“Tripping on Internet Populism”“The Rise of Open-source Politics”

By Micah L.Sifry

“Tripping on Internet Populism”

“The Rise of Open-source Politics”

By Micah L.Sifry

• Impact of digital democracy• Open Source politics• The Dean Campaign• The future of Web-enabled Politicking• Crawford’s advice

Introduction

Impact of Digital Democracy

• Digital democracy teach-in– Real-time communication convergence– Joe Trippi, keynote speaker– Conference site

• Optimism for Internet to change “balance of power” in America– “Broadcast Politics” challenged– Social software initiating change

• Success of Dean campaign

Impact of Digital Democracy

• Changing role of money in politics– New technology is “. . .returning the party in

this country to where it belongs – in the hands of the grassroots and everyday Americans” Joe Trippi, Howard Dean’s campaign manager

• Changing process of community organization– Role of Meetup.com– Opens process to greater citizen participation– Change for America blog

Open Source Politics

“…refers to allowing any software developer to see the underlying source code of a program, so that anyone can analyze it and improve it; better code trumps bad code, and programmers who have proven their smarts have greater credibility and status.”

Micah L.Sifry

Open Source Politics

• Challenges status-quo of “top-down” politics– Allows for all members of organization

to participate– Dismantles hierarchy– Removes central power control

Open Source Politics

• Moveon.org vs. DailyKos.com– Moveon has large subscriber base – gets

people involved– Still remains top-down organization

• “…is to liberal politics as Wal-Mart is to retail.” - Wes Boyd

– DailyKos is multilayered community• Rewards ideas that surface from below• Built with “Scoop” – different social software that

allows peer moderation and ranking• Community elects “leaders” through rankings

(called “trusted users”)

Open Source Politics

• Internet brings in portion of population that feels alienated– De-emphasizes money and marketing

role

• Traditional campaign politicians still very nervous– Loss of “control”– Opens up “brand” to entire community

Open Source Politics

• Loss of control can have positive impact– “I am not a ‘customer’ and I am not a

‘consumer,’…I am a citizen and a voter. I flee from ‘message. It is advertising. I want to avoid advertising.”

– “Control kills passion. Control kills the human voice.”

• David Weinberger

The Dean Campaign

• The start of “Ask the Dean campaign” at SmirkingChimp.com

The Dean Campaign

• An actual direct line to the Dean campaign

“This is too cool, an actual direct line to the Dean campaign committee! Pinch me, I must be dreaming!”

The Dean Campaign

“That was an amazing day to see that rise out of nowhere. People were floored that the thread title was “Ask the Dean campaign” and Trippi and Matt were actually asking questions and interacting. Never before had anyone seen that.”

The Dean Campaign

• Communicate with people more directly in less time and less cost

• People felt very connected and involved with the campaign

The Dean Campaign

• Technology allows every voice to be heard– Makes people feel like they are actually

part of the community… not just an observer

– It’s a two way communication

The Dean Campaign

• Technology supports the idea of democracy

The Dean Campaign

“New web-based tools are facilitating a different way of doing politics, one in which we may all actually, be equals; where transparency and accountability are more than slogans; and where anyone with few resources but a compelling message can be a community organizer.”

The Dean Campaign

• About two-thirds of American adults use the Internet, and more than 55 percent have access to a high-speed Internet connection at either home or work.

• More than 53 million people have contributed material online.

• More than 15 million have their own website.

The Dean Campaign

• A new blog, or online journal, is created every 5.3 seconds, according to Technorati.com. As of November 1, there were almost 4.3 million blogs which more than half of them are regularly updated by their creators, producing more than 400,000 fresh postings every day.

The Dean Campaign

• A well-written blog, Joshua Micah Marshall's Talking Points Memo, gets more than 500,000 monthly visitors--as many as the entire website of The American Prospect, the magazine where Marshall used to work, at a fraction of the cost.

The Dean Campaign

• A two-minute political cartoon lampooning both Kerry and Bush, put out by JibJab.com this past summer, had 10 million viewings in the month of July--three times the number of hits on both presidential campaign websites combined--and has since been viewed another 55 million times.

The future of Web-enabled Politicking

• Web may enable return to greater civic participation

“In the same way that TV took politics away from the grassroots, the Internet will give it back.”

Scott Heiferman

The future of Web-enabled Politicking

• The Open-source method can make politics more representative and fair– People that receive the message,

create it

• Web politicking may be suited to one demographic

The future of Web-enabled Politicking

“…really well suited to the liberal side of the spectrum, where you have a lot of college-educated people who are not connecting to politics through church networks or their workplaces or professional associations, where open partisanship is frowned upon, and where the Democratic Party has fallen into dealing with people as disaggregated individuals, followers or clients, rather than participants."

Theda Skocpol

The future of Web-enabled Politicking

• Recent survey found attendees at Meetup.com for democratic candidate were mostly white, middle and upper-income professionals

• Not everyone is online

• Web doesn’t alter our tendency to organize by social group

The future of Web-enabled Politicking

• Regardless, next generation is growing up online– 29% of kids in grades kindergarten two third

have their own email address

• RateMyTeachers.com – Students allowed to rate their teachers– Over six million rating posted – Posting tripled in one year

• Future may allow adults to rate authority figures

Crawford’s Advice

• Allow users to learn better by enabling interactive “play” techniques on community sites– Incorporate simulations to help users

understand current political issues– Motivate users through political simulation

scenarios

• Increase bandwidth to community members– Encourage contributions within community to

provide all members with best tools

Crawford’s Advice

• Keep community sites active and interesting– Most are “more like a library than a playground”

• Design sites that enable greater ‘thinking’ and ‘listening’– Most sites one-way ‘talk’, relatively low on ‘think’– Make members feel empowered by “listening” to their

ideas

• Allow users more control to custom-build their pages– Not want you want to provide, but what user wants to

‘do’– Users will follow ‘lead’ of community members who

build trust in pages

Crawford’s Advice

• Configure sites not like a ‘tree’ but more like a ‘web’– Further cross-links as opposed to

branches