Identifying the Influentials...

Reading IPDI's report on the Influentials, one thing strikes me - on a campaign, I need to know asap when one of them offers to help my campaign! But how do I do that?

Even since this report was written, I would be confident in putting forward the view that people volunteering, donating and getting involved online has increased considerably. I doubt it is any longer the case that all of these people are Influentials, as defined in the report.

As such, we need to find a way to identify them as the sign up. One way hinted at in the report is via the sign up screen for volunteers. I would suggest trying to modify the form so that you ask enough questions to identify that this person is most likely an Influential, and have a flag in the contact system to identify them as such.

If you follow the guidelines for putting them to work, you can then have a dynamic list that will automatically include that person next time you design communications targeted at Influentials.

In my experience, it is always preferable to have rules identifying such characteristics, rather than leaving it to the whim of an individual to decide if someone should be included.

Are we really changing the world?

I couldn't quite put my finger on what I felt was the over-arching theme in many of the race and digital divide discussions until I saw this quote at the end of the The African American Blogging Thing.

... blogging is representative of existing dynamics as much as it is a new system to change those dynamics.

And that is the point isn't it? We have talked much in class and outside about how the Internet has been so revolutionary by increasing civic participation and motivating whole groups of previously disenchanted citizens to rejoin the political fray. But hasn't it just done that amongst the groups that were politically interested anyway, just turned off by the partisan political process - in other words, people who are predominantly white with above average incomes?

Reading the articles this week, I wonder how many of the population that progressive blogs seek to speak for ever actually read blogs like DailyKos and MyDD? In reality, I'm going to guess that the readership profile of DailyKos doesn't look that much different to the people who came out to support Howard Dean.

I don't get any real sense that the Internet has really changed the dynamic as much as we would like to believe. It is often said that the Republicans need an average turnout - low or high favors the Democrats. One reason for this is that the nearly 50% of people who don't vote are presumed to be more likely to vote Democrat. Once again, many of the these people didn't vote in 2004, when we saw the most concentrated GOTV efforts ever seen.

What can we do to bring these people into political process? I don't think it is just a matter of access to computers - reading the article above, it seems to suggest that African Americans are online and reading blogs, but feel no connection to something like political blogs which they see as a predominantly white culture. Surely the democrats need to spend less time attacking each other, and more time working out ways to connect with their natural supporters?