Turn off the computer and leave the house

My good friend and fellow erstwhile Deaniac Mike Dish makes a great point about the Dean campaign and persuasion. Like many others, I think the Dean campaign was a case where the candidate lost but the campaign won. Dean brought thousands of people into the system. He was unsuccessful in the primaries because the enthusiastic supporters he brought in just couldn't match up with "establishment" supporters who knew how to get out the vote in Iowa, New Hampshire, etc. The Internet is a great tool for getting people involved-- but it can't stop there; you have also be able to instruct them on what to do once they turn off their computer and leave the house.

Bloggers take on the FEC!

Matt Stoller, Duncan Black, and 'Kos put together a memo to the FEC re: the current proposal to regulate blogging. Their comments, eloquently compiled into a memo, can be found here. There's an interesting argument to be made here rooted in free market capitalism. Carol Darr at IPDI often talks about how the Internet has "lowered the barriers to entry" in politics, giving every citizen with a free minute the chance to be heard through his or her blog. Readers can choose which bloggers they read, and the successful ones should be allowed to prosper and expand. Here's the salient bit:

We recognize that the FEC might feel some skittishness about allowing bloggers to be paid while simultaneously being treated as "media." This fear may stem from an assumption that bloggers are more likely to be swayed by money and become a de facto controlled entity. We do not believe this to be the case, primarily because of every blogger's need to maintain credibility given the diversity of competing options available of the blogosphere. In short, the free market of ideas works here: With zero cost of entry for participants (Blogger.com, the most popular blog service, is free) and zero cost for readers, citizens have unlimited options in terms of who to read and who to trust. Moreover, without the ability to receive paid advertising for our advocacy from those entities most desiring to reach our readers, we would no longer be able to sustain ourselves as independent voices and practice the kind of around-the-clock journalism that the Internet enables.

More on Old School vs. New Media

Something to add to my previous post about email for fundraising. Other types of fundraising tools--events, house parties, meetings, calls, and direct mail--operate differently than fundraising through email because these traditional tools ask for money that is separate from day-to-day expenses. One of the great things about soliciting money through emails is that people often react by contributing small amounts of money that they have mentally categorized as "discretionary" (and a large number of small donations can help propel a candidate like Howard Dean to the lead).

Old School vs. New Media

Today at the "Take Back America Conference," I sat in on a plenary on fundraising featuring my boss (the Development Director at Progressive Majority). Having a fairly tech-savvy (or tech-interested) audience, we spent some time talking about e-Campaigning and using the power of the Internet for fundraising. I thought I'd note some of my boss's observations-- with the caveat being that these come from someone who has been trained in the traditional school of fundraising:

* "Emails are more effective than websites." This is something we discussed in class, and I thought it was particularly noteworthy. Sometimes we get so caught up in slick websites that we lose sight of the fact that sites are many-to-one whereas emails are one-to-one. Case in point: last week, we had to send out a fundraising alert to some of our monthly contributors. Rather than post something on our website or send an email from our Executive Director's account (which would quickly be tagged as faked since the ED just doesn't sit down and write emails to low-range donors), we had the email come from my account! The 80 or so people we emailed thus received an alert from someone they'd never heard of, and since that someone is at a relatively junior position, they were probably more likely to think it was genuine rather than the form mail-merged letter it was. This is an effective tool, and one that is given its effectiveness because of the medium.

* "You can't just send emails asking for money without building a relationship first." Proof? Look at how the Kerry and Bush campaigns used emails. I remember getting TONS of emails from Kerry (and Clinton, Obama, Dean, etc) asking for money... while at the same time, the Bush campaign was encouraging people to get involved with local events, and to forward their emails to friends and family. In fact, at a Progressive Technology Roundtable last November, I remember hearing about a study on how the campaigns used email. If someone knows where I can find that, I'd love to read it again.

* "Emails and direct mail have similar levels of attrition, BUT emails run into the digital divide." This is a great point, especially for progressives. With an email, I can hit a bunch of supporters for free... but I won't hit the people who don't have Internet access. Many elderly people don't use computers; many of the poorest Americans don't have Internet access. Last I heard we were at around 75% penetration with Internet access (either at home, work, or at school/library), and a lot of people think that's asymptotal and we just won't be able to get much higher. If so, we need to recognize the limitations of the medium.

Push & Pull

In our conversation about new media's role in a marketing world dominated by television and print, I got to thinking about how users interact with web sites as opposed to traditional media types. Marshall McLuhan would wisely point out that "the medium is the message," and his short, simple, and insightful statement seems particularly salient here. The beauty of the Internet is its customizability. Whereas television and print are, in essence, "pushed" onto the reader/user, the Internet is all about "pull," or how the user configures and personalizes his or her experience. The most successful sites are all about setting your preferences-- on a news site, you can select what types of news you want to hear about; on your blogroll you list the types of opinion that most interest you. The paradigm of "Internet as customizable medium" isn't easy to change, and may help to explain why blogads, banner ads, and spam--ways of mapping traditional media usage onto new media--have yet to be extremely successful.

It seems the solution is to discard traditional ways of using media, and look for how you can exploit the customizability of the Internet. Campaigns should use the built-in targeting inherent to Internet usage to create narrowcast messages. In this model, visitors who go to a NASCAR website are greeted with a very different message than those who go to Gay.com. While it's tempting to wholesale broadcast messages across a range of high-traffic websites--in the way that traditional political advertising was broadcast on a variety of television channels, effective use of the Internet for politicking depends, I believe, on targeting.

Take Back America!

It's time to Take Back America! My organization, Progressive Majority, is assisting Campaign for America's Future in hosting the TBA Conference this Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Some of the big progressive names are going to be there (George Lakoff! Antonio Villaraigosa! Arianna Huffington!) and I'm excited for it. There are also two plenaries re: online politics, so I'll try to attend those and report back.

The Daily Rag(havan)

Having failed to post consistently over the last month at District'd, I've moved onto greener pastures. Introducing... "The Daily Rag!" -- daily analysis of politics, technology, and political technology. I'll admit--it's for a class on new media, and I'm a bit late on the start, but I'll try harder from here on out to provide the best in left-wing nuttery.