for political candidates to get my vote? Every person has their own reasons for selecting a particular candidate, their own litmus tests, and we're asking the public to articulate this in the form of open letters to the candidates. Using Get My Vote, you can upload your own commentary - audio, video or text - and talk about what issues or concerns will drive you to the ballot box. NPR is then planning to incorporate these commentaries into our shows throughout the rest of the election cycle.
We've also designed the project in such a way that local stations - both NPR and PBS stations - can create their own Get My Vote initiatives on their websites by embedding Get My Vote widgets. That way, a station can localize the project. A station in Arizona, for example, might create a local version of Get My Vote focusing on immigration perspectives, while a station in Massachusetts might challenge users talk about what it would take for local mayoral candidates to get their vote. So while most users might end up talking about the presidential candidates, I'm hoping it's used for state and local races as well.
On the Get My Vote homepage, you'll see that we're using a tag cloud prominently. These tags are submitted by users when they upload their commentaries. For example, a commentary from an Iraq war vet about healthcare for vets might include tags like "Iraq," "healthcare" and "Walter Reed." The more often a particular tag is used by commentators, the larger it appears in the tag cloud. That way, you can get a sense of what topics and ideas are being referenced most often by commentators. Clicking any tag also will show you all commentaries associated with that word or phrase.
We've also ensured that the commentaries are embeddable on other websites and social networks - a first for an NPR project. There's an embed code available for commentaries that you can grab and place in your website. You can also click an option to post on another blog or network, giving you a list of more than 20 sites where you can upload your own Get My Vote commentary, or someone else's. For example, here's a video featuring Texas musician and author Kinky Friedman talking about the death penalty:
Speaking of Kinky, you'll notice that some of the videos in the site have been produced by NPR staff. That's mainly because we didn't want to launch a site that was devoid of any commentaries, so we put together a few just to get things going. Soon enough, I expect the number of user-generated commentaries to far surpass the numbers of commentaries we've produced for the site.
The site is now in public beta. This means that anyone can now access the site, upload their own commentaries and explore the site in general, but we're still working out a few bugs and other minor fixes. We're hoping that if you have any problems with the site you'll alert us through the contact form. Over the next few weeks we'll continue to tweak the site, and soon after that, we expect some of our shows to begin using it on air.
So when you get a chance, please visit npr.org/getmyvote, upload your own commentary and please let us know what you think. Our team is really eager to hear what you have to say. -andy
Tags: commentaries | election 2008 | Get My Vote | NPR | open letters | politics | UGC | user generated content
Posted by acarvin at 9:51 AM
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March 5, 2008
Let's Play Stump Speech Bingo!
Having watched the presidential candidates give stump speeches a gazillion times, it didn't take long for me to start recognizing certain phrases. On Twitter, several of us even began to joke about having drinking games every time McCain said "my friends" or Obama said "hopemonger," for example. So it occurred it me it would be fun to create some kind of game for spotting all the catch phrases they use in their stump speeches again and again. So I came up with Stump Speech Bingo. I tracked down some code that would allow me to generate random bingo cards, which I then populated with stock phrases used by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Here's an example of a randomly generated John McCain bingo card:
Since my blog isn't printer friendly, you won't want to print out this page. So I created a new page that would generate random bingo cards for each candidate: Game rules: Before a candidate begins a speech, have each player print out their own copy of the candidate's bingo card. (It'll generate a new random bingo card when you reload the page.) Then, as the candidate uses stock phrases from his or her stump speech, look for them on your card. If you find a match in one of the boxes on your card, mark off that box. The box marked "BINGO" is a freebie that you can mark off immediately. As soon as you get five across or diagonally, call out "stump speech bingo!" and you'll be the winner. (If you're playing via Twitter, simply tweet the message to your friends.) If you have any questions about the game or would like to suggest other stock phrases from candidates' stump speeches, please post a comment here or email me at andycarvin _at_ yahoo DOT com. I'm also hoping to create special editions to be used at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions - stay tuned! And special thanks to Karl Geiger for making the source code of his bingo card generator available on his website. -andy
Tags: Barack Obama | election 2008 | games | Hillary Clinton | John McCain | presidential candidates | rhetoric | Stump Speech Bingo | stump speeches
Posted by acarvin at 8:48 PM
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February 8, 2008
Amy Winehouse and Media Concentration:
Why Going Back to Black in the US Radio Market Ain't Easy
This morning I was listening to a story on NPR's Morning Edition by Rob Gifford talking about British soul singer Amy Winehouse, who is nominated for more Grammy awards this year than any other female artist. The bulk of the story focused on how Winehouse and her runaway hit album, Back to Black, has paved the way for new wave of young women songwriters with a decidedly retro outlook, harkening back to the glory days of Motown. But then it took a twist I wasn't expecting: the impact of media concentration on musical diversity and the US racial divide.
I'll let Gifford pick it up from here:
What's perhaps most noticeable about the new young women singers is the crossover in styles and influences: blues, jazz, soul, folk, even Celtic rhythms.Author and broadcaster Paul Gambaccini, who has spent 30 years covering the British music scene, says this is partly because of the diversity in what gets played on the radio in Britain, compared with often centrally programmed stations in the United States.
"In the States, it has been possible, with narrow casting and formatization, to only hear the kind of music you know you like," he says. "The result of this is that in American music, the tendency has been for white music to get whiter, and African-American music to get more ghetto. The point is that in Britain, where there is no such formatization of music, you can have an Amy Winehouse singing 'Back to Black' and nobody thinks you shouldn't be doing this."
It's not the first time I've heard someone make the argument that media concentration in the US commercial radio market negatively impacts the range of music you can here in your community. If I had a nickel for every time I heard the same damn song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers or 311 on DC's local rock stations, I might not get rich, but I probably could use it to buy a satellite radio receiver and tune them out for good. But it's been a while since I've heard anyone say in such direct terms that media concentration is contributing directly to a racial/cultural divide in the US.
What do you think? Does Paul Gambaccini's interpretation of the impact of media concentration have merit? If Amy Winehouse had been born in New London, CT rather than London, England, would the Clear Channels of the world prevented her from going back to black?
Tags: Amy Winehouse | Back to Black | media concentration | media ownership | Morning Edition | Motown | NPR | Rob Gifford | soul
Posted by acarvin at 8:47 AM
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February 5, 2008
Super Tuesday Election Returns, Courtesy of Google
Tags: election 2008 | Google | primaries | Super Tuesday | voting | widgets
Posted by acarvin at 2:40 PM
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Following Super Tuesday Results on Twitter
Tonight's going to be a busy night for Twitter users, with more than 20 states voting in the biggest Super Tuesday primary in US history. Twitter use has spiked during major election events, like debates and the Iowa caucuses, so tonight should be even crazier. Thankfully, the folks who run Twitter just moved their servers to a new ISP, so hopefully they'll withstand the crush of tweets once the first polls close at 7pm ET tonight.
If you're interested in joining in on the fun, I'll be tweeting from NPR headquarters into the wee hours of the morning, monitoring the results with the rest of the NPR.org Super Tuesday team. I'll be posting official precinct results, as well as whenever NPR makes the call for a particular primary using nprnewsblog, while I'll use my acarvin Twitter account for more general observances. I've set also up a Twitter account called SuperTweetday. All Twitter users are invited to reply @SuperTweetday to share stories about what's happening locally in their voting precinct at the polling stations, as well as observations on the results. These posts will then be automatically to the SuperTweetday account, so if you follow it, you'll receive everyone else's comments.
Meanwhile, you should check out Twitter accounts Supertuesday, which is already covering election activities now that the polls are open, and IVoted, which invites people to tweet their votes @IVoted to share them with other users.
It's gonna be a fun night. Hold on to your hats, and keep your fingers crossed that the system doesn't come crashing down.... -andy
Tags: election 2008 | politics | primaries | Super Tuesday | SuperTweetday | twitter | voting
Posted by acarvin at 9:46 AM
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February 4, 2008
Attention Political Podcasters: Wanna Contribute to NPR's Weekend Edition?
Yesterday, NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday put out a call for political podcasters - audio podcasters as well as vloggers - under the age of 30 to serve as contributors to the show. They're looking for young people from across the political spectrum to participate. Here's the announcement that went out on air, drafted by yours truly:
Are you a podcaster under 30 who's passionate about Election 2008? Weekend Edition Sunday wants to hear from you!We want a diverse group of podcasters to tell us how the election is playing out in their areas. Tell us why you'd be a good choice.
Send us an e-mail with details about yourself and your interest in the election. Please put "WESUN Podcaster" in the subject line. Be sure to include links to your previous podcast work.
Once we figure out which podcasters will be contributors to the show, our plan is to set up a blog that will serve as the home base for their stories through the rest of the election cycle. They'll also be airing some of the podcasts as on-air commentaries as well. So if you're a young podcaster with insights on Election 2008, please send us some samples of your work and audition for the project. -andy
Tags: citizen journalism | election 2008 | NPR | podcasting | politics | Weekend Edition Sunday | WESUN
Posted by acarvin at 9:12 AM
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January 26, 2008
A Charge to Keep, A Horse to Steal
On this week's broadcast of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me they opened the show with what I thought was a joke about a painting owned by President Bush. But it wasn't a joke.
Here's the story. For years, President Bush has owned a painting he's referred to as "A Charge to Keep," in reference to the Methodist hymn by Charles Wesley. Here's a picture of the painting:
According to Bush, the picture shows a man on horseback trailed by a group of followers - in other words, a Methodist evangelist spreading the Good News across the American West with his flock. The painting has been so influential on Bush he's even used it as a name for one of his books.
White House commentator David Gergen wrote about the painting and its symbolism in a 2003 article:
As Bush recalls in his memoir of the same title, he then sent a memorandum to his staff: "When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves."Bush's personal identification with the painting, which now hangs in the Oval Office, reveals a good deal about his sense of himself as a political leader--who he thinks he is, the role he plays, and the centrality of his religious faith. But the way we respond also reveals a good deal about us, his intended followers, and about the effectiveness of his leadership style.
His followers today tend to see in Bush what he sees in the painting: a brave, daring leader riding fearlessly into the unknown, striking out against unseen enemies, pulling his team behind him, seeking, in the words of Wesley's hymn, "to do my Master's will." They see him as a straight shooter and a straight talker. They take comfort in his religious faith and think he is leading us toward a mountaintop.
His critics can look at the same painting and see something very different: a lone, arrogant cowboy plunging recklessly ahead, paying little heed to danger, looking neither left nor right, listening to no voice other than his own. They think he is careless, even deceptive, and often says one thing while doing another. That he believes he is doing the Lord's work only increases their apprehension. He's not taking us up a mountain, they fear, but over a cliff. Indeed, some believe he is the most dangerous president in a century or more.
It turns out, though, that the story behind the painting isn't exactly correct. In his new book on the Bush White House, Jacob Weisberg conducted research on the painting's provenance.
[Bush] came to believe that the picture depicted the circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century. In other words, the cowboy who looked like Bush was a missionary of his own denomination.Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled "The Slipper Tongue," published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: "Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught."
You can't make this stuff up. Read more in Slate and the Carpetbagger Report. -andy
Tags: A Charge to Keep | art | Charles Wesley | George W. Bush | horse thief | irony | paintings | provenance | White House
Posted by acarvin at 12:13 PM
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January 15, 2008
Widget Fest: CPB Grant to Foster Public Broadcasting Collaboration & User Engagement for Election 2008
Earlier today, NPR and its partners announced that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is awarding more than $1.3 million dollars to a consortium of public media organizations to expand our coverage of election 2008 across multiple platforms. The consortium, led by NPR and including American Public Media/Minnesota Public Radio, Capitol News Connection, KQED, PBS, PRX, PRI/Public Interactive and The NewsHour, will work together to produce election-related content and interactive tools available to the entire public broadcasting system.
"By pooling content produced locally and nationally -- for radio, television, and online -- we will discover new ways of doing business to better serve the public," said NPR CEO Ken Stern in a note that went out today to the public radio system. "We are pleased to have succeeded in coming together to deliver on the commitments made at the 2007 Annual Meeting."
"This grant underscores CPB's support of innovative projects that move public radio and television into the digital future so they can help individuals better connect with their communities wherever they are," added Pat Harrison, CPB President and CEO. "This ambitious project will provide us with new ways of looking at how we serve the public on existing and emerging media platforms."
The basic premise of the project was built around a simple reality - many public broadcasters were planning to create on air content and interactive modules for their websites, but we didn't have a structure in place to work together during the election cycle. Around a year ago, NPR and PBS began conversations around editorial partnerships for the election, including the creation of an interactive map that would work on both of our websites, as well as on the TV show NewsHour. While that conversation was taking place, I co-organized a group discussion at the February 2007 Integrated Media Association conference for public broadcasters to talk about the Election 2008 social media plans and how those activities might be replicable across the system.
The conversation kicked into high gear at NPR's annual meeting last April, where you may recall I blogged about some of the ideas that were brewing among those of us present at the event. We organized breakout conversation in which we laid out what was at stake and how we might collaborate. It didn't take long to realize that we had an opportunity that might quickly slip through our fingers if we couldn't get our act together. We needed to pull together a SWAT team and get to work.
At the encouragement of CPB, we organized a May meeting at NPR laying out all the possible ways we might collaborate, and get that SWAT team going to pull together a plan. By the end of July, we submitted our plan to CPB, which today has been christened with this $1.36 million grant.
So what exactly are we doing? For one thing, we're going to take all of the cool online election activities we've got planned for 2008 and we're going to make them available as widgets, including:
- An interactive election map from NPR and The NewsHour;
- Localizable news modules from Public Radio International's Public Interactive;
- A curated collection of election audio and social media content from PRX;
- Election-related video from PBS;
- An archive of broadcast materials covering New York-based presidential candidates from WNYC;
- A collaborative content initiative entitled "Global Perspectives on Election 2008" from PRI;
- User-generated political commentaries curated by NPR;
- Capitol News Connection's interactive 'Ask Your Lawmaker' widget, enabling citizens to directly question their lawmakers and listen to answers obtained by CNC journalists;
- Election simulations and thought-provoking interactive activities from American Public Media and KQED.
Some of these tools, like the NPR/NewsHour map and CNC's Ask Your Lawmaker widget, are all ready up and running. Others, such as NPR's user-generated political commentaries project, will be launching in the coming months. (You have no idea how excited I'm am about this one. We're working like gangbusters to get this puppy launched - more soon.) In each case, the projects will exist wherever they originally resided, but they'll have widgets, too, so stations can take these tools and localize them for their own uses. Some of the projects, like our user-generated commentaries, will be embeddable on blogs or wherever else you'd want to place them.
Meanwhile, underlying all of these projects will be an experimental social network - a "knowledge network" for public media entities to share election resources and data, find tutorials and best practices for utilizing these tools and other social media activities, and coordinate their election coverage. It's basically an extranet for PBS and NPR stations, along with other public media partners. Last but not least, PBS will be creating curricular materials for some of these online modules so they can be used in classroom settings.
I am so glad to see this project announced publicly. I've been working on this for the better part of the last nine months, and it's so gratifying to see so many entities across the public media system coming together to improve our election coverage, while providing the public with interactive tools to help them make a more informed decision when going into the ballot box. This year is going to be a total blast. -andy
Tags: Capitol News Connection | collaboration | CPB | election 2008 | grants | journalism | KQED | Minnesota Public Radio | NPR | PBS | PRI | PRX | social media | widgets
Posted by acarvin at 6:19 PM
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January 10, 2008
The Potential Impact of Polls and Punditry on the New Hampshire Primary
Like pretty much everyone else, I totally blew it. Before the voting wrapped up in New Hampshire on Tuesday night, I posted a note on Twitter predicting that Barack Obama would beat Hillary Clinton by 10 points. Talk about missing the mark. (I nailed the GOP race, though, calling it for McCain over Romney by five points, but who's counting.)
At least I was in good company, as pretty much every pundit, professional and otherwise, predicted an Obama blowout. And they based that assumption on the polls. These polls leading up to the primary were generally consistent, showing Obama leading Clinton by double digits. Yet in the end, Clinton beat Obama by three points. So for more than 48 hours now, the media has spent an inordinate of time analyzing what went wrong with the polls.
On the one hand, there's the issue of margin of error; when you hear a talking head on TV saying "So-and-so leads the other candidates by a seven-point margin," they don't always follow it up by noting that the poll had a margin of error of four points, making that seven-point lead more like a three-point one.
On the other hand, we can't forget that this is New Hampshire, a place that places much pride in helping kick off what's perhaps the our ritual of civic engagement. Some New Hampshire voters consider the casting of their ballot as a strategic decision, in which they vote for a candidate whose inclusion makes for a better race, if not a winning one.
Jon Greenberg, executive editor of New Hampshire Public Radio, believes that a certain percentage of New Hampshire voters, particularly women voters, decided to vote in a particular way directly because of the wide margin in the polls.
"My thesis is simple," Greenberg told me earlier today. "The polls gave many women a tangible sense of what primary night might be. They didn't like that picture and acted to change it. Put another way, the polls, which we think of as describing reality, became a factor that changed the outcome. Ordinarily, I would not think this possible but never before have we had a primary with a strong, entirely credible, female contender. There are two elements of the NH primary that I think play a key role in explaining the outcome.
"In the traditional framework of the NH Democratic primary, Clinton was not just a woman candidate, but an establishment candidate," he continued. "If you know the work of Dante Scala, the establishment candidate always has the edge with working class voters. In Dante's typology, it is part of the definition of that sort of contender. In that light, Clinton's edge among those voters was typical.
"The other factor that is peculiar to NH is that NH voters can be much more strategic than voters elsewhere. I don't want to exaggerate this, but I don't think you can see the NH electorate during a primary as using the same decision rules as voters elsewhere. There is a systemic difference for some appreciable portion of the population - at least 10% and possibly more. They game the system.
"My theory is that you take these two conditions and throw in gender politics in a way that's never existed before in a presidential race and it's plausible that the polls themselves generated a groundswell reaction among women - and Clinton's edge over Obama would reflect that - that ultimately altered the outcome."
In particular, Greenberg takes note of the voting results from the southeastern portion of the state, and the so-called gender gap. "In terms of polling data, I'd point to the 12-13% margin among women that Clinton had over Obama. She enjoyed equally great margins with lower income and less educated voters but as I said, that's typical of establishment candidates. Less precise but intriguing data comes from the town by town breakdown. Clinton won in the southeastern quadrant of the state where you have many towns with above average household incomes. It's just my guess, but I don't think it was the lower income folks in those towns that put her over the top. I think it was the women."
And then there is the growing number of stories from the voters themselves. Greenberg has spent the better part of the last year involved in Primary Place Online, a community media initiative in which New Hampshire Public Radio created a website for residents of the town of Exeter to publish their thoughts on the election in the months leading up to the primary. Greenberg has examined posts from local women voters on the site, some of who have noted how the polls changed the way they and their friends ended up voting.
One post from a user going by the name Alewife comments on how she's begun to hear from other people who changed their votes due to the wide margin in the polls. "It's noon and I have already met three people who were undeclared voters who chose to vote for McCain so that Romney would not win, but wish now they had voted for Obama," she wrote on the site the day after the primary. "They thought, BECAUSE OF THE POLLS that Obama had it locked up over Clinton." Another commenter replied to her remark by adding, "I have also heard Obama supporters say that because Obama was doing so well IN THE POLLS, they used their vote 'strategically' elsewhere, namely to vote for McCain because they hate Mitt Romney so much."
Another user going by the name MMF explained in great detail how she shifted from being a Clinton supporter to a Richardson fan, then settling as a Clinton voter at the last minute:
Richardson was here on election eve and he was fantastic. I agree squarely with him on almost every issue. I was persuaded to vote for him and keep him in the race too. But then, a student of mine told me of these last polls putting Obama ten points ahead of Clinton. The news confirmed this even yesterday morning. Ultimately, I think it's more important to keep Clinton in the race than Richardson. These polls made me think Clinton might really need my vote and voting for Richardson would help Obama to a big win. That sealed the deal for me. I walked downtown and voted for Clinton.
Another woman named Bricci described how she was one of those voters who didn't make up her mind until the very end:
I myself saw all the candidates speak and studied all the issues that I felt were pertinent. After doing all this I decided to endorse the person most suited for the position of leading our country and that was Christopher Dodd. My second choice was Joe Biden (can anyone see where this is going)? So after the Iowa caucus I was at a loss. I read and reread everything I could get my hands on. I went and saw senator Edwards, governor Richardson and John Mccain. Still as I entered that booth and the curtain closed I was not sure what circle to darken with the sharpie. Taking a deep breath, I filled in the oval next to Hillary Clinton's name. After all the rhetoric, all the speeches, all the reading, I voted with my heart and instincts.
"Are they just anecdotes?" Greenberg asks rhetorically. "Sure, but I think they are relevant." And he's right: three or four examples don't exactly make an empirical data sample. Yet their stories are informative nonetheless.
Assuming there's a connection between the media playing up the wide margin in the polls and some voters changing their mind about how they planned to vote, it raises questions as to what responsibility, if any, the media should have when it comes to how they report their polling results. In some ways, the New Hampshire primary results almost seem like the journalistic equivalent of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, working in combination with the so-called Observer Effect. With the Uncertainty Principle, the more accurately you try to measure the position of a particle, the less precisely you can measure its movement. And in the case of the Observer Effect, the very act of attempting to observe something causes an inadvertent interaction with it, thus leading to an unintended change in its behavior. In this case, the media tried to offer as accurate an assessment as possible regarding potential voting behavior. And by touting both their findings and the consistency of those findings, again and again, they may have directly impacted voter behavior when they punched their ballots.
"The media will continue to pay for polls and they will continue to report the results," Greenberg added. "However, I do think the media have an obligation to present polls more carefully. If I were to make any suggestion for the media, it would be to break the rule of putting the lead of the story first. If the elements that show the uncertainty of the poll were presented first - for example, 45% of voters say they have yet to make up their minds and no difference smaller than 8% should be taken seriously - and the simple comparison numbers were presented second, it might lead the audience to see the polls more realistically. I have a hunch that if the media did something like this, they could effectively encourage the public to treat all polls as hazy shadows of reality rather than as accurate representations of what's really there."
It's certainly an interesting theory. What do you think? -andy
Tags: Barack Obama | Heisenberg | Hillary Clinton | Jon Greenberg | New Hampshire primary | New Hampshire Public Radio | Observer Effect | polls | Uncertainty Principle
Posted by acarvin at 9:03 PM
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November 21, 2007
Four Ways to Participate in NPR's Democratic Presidential Debate
Mark your calendars: On Tuesday, December 4 at 2pm ET, NPR and Iowa Public Radio will jointly host a Democratic candidate presidential debate in Des Moines. The event will be a first for the current election cycle, as it will be an audio-only debate - just the candidates in a two-hour conversation with NPR moderators, and not a TV camera in sight. It should make for an interesting discussion.
Meanwhile, there are four ways you can get involved in the debate:
Propose a question. Our debate moderators want to hear from you and find out what kinds of questions you'd like to see asked of the candidates. In particular, NPR is interested in hearing your best thinking regarding some of today's hot-button topics, including immigration, the environment, Iran and Iraq, China and healthcare, among others. And if you'd rather pitch a question on an issue that you think isn't being discussed much, you can do that too. You can also comment on any of the questions proposed by other people.
Blog from the debate. If you're a blogger who can figure out a way to get to Des Moines for December 4, please feel free to request media credentials for the debate. NPR hopes to have some bloggers participating at the event, liveblogging the debate and interviewing people in the spin room afterwards. Of course, you're more than welcome to liveblog it from anywhere else, but if you can get to Des Moines, it's an amazing experience to observe the spin room first-hand.
Discuss the debate as it happens. NPR news blogger Tom Regan will be liveblogging the debate as it plays out, along with a group of NPR reporters who will work to fact-check claims of the candidates. You can dive right in to the scrum by posting your own punditry in the blog's comment threads. Or, if you're a blogger, create a post of your own and tag it nprdebate so Tom and others can follow the conversation.
Mash it up! Following the debate, NPR will post the audio online. If there's anything creative you want to do with it, go for it, as we won't be placing any licensing restrictions on how it can be used. Again, it'd be great if you could tag anything you do with it nprdebate - I'm sure I and others will be eager to check it out.
I'm not sure when the Republican debate will be - they were shooting for the same week but the candidates had scheduling conflicts. Hopefully it'll be sorted out soon. -andy
Tags: blogging | Democrats | Des Moines | Iowa Public Radio | npr | nprdebate | presidential debate | questions
Posted by acarvin at 7:28 PM
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October 28, 2007
Martin Luther King III on Blogging, the Media and the Jena 6 Protests
Tags: bloggers | civil rights | Jena 6 | Martin Luther King III | protests
Posted by acarvin at 10:30 PM
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Martin Luther King III Discusses Media Ownership
On October 24th, IFOCOS and United Press International hosted a conference about journalism, activism and social media. Among the guest speakers was Martin Luther King III, son of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and a veteran civil rights activist in his own right. During the Q&A, MLK III talked about how ordinary Americans are generous and very willing to offer assistance during times of crisis such as Hurricane Katrina, but the media often allows important stories to fall away from public consciousness, impacting the public's attention on the crisis. He continued by expressing concern regarding the impact of media concentration and cross-ownership at the local level, but the moderator then steered the conversation in another direction. So when the moderator opened the Q&A to the audience, I asked MLK III if he would like to elaborate on media ownership and its effects on the quality of local journalism. In this video, you'll see both his initial comments on media concentration, followed up by his answer to my question. -andy
Tags: civil rights | IFOCOS | Katrina | Martin Luther King III | media ownership | politics | tsunami | UPI | We Media
Posted by acarvin at 6:48 PM
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October 22, 2007
Questions I'd Ask Mitt Romney
Michael Arrington of Techcrunch is going to be interviewing presidential candidate Mitt Romney later this week and he's asking for your help. Michael's looking for questions he can ask Romney, and he's open to engaging the candidate on issues related to education technology and the digital divide.
Here are the questions I've thrown into the ring:
- Do you support the federal E-Rate program, the initiative that subsidizes Internet access in low-income schools and libraries? Why or why not?
- No Child Left Behind mandates that all students must be "technologically literate" by the eighth grade but doesn't expand on the subject. In your mind, what technology skills should every eighth grader possess, and why?
- The U.S. continues to struggle when it comes to producing enough college graduates who major in disciplines related to science, technology, engineering or math. What reforms would you make in K-12 education in order to increase the number of students who go on to college to study these disciplines?
- What do you think of MIT's so-called $100 laptop? Do you see it offering any benefit to US students?
- Congress is currently considering legislation that would block access to online social networks at schools and libraries that accept federal E-Rate funding. Do you think this legislation would help protect kids against online threats, or does it undermine educators' abilities to use the Internet creatively in their classrooms?
- How do you personally define the term "digital divide"? Do you believe there is still a digital divide in this country? Would you use that term to describe it, if you were president? What would you do as president to alleviate it?
If you've got any questions of your own, feel free to post them on Techcrunch . You're more than welcome to share them here, too, but I can't guarantee that Arrington will read my blog with much frequency. :-)
Tags: digital divide | E-Rate | education technology | election 2008 | Michael Arrington | Mitt Romney | OLPC | Techcrunch
Posted by acarvin at 10:26 AM
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October 10, 2007
Jay Rosen's Six Lessons from NewAssignment.net
Jay Rosen of NewAssignment.net is talking about some of the lessons learned from their first networked journalism experiment with Wired News, which focused on trends in crowdsourcing. He said there were six lessons, but he threw in a seventh for good measure.
1. Division of labor is key in distributed reporting projects. You need to think about what task, and what size of task, you expect people to do.
2. You have to get the motivations right. If you don't understand participants' motivations, you can't figure out how to define the work.
3. Watch for rising coordination costs. More users=more costs, ie answering questions, giving out instructions, etc. You can get your project run into the ground by succeeding with lots of people.
4. If I go off and do something for you, now I have to come back and give you that data. When this happens, people need to see how their contribution fits into the puzzle.
5. Share background knowledge. The more background they have, the easier it'll be to find data that's significant.
6. Existing communities already know how to interact and work. They're better than starting from scratch.
7. The one percent rule - only about one percent of users will actively get involved in creating content, while 10 percent might be involved in peripheral activities like commenting.
Tags: crowdsourcing | Jay Rosen | netj | networked journalism | NewAssignment.net | Wired News
Posted by acarvin at 12:03 PM
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It's Your Newsroom
Dan Barkin of the News & Observer is on stage at the Networked Journalism Summit talking about Your Newsroom, a collaborative news space for North Carolina residence. They've basically handed over the editorial reins to the public, so users can submit their own content relevant to the local community. Photos seem to be a big hit, and they're highlighted prominently at the top of the page. You can also submit your own event listings, blog posts and discussion forums. I remember when the News & Observer was one of the most innovative online newspapers back in the mid-90s, but frankly I lost track of what they've been doing more recently, so I'm looking forward to digging into Your Newsroom to see what they've been doing lately.
Tags: citizen journalism | netj | News & Observer | Your Newsroom
Posted by acarvin at 9:31 AM
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At the Networked Journalism Summit
Today I'm in New York to participate in the Networked Journalism Summit. The day-long event is focused on collaborative journalistic activities in which professional journalists work with members of the public. This would include forms of citizen journalism, as well as Jay Rosen's NewAssignment.net. There are almost 200 people in attendance.
I'll try to blog about the event later. I'll also be posting on Twitter, so be sure to check that out as well. -andy
Tags: citizen journalism | Jeff Jarvis | netj | networked journalism
Posted by acarvin at 9:21 AM
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August 28, 2007
Behind the Scenes at NPR: the Talk of the Nation White Board
I was pleasantly surprised this afternoon when I saw that Talk of the Nation had posted a photo of their "board" on Flickr. For those of you who've never visited NPR, each of our shows utilize a white board to display what's on tap for each day of the week. Text written in a black marker identifies a specific program segment, or "slug." To the right of each slug, you'll see the initials of the producer that's handling that segment. Any name written in blue represents a confirmed guest, while the red text adjacent to each name identifies the time they'll be on air, and their physical location, such as NPR West in Los Angeles or in studio 3A with host Neal Conan here in DC.They also blogged about today's show, in case you're looking for more details on each topic listed in the photo.
What's really cool about this photo is that it gives you access to the same daily summary that the rest of us see at NPR headquarters, whether you go to the show's offices or look it up on our Intranet. (Actually, the automatic photos of each white board displayed on the Intranet - the "boardcams," as they're known - are generally a heck of a lot harder to make out than this particular photo.) I'm not sure if my friends at TOTN are planning to do this on a regular basis, but I hope they do. -andy
Tags: National Public Radio | news | NPR | radio | Talk of the Nation | TOTN | whiteboards
Posted by acarvin at 1:51 PM
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August 2, 2007
Journalist Shield Legislation Amended to Cover Only Commercial Bloggers
The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee yesterday approved an amended version of HR 2102, also known as the Free Flow of Information Act. The purpose of the legislation is to create a federal shield for journalists so they could not be compelled to reveal their sources except in extreme cases, such as emergent national security situations and the like. Advocates of bloggers had fought hard to extend the bill's coverage to the blogosphere, but the amendment passed yesterday might not please everyone who might feel they should be covered.
The bill defines journalism as "gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public." By this definition, many bloggers could easily argue that they, too, would be covered if the bill were signed into law. The intention of this language was to get away from the notion that journalism is solely an occupation in which one works for a media entity of some sort, has an editor, etc. Instead, it defines journalism in terms of actions rather than as an occupational status.
Yesterday's voice vote, though, complicates matters a bit for some bloggers. The Bush administration, as well as some members of Congress, expressed concerns that the bill's original language could be used to create an enormous loophole for people engaging in criminal behavior. For example, someone who participated in a crime or assisted a criminal could point to a hastily crafted blog and claim that they were researching a story to obfuscate the fact they were engaging in a criminal enterprise or obstructing the law.
As a compromise, members of Congress decided to refine the definition of who would be covered as a journalist. To be covered, you would have to derive "financial gain or livelihood" from your journalistic activities. In other words, if you could prove that you use your blog to generate income, you would qualify as practicing journalism and thus fall under the shield law. But if you published a blog without any financial benefit, you wouldn't be covered by the law.
I'm not surprised that Congress would offer this up as a compromise. But I also won't be surprised if some advocates of citizen journalism take this compromise as exclusionary, since it favors those bloggers who are in a position - or make the decision - to blog commercially. I would surmise that the vast majority of bloggers make no income from their activities. Granted, many of these same folks would never consider themselves as engaging in acts of journalism, but where does that leave those who do? I know many bloggers who choose to keep their blogs advertising-free so they don't appear to have any conflicts of interest. Does this make their acts of journalism less deserving of protection than those who decide to make money off their blogging activities?
I keep wondering how this provision would apply to me, for example. I wear a variety of blogging hats. I get paid by PBS for my contributions to learning.now, for example, but I don't derive any income from my personal blog. And while not all of my writings on my personal blog qualify as journalism, other posts certainly do. Would I not be covered by this legislation regarding any acts of journalism I conduct for my personal blog?
More generally, will this bill lead to a wave of bloggers adding advertising to their blogs just to be covered? And if all it takes is for a person to derive some income from their blog, even if it's paltry, won't that mean the loophole hasn't really been closed?
This is definitely gonna be an interesting debate. -andy
Tags: bloggers | Congress | HR 2102 | journalism | loopholes | shield law
Posted by acarvin at 7:29 AM
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July 23, 2007
Michael Moore Visits NPR
Michael Moore and the Ladies of TOTN, originally uploaded by andycarvin.
Documentary maker and all-around provocateur Michael Moore came by NPR's DC studios today for an interview on Talk of the Nation. The show invited me to shoot some video of him and take some pictures, too. This pic shows Moore posing with executive producer Sue Goodwin (top left) and other members of the TOTN crew. (I just love the grin on Barrie Hardymon's face in the center of the photo.)
Moore was at the studio with two of his assistants for about 30 minutes. I got to hang out with them and Sue Goodwin in the green room prior to the on-air interview. While I'd hoped to shoot some casual footage of everyone hanging out, Moore requested I didn't. "Look at me," he said, slouching on the couch. "Seven weeks straight of this - exhausted." He was very nice about it, though, and I didn't want to start things on the wrong foot. So I put the cameras down until Barrie and the others came in to introduce themselves and pose for few quick pictures with him, which he was happy to do at that point.
In between, we all talked about all sorts of things, including the upcoming 40th anniversary of Who drummer Keith Moon crashing his car into the Flint, Michigan Holiday Inn swimming pool. Moore asked me if I'd seen Sicko yet, and I convinced I hadn't, explaining I was waiting for it to play at our local theatre as a matinee for those of us who have to bring screaming infants along with us. "I know what that's all about," he said, telling a story of all the evil eyes he and his wife would get when they'd bring their baby girl to DC's Uptown Theatre in Cleveland Park, when they couldn't afford to pay a baby sitter for the night.
When the time came for him to go on-air, I took off my shoes and followed him into the studio. Since I'd be moving around while shooting video of him, I didn't want my shoes to make any noise while I walked around the studio. Thankfully, the 20-minute interview passed without any major incidents. No one mention Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and I didn't accidentally collide into any furniture.
Once it was over, Moore said his goodbyes to the production team, signed an autograph for an intern, then headed out to another studio for an interview with News & Notes.
Right now I'm still exporting the footage I shot. I'll let you know when it's ready for viewing. -andy
Tags: documentaries | interviews | Michael Moore | NPR | public radio | Sicko | Talk of the Nation
Posted by acarvin at 4:43 PM
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July 18, 2007
Presenting at the JFK Presidential Library
Tomorrow morning I'll be heading to the airport at the crack of dawn for a quick daytrip to Boston. I'll be giving a speech at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library on the impact of Web 2.0 and social media on journalism, particularly coverage of election 2008. Here's a draft of the powerpoint presentation I plan to share with the audience. I wish I could stay longer, particularly because the Open Society Institute is convening a forum on youth media in Cambridge, with some of my favorite people and thinkers, including Ethan Zuckerman, Dina Mehta, Jennifer Corriero and Danah Boyd. Unfortunately, as soon as my speech is done, I need to bury my head in proposal writing and related meetings. Such is life.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 7:43 PM
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July 1, 2007
Waiting in Spin Alley
Tags: debates | election 2008 | media | politics | spin alley | waiting
Posted by acarvin at 7:15 PM
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June 28, 2007
You'll Get No Smokes from PBS, Thank You Very Much
One thing I've noticed while hanging out with the media posse here at the presidential debate is that the media center is healthier than the last time I attended a debate. Way back in 1992 I talked my way into a press pass for the third general election debate between Clinton, Bush Sr. and Perot at Michigan State University. The media center isn't that much different in terms of desk space, lots of coffee, fax machines, etc, but there's one thing that's missing.
Free cigarettes.
Now mind you, I don't smoke, nor did I smoke back in '92, but at that first debate, I couldn't help but notice the table of free swag from Philip Morris. You see, they were one of the main sponsors of that debate, and along the side of the media center room they set up a table with free stuff for the journalists. And the two things I remember the most were the packs of free cigarettes and the bowls full of Kraft carmel chews. The chews lasted the night; the cigarettes did not.
Thankfully, the good people at PBS are clearly looking out for our teeth and our lungs. At most, I'll go home somewhat caffeinated and full of protein (grilled chicken and salmon for dinner). And if anyone here wants to smoke, by God, they'll have to supply their own habit. -andy
Tags: candy | caramel | cigarettes | health | Kraft | media | Phillip Morris | politics | presidential debates | swag
Posted by acarvin at 8:52 PM
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June 25, 2007
Supreme Court Rules Against "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" Kid
This morning, the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against an Alaska high school student who unfurled a banner with the words "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" across the street from campus as the Olympic torch relay took place. The student, Joseph Frederick, claimed the message was intended as nonsensical, but that didn't stop his school principal from suspending him. Today, the highest court in the land agreed with the principal's decision.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that even though the action took place off-campus, the school was justified in suspending Frederick because he was displaying what could only be interpreted as a pro-drug message. "The message on Frederick's banner is cryptic," Roberts wrote. "But Principal Morse thought the banner would be interpreted by those viewing it as promoting illegal drug use, and that interpretation is plainly a reasonable one." -andy
UPDATE: I've posted an in-depth analysis of the ruling on my PBS blog. The majority opinion basically says that the school could punish the student because the student's actions took place at a school-sanctioned event, even though it was off-campus, and that his speech condoned illegal drug use. Based on the ruling, I make the argument that schools that block student access to blogs and social networks would have a hard time using the ruling in their favor, since blocking access is basically the opposite of sanctioning these websites. In contrast, schools that allow access to social networks in an educational context might be able to argue that drug-related student content, even if it takes place off-campus, is punishable, because the websites were indeed sanctioned.
Tags: Bong Hits 4 Jesus | education | free speech | law | Morse v. Frederick | Supreme Court
Posted by acarvin at 10:53 AM
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June 22, 2007
Ask a Presidential Candidate
If you had a chance to put a question to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or any of the other Democratic presidential candidates, what would you ask them? If something comes to mind, please tell my NPR colleague Michel Martin. She's one of the moderators at next week's Democratic presidential debate at Howard University on June 28th. I suggested to her that she ask the public for potential questions on her blog and she took up the challenge:
Yours truly will be one of the questioners at the PBS-sponsored presidential debate next week at Howard University.We want your questions. Do you have one...or three?
We are particularly interested in key domestic and international concerns that have NOT been showcased in the other debates.
What's on your mind? We'll be asking every day from now until next THURSDAY, June 28.
So if you've got a potential question for the candidates, please post it on Michel's blog. (You're welcome to post it on my blog as well, but be sure to post it on hers as well, since I can't guarantee she'll read it here.)
Speaking of next week's debate, I'll be blogging from the event, thanks to my colleagues at PBS, who are sponsoring the debate. PBS is now working with the Media Bloggers Association to credential bloggers who want to cover the event. I'll probably be in the media center with everyone else, but hopefully I can snag some time with some of the candidates or their proxies in the post-debate chaos of the spin room. This will be my second presidential debate - I covered the last of the three general election debates that took place between Bill Clinton, Bush Sr. and Ross Perot in 1992. I'm really looking forward to the debate, so please check out the blog on the evening of Thursday, June 28th to get the skinny on what's taking place there. -andy
Tags: Barack Obama | blogging | credentials | election 2008 | Hillary Clinton | Howard University | Media Bloggers Association | PBS | presidential debate
Posted by acarvin at 11:39 AM
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June 19, 2007
Ask a Technocrat
Later this week in Geneva, the International Telecommunications Union will be hosting a high-level UN conference on digital content delivery and the future of the Internet. Thomas Crampton of the International Herald Tribune will moderate a panel this Friday on the role international organizations should play in a world of converging media. His panel will feature leadership from entities such as WIPO, UNESCO, the ITU, the EU parliament and the European Broadcasting Union.
Thomas has put out a request for bloggers to submit questions for the panelists. If you'd like to offer your two cents, you can post your questions in the discussion thread on his blog.
Don't think you have any questions? Think a little harder. These folks are playing a major role in issues ranging from bridging the digital divide to who controls intellectual property on the Internet. I'm sure we can come up with some good questions, right? -andy
Tags: digital divide | Geneva | intellectual property | ITU | telecommunications policy | UN | UNESCO | WIPO
Posted by acarvin at 11:03 AM
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June 13, 2007
Josh Wolf on The Colbert Report
Video blogger Josh Wolf was on The Colbert Report yesterday talking about the reasons he spent 228 days in jail on contempt charges for refusing to turn over footage he shot at a public protest. Colbert argues with Josh about whether he should be considered a member of the press, among other topics. -ac
Tags: comedy | free press | Josh Wolf | journalism | law | The Colbert Report | tv | video blogging
Posted by acarvin at 12:52 PM
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June 12, 2007
Nobody Expects the American Inquisition!
Wish I'd come up with this... -andy
Hat tip: Tom Regan
Tags: Inquisition | interrogation | John McCain | Monty Python | satire | torture | video | YouTube
Posted by acarvin at 12:30 PM
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June 8, 2007
Change.org: Using Social Networking to Raise Money For and Against Politicians
This week I had the chance to chat with Ben Rattray, co-founder and CEO of Change.org, one of the most interesting up-and-coming social networks on the Internet. They're using social media tools to bring together like-minded people to raise money on issues they care about. And thanks to a recent relaunch of the site, users can now work together like an informal political action committee (PAC), targeting their collective donations to support - or unseat - politicians.
Originally, change.org was set up to allow you to band together with like-minded people and raise money for causes, like pooling together money for a targeted donation to an organization specializing in malaria eradication or supporting public broadcasting. With the relaunch of the website, change.org lets you connect with people to give money to politicians to influence specific policymaking.
For example, let's say you want to work with other citizens to tell politicians you favor network neutrality on the Internet. (There's already a change.org group working on that goal.) Prior to the relaunch of the site, that group could raise money for nonprofits representing this particular interest, like Free Press. Now, though, users can actually target their giving to specific politicians, or against politicians that oppose their viewpoint. Supporting specific politicians is straightforward. First, you identify who the politician is and manage an online campaign to raise the money. Then change.org sends that politician a check with a letter saying that the money is on behalf of a group of citizens, showing who gave what and why.
More interesting, though, is that the site lets you give money against politicians. Continuing with the example of network neutrality, supporters of are often critical of Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska because of his stance on the issue. Change.org lets users target their money to Stevens' eventual Democratic opponent in the next election, even if that person hasn't been selected yet. Until his opponent is nominated, change.org will hold the money in escrow. At that point in time, a check gets cut for the candidate opposing him. And if your group identifies any politicians opposing your policy - in this particular example, Sen. Stevens - they too will receive a letter saying that X number of dollars have been raised for their opponent because of their position on that policy.
Ben explained that influencing politicians doesn't necessarily take hundreds of thousands of dollars. "Spend just 10 or 20 thousand - or just threatening to spend it - is usually sufficient to shut them up," he said. "It may seem counterintuitive, but it works as out countervailing force."
Because Change.org allows users to behave like a PAC, it raises questions as to whether they would be held to the same financing rules. Ben noted that his website is simply working as a vehicle for people to organize and transmit money that they would otherwise give as individuals, so users aren't forming actual PACs in the literal - and legal - sense of the term. This made me wonder whether he was concerned there would be a political backlash of some sort, with people arguing the website lets people get around current campaign financing rules. "I think that could be the most interesting outcome we could get," he said, laughing. Howeer, they've designed the features on the site with current campaign financing laws taken into account. "We're playing in the game that's available," he continued. "these are the rules."
When you look at the site, Change.org appears to be dominated by causes that one might describe as left-of-center. So I asked Ben if the site had any partisan aspirations. "We are agnostic and people could provide whatever content they please," he said. "Right now, the name [Change.org] may turn off some conservatives.... But lots of Republicans want change as well. But the left is often an early adopter of social media, if you look at MoveOn and that kind of stuff. Though conservatives are catching up."
"What we're trying to do," he said, "is doing [political giving] in transformative ways, changing the world of philanthropy and politics - literally. The system is very broken.... The experience of giving is not the rich experience it can be. It's not that it's hard to give - it's actually really damn easy. The problem is that it's not engaging. You want to get people more engaged in social issues, participating in the process."
Taking the conversation in a different direction, I asked how Change.org might interface with other social networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace. "We're about to launch our facebook app soon," he said, without committing to a specific date. "It'll basically be a build of our entire app. Facebook apps have become truly transformational - forward-looking. If you take Facebook at their word, it's not a platform for little features, but full-fledged applications. We want to be the nonprofit, political social activism feature in Facebook. Not an add-on, but a seamless experience."
"Myspace has a limitation in that it has a more distinct culture," he continued, "while Facebook gets used more openly, for a broader variety of activities." Having said that, he wouldn't rule out integrating with them if the opportunity became available.
Ben also described a new widget-based tool they plan to launch in a few weeks. The widget could be embedded in any website, from a personal blog to a politically-focused online community. Users would type in their phone number into the widget. The widget would then activate a call to your phone, then connect you to your member of Congress. That way, the widget could be used to facilitate contacts with members on Capitol Hill in connection to whatever political cause you assign to the widget. Meanwhile, the widget tracks the number of calls generated to each member of Congress, so the people running the campaign can get a sense of how much the public is using it to make their voices heard.
Despite the fact that Change.org is designed as a social network, Ben doesn't see it replacing online political sites. "It's not about replicating the political communities on the Web. It's about translating the passion of the people on those sites into real political power."
"I don't want to diminish what [Daily] Kos has done," he continued, "but the translation [of online discussion into political influence] is clearly limited. If you get 500,000 uniques a day, and then raise around $1 million. That's not a lot of money, in terms of conversion of readers to donors. If I want to donate, I have to go there, then go to a third-party site.... And I don't have a profile of my political influence. So we're building a suite of widgets to empower bloggers and blogging communities to more efficiently translate their passion into real political power."
"We're not about fundraising," Ben reiterated. "Giving to politicians is not exciting. People want to change the world, stop global warming, undercut the influence of the NRA, whatever you issue might be."
"People want to be a part of a community who come together, engage, and have collective decision-making" to impact the political process through donations, he said. "It's really unexciting to give 25 bucks to your local politician. It's hard to give to a single politician. We've transformed that into, 'I'm giving to save network neutrality.' It's an important psychological shift - not about getting someone elected, but getting my personal issue taking seriously." -andy
Tags: Ben Rattray | Change.org | DailyKos | election 2008 | Facebook | fundraising | MySpace | PACs | political action committees | politics | social networking
Posted by acarvin at 1:58 PM
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May 18, 2007
MySpace: Balancing Business with Democracy
Eli Pariser of MoveOn: While it may make sense from a business perspective for MySpace to not allow embedded videos from competitors like Revver, it doesn't make sense from a democracy perspective.
Jeff Berman responds: This is a democratic platform and it needs to be, but democracies have rules. YouTube was built upon MySpace, and we generally don't block them. But Revver monetizes their videos at our expense, though, and that's problematic for MySpace.
Tags: MySpace | PDF2007 | Revver
Posted by acarvin at 2:07 PM
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Steve Urquhart: The Extremes of Politics are Rotting Our Core
Utah State Representative Steve Urquhart, founder of the political wiki Politicopia, spoke about the reasons he created his site, which allows the public to collaborate on debating and crafting policy. Some notes:
"The extremes dominate the political process and the core is rotting," he said. The extremes have the money and the rock star status. Solutions evade us because this is at odds with democracy. "Democracy requires comprise - and that takes place in the middle, not on the extremes." The bulk of Americans get discouraged and disgusted because they're disenfranchised by the extremes. People of good will enter the system and get eaten alive. Imagine if everyone in this conference took over power in government. Within two years we'd be doing the same thing people in power do today. So it's not a matter of changing people - it's about changing the system.
So at first I launched a blog, then a wiki called Politicopia.com. I put up issues pages, as can anyone else, and we debate issues facing the Utah legislature. On one issue, the argument brought things to the right; on another one, to the left. But in both cases, the discussion moderated the policy outcome. What I want politicopia to become is some networking function, so it's easier for people to talk directly to each other.
"We need to engage the smart mob in the middle, not the fringes."
Tags: collaboration | partisanship | Politicopia | politics | wiki
Posted by acarvin at 2:00 PM
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Previewing the Next Edition of Tom Friedman's The World is Flat
Tom Friedman returned to the stage to read excerpts from three new chapters he's adding to the next edition of his runaway best seller, The World is Flat. I took some notes, though struggled a bit to keep up with his fast-paced reading. -andy
Here's a quick sampler of the new chapters I'm adding to the next edition of The World is Flat. The personal computer, the Internet and workflow software is allowing people to create, share and collaborate in ways that have truly made the world flat. I see it wherever I go.
The first chapter I've added is "IF it's not happening, it's because you're not doing it." I came into the office, turned on my PC and got 5000 emails with the same complaint. A group in Canada called A Dog and 10,000 Dollars had organized it. What do I have to do to make them go away?
Okay, this isn't true, but this happens to CEOs every day. The Internet lets even the smallest groups organize their activism and expose multinationals. If it has merit, they can get these companies to change behavior or beg for mercy. And the praise these companies win when they do the right thing has real benefit.
A few years ago, TXU announced they would create some more energy plants, which would pollute the environment, and they'd do it anyway. So stoptxu.com was formed, creating a national constituency against their plans. All of those efforts paid off when a buyout group offered to buy TXU. But they didn't want to fight the environments, so they invited the protestors to work with them and figure out a way to make the deal climate-friendly. The world's biggest buyout rode on the approval of the only two people at the table who had no money at the table - the environmentalists.
I asked a lobbyist about this. She said: "We were operating under the old rules and the rules changed, but no one bothered to put up a sign."
The people changing the world are online activists, environmentalists, biz school students with a green soul. They have a burning desire to make a difference, and that the flattening of the world makes this possible more than ever before. So I would tell today's people, if it's not happening, it's because you're not doing it.
Next chapter: I traveled the world and looked at social entrepreneurship. "What happens when we all have dogs' hearing?" I flew to France and Germany. I was met by a driver, a young guy of African descent, taking to himself in French through a Bluetooth headset phone. He picked me up and kept talking. He had a movie playing while we drove, and he kept talking on his phone. I was trying to write on my laptop and could barely conce