Kos vs. IPDI: the smackdown

Yesterday, Kos had a couple of posts up that hit a little close to home: criticizing GSPM's own Carol Darr's comments to the FEC on whether bloggers should be regulated as political expenditures under campaign finance laws. You can read her comments (submitted on behalf of IPDA) here, and Kos' comments here, here, and here.

I have to agree with Kos on this one: I can design my own fliers promoting the candidate of my choice, print them up at Kinko's, and stand on the street corner handing them out to passersby without any government regulation--how is that different than having a blog? Payments from campaigns to bloggers must be disclosed in the campaign's quarterly expense reports, just like payments to any other consultant. James Carville and Paul Begala consulted for Kerry while hosting "Crossfire" on CNN. If a blog is run by a campaign, than it should be treated as any other campaign expenditure. But independent bloggers that declare their support for one candidate or another should be treated the same as any private citizen doing the same on the street corner.

There's also an important difference between television and the internet when it comes to regulation: access to television is limited by the amount of broadcast spectrum set aside by the FCC for television, and the monopoly rights that stations hold on that spectrum. The internet, on the other hand, has very low barriers to entry. There is no practical limit on the number of websites that can exist, and starting a page is a low-cost (or free!) task. I can't start my own TV show tomorrow--but I'm a blogger!

The Mystery Meat Plague

I'm glad I finally have a name for what annoys me so much about this site.

It shouldn't take me 10 minutes to find the locations of your stores! Please, Chipotle, free us from mysterious rings of tortilla chips and avocados!

Rapid Response

One of the more interesting uses of new technology in the political world I've seen lately sadly (or, well, maybe not so sadly) did not get to be implemented. (At least not yet, anyway.)

In the run-up to the Senate nuclear option, PFAW asked its members to sign up for text-message notification at the exact moment that Frist pulled the trigger. The messages would have included the Senate switchboard number, and with a push of a button, PFAW members would have been immediately linked to their Senators' offices, ready to register their opposition to the Republican majority's actions.

Having worked with the software that many advocacy groups here in DC use for their email Action Alerts, I can understand why PFAW decided to look for new technology for this particular need. Depending on the complexity of the message (how many pieces of information like the name of the recipient's Senator or a phone number that have to be pulled from a database and matched by zip code) it can take up to 12 hours to send 120,000 email messages. Moreover, many people only check their email once or twice a day. As long as the "rapid" in "rapid response" means "in the next week or so", email can be an effective way to mobilize an interest group's members.

However, PFAW clearly needed something quicker. The key events of the nuclear option were going to happen quickly, within a few hours, and PFAW needed to show how many people felt strongly about preserving the filibuster within that time frame. The use of cell phone text messaging, with an automatic link to the Senate switchboard, was an inspired use of technology for political communication.

Too bad we didn't get to see it in action...

Diversity online

While many of Sunstein's observations seem intuitively reasonable, Jenkins does a good job of showing how "broadcast" and "narrowcast" media will work together to expand the ways that information is communicated. One problematic part of Sunstein's analysis, however, is his evaluation of diversity in the real world, as compared to online diversity.

While it may be true that the internet allows people to filter out opinions that disagree with their own, Sunstein overestimates the exposure that many people have to opposing viewpoints in other parts of life. Indeed, many people who live in homogenous communities, especially small or rural communities, may find more intellectual and political diversity in their internet wanderings than they would walking down the street, talking to their neighbors, or reading the local paper. National news takes a broader view, of course, but can three corporate networks really be considered "diverse"?