bytes and ballots

Wired story on Joost

2007-02-02T15:34:00.000-08:00

Here's the promised link to the February 2007 Wired Magazine story on Joost.

Faking campaign photos

2007-01-30T08:40:00.000-08:00

The LA Times has a story this morning, "O.C. candidate has serious image problem." The story is about a candidate running for an Orange County (CA) supervisorial seat; someone in his campaign, or associated somehow with his campaign, doctored a photo so that the candidate (Trung Nguyen) is shown right behind Governor Schwarzenegger. I just wonder how often this sort of thing happens these days with campaign photos like this.

Politics snubbing TV?

2007-01-29T13:07:00.000-08:00

There is this interesting piece in the Denver Post, by that paper's TV critic, "Politics tuning TV out." Here's a short snip, reflecting something I have written about earlier:

This election year we're seeing a seismic shift in the way TV interacts with politics and politicians. After decades of setting the agenda - influencing how campaigns operate, even defining the choices presented to voters - television is being snubbed in the run-up to 2008.

The Internet is stealing the thunder from the old rabbit ears, forcing the networks to play catch-up.

So far, two Democratic candidates for the nation's highest office have chosen to announce their bids via the Internet. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both streamed video on the Web, in essence becoming their own broadcasters for the moment, making a high-tech end run around old media.

And in a similar vein, there is a piece in the NY Times, "In Politics, the Camera Never Blinks (or Nods)".

A side note ... on attack ads in Canada

2007-01-29T13:03:00.000-08:00

There's an interesting story in Macleans.ca, "The Going Negative Myth: No Matter How Many Attack Ads, You Can't Go Somewhere You Already Are." It's got some interesting information in it regarding negativity in Canadian politics.

"Hillary TV"

2007-01-29T13:02:00.000-08:00

This is on ZDNet today, "Hillary TV: Will User Generated Politics Get Clinton to the White House?"

"Attack ads go online and underground"

2007-01-29T13:00:00.000-08:00

The LA Times has a story today, "Attack ads go online and underground."

Who reads political blogsites?

2007-01-24T09:42:00.000-08:00

Political blogsites are proliferating; even candidates running for local level offices have them these days!

But an open research question is who reads political blogsites.

There is an interesting study from Joseph Graf, published by the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, "The Audience for Political Blogs: New Research on Blog Readership" on this question.

The study used a list of registered voters with matched email addresses in California (apparently about 2.3 million registered voters in the state), who were emailed, and asked to participate in their study of political blogsite readers. They were able to get 7,863 respondents, many of whom reported reading blogs. Here is a quote from the report's executive summary regarding their key results:

• While many Internet users have seen blogs, a much smaller proportion of them are regular readers of political blogs. Of the sample gathered here, 9% said they look at a political blog “almost every day.”
• Daily readers of political blogs see blogs as a news source and an alternative to the mainstream media, which they despise. Daily blog readers get almost all of their news online.
• The audience for political blogs appears to be fairly concentrated across dozens of blogs, not thousands. Daily readers visit the most popular blogs.
• Daily readers are disproportionately men, are not younger than other Internet users, but claim greater household income than other Internet users.
• Daily readers are more likely to place themselves at the ends of the political spectrum. They are also more likely to take strong positions on social issues, especially those who consider themselves Democrats.
• Daily readers are heavily involved in politics, and they respond to efforts by bloggers to participate. Daily readers forward news stories, sign petitions and e-mail politicians at the prompting of political blogs.
• Daily readers think that blogs encourage and improve political discussion.

It's an interesting attempt to study the use of political blogsites. As the report acknowledges, it is very difficult to study the readers and producers of political blogs, because they are still relatively few active writers and readers of political blogs. I wasn't able to find exact details as to what the contact email looked like, nor was I able to find the exact questionnaire (if I do find this info, I'll post it here); I wonder whether or not the contact email or questionnaire was worded in a way that might attract users of political blogs, or even politically active individuals, because the basic data on political activitiy reported here does seem a bit skewed.

Methodological questions aside, this is an interesting report, and an interesting study ... we'll certainly be seeing political campaigns increase their use of tools like blogsites in the next cycle.

Joost may change the face of political campaigns

2007-01-22T10:23:00.000-08:00

There is a good article in the new issue of Wired Magazine, that presents a lot of detail about Joost. There is some discussion in the Wired piece (which when it is available online I'll link to) about how advertisers are excited about Joost, and the new possibilities it presents for precise targeting of advertising to specific Joost subscribers, and the content they are watching.

But I am struck by the synergy between Joost's technology and the current use of "microtargeting" by political campaigns, and wonder about whether, if Joost (or something like Joost) eventually takes hold, when campaigns will start using it to precisely target political messages. It would be possible to get campaign video right to the eyeballs of specific voters, and to even allow for interactivity between the campaign message and specific voters. These new technologies certainly bear watching, as they present new and unprecedented opportunities for the targeting of political messages to individual voters.

More on Joost later ...

Presidential hopefuls turning to the Internet for announcing candidacies

2007-01-22T10:03:00.000-08:00

In a sign of how national candidates are viewing new technology as a campaign medium, I found it quite interesting to see that Hillary Clinton last week used the Internet to announce her initial interest in running for president on the Internet. She follows both Barack Obama and John Edwards in using the Internet to announce their intentions. I suspect this signals what will be a heightened use of the Internet in the 2008 presidential campaign. There's was a short story in the Los Angeles Times yesterday that talked about Clinton's use of the Internet.

Exactly why the Internet is become such a popular forum for announcing presidential intentions is not clear: perhaps it has something to do with the ability to get the word into the hands of targeted supporters, and perhaps it has something to do with staying away from the free media and their propensity to ask questions that candidates don't want to answer. But I do suspect this will signal an increased Internet presence for all presidential hopefuls in the 2008 cycle.

"Viral Video in Politics"

2007-01-16T14:42:00.001-08:00

The New Politics Institute has a series on the transformation of video, and they have an interesting report out called "Viral Video in Politics". Peter Leyden of NDN has a nice summary of this report on his blog.

Anti-spam tool turned into political activism tool

2006-12-14T11:47:00.000-08:00

Wired has this story about how the anti-spam software Blue Frog is being transformed into a software application for political activism. The vision behind this new tool, Collactive, is discussed in the story:

Now founders Aran Reshef and Amir Hirsh are reincarnating their software to turn armies of internet users into political activists. Their new Collactive platform takes the drudgery out of grass-roots action, letting armchair activists fill out online petitions, file comments in rule-making proceedings, send letters to their representatives in Congress and seed collaborative web forums with sympathetic news items -- all with the push of a button.

The Collactive software is offered as a generic distribution to organizations, who then configure it for a particular political issue and give it to users as a downloadable software package or Firefox plug-in.

Once it's installed, the organizers can send alerts to users or update the software with scripts that know how to take particular actions, such as automatically filling in feedback forms on a politician's website. End users can also forward e-mail alerts to their friends, who have the option of installing the software themselves and joining the network.

Here's a link to Collactive.

Schwarzenegger political "hack" no crime ...

2006-12-14T11:41:00.000-08:00

According to this LA Times story, investigation by the California Attorney General's office has found that no crime was committed by the Angelides campaign when they obtained audiotapes of Schwarzenegger's conversations from a computer in the Governor's office:

In late August, Angelides campaign aides plucked the audio from the governor's website. Portions of the recording were published by The Times in early September, two months before the election.

The files contained a casual conversation in which Schwarzenegger told aides that Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia (R-Cathedral City) has a "hot" personality, and attributed her temperament to mixed blood.

Several weeks later, with the governor's race still underway, CHP investigators consulted state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer's office and were told that proving a crime with the evidence in hand would be impossible.

"You don't break and enter a business by walking in an open door during business hours," said Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for the attorney general's office.

The governor's computer system appeared to have been "quasi-open," he said. "That makes it very difficult to put together a prosecutable case."

"Applebee's America"

2006-12-04T21:29:00.000-08:00

I recently had a chance to read this interesting new book, "Applebee's America", by Douglas B. Sosnik, Matthew J. Dowd and Ron Fournier. The book uses the recent reelection campaigns of both Bush and Clinton, as well as looks inside megachurches and the restaurant chain Appleee's, to explore new ways that organizations are attracting voters/members/dollars, in a world that is rapidly changing.

There is a lot in the book about the Bush and Clinton reelection campaigns, and a lot of discussion of how campaigns are now using technology to connect to voters. In particular, they focus on two "myths": first, that technology is making for a more disconnected America; second, that the easy availability of information is forcing fewer voters to turn to others for information. The authors assert that both myths are false, and argue that Americans are using technology increasingly to build social and political connections, and that information technologies are leading voters to increasingly turn to reliable individuals (called "Navigators") to help alleviate information overload.

It's an interesting book, and an easy read. Not a lot of analytic content here, but for those interested in political networks, and how campaigns are rethinking the use of information technologies, it is a worthwhile read. And by the way, the book contained one of the most accessible discussions of "microtargeting" that I've read!

YouTube creating new markets, in politics

2006-12-04T15:53:00.000-08:00

I guess it had to happen. Someone would figure out that YouTube can be a complicated and difficult medium to use for political communications. So I wasn't surprised to read the release regarding "Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network", a new website:

(that) caters to the narrow but diverse audience of political candidates, elected officials, political pundits, advocacy groups, political junkies, and government agencies. Created to leverage new uses of video technology for the political community, CHBN allows its users to inform, educate, advocate, influence, and campaign at the click of a mouse.

David Livingston, a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. and the site's founder, says: "CHBN is a non-partisan website that serves as a free and powerful communication tool for people and organizations in the political community. It'll not only serve as an important tool for candidates and others, but it will also be entertaining and informative for our visitors."

"We feel confident that this is where politics on the internet is heading," Livingston says. "We wanted to be the first to provide a professional, politically themed online network. Members can create and upload their own videos or upload their existing media to give it additional exposure. Elected officials can use the site to give weekly video updates to stay connected to his or her constituents. In addition, individuals and advocacy groups can broadcast legislative proposals or viewpoints on an issue, and can receive feedback through CHBN's 'rating' and 'comment' feature. Unlike television, this tool allows members to immediately gauge viewer interest while complementing online fundraising efforts."

The release is here.

"Wireless Enters the Political Arena"

2006-12-01T09:40:00.000-08:00

This is from WirelessWeek.com:

Wireless phones could be an important catalyst – from increasing the impact of campaign strategies to how voters stay informed about elections, says Adam Thierer, senior fellow and director of the Progress and Freedom Foundation's center for digital media freedom. For instance, using "flash mobs" – which have been an online forum phenomenon, where people are directed to be at a certain place at a certain time – could become a campaigning technique for candidates looking for mass support at a given time, he says.

...

Wireless technology also is making its way into voting machines themselves. A number of voting machine vendors now incorporate infrared communications ports that allow officials to download new ballots or update old ones instantly, according to Lillie Coney, coordinator for the Electronic Privacy Information Center's National Committee for Voting Integrity.

Along with the increased efficiencies and possibilities, though, wireless technology also is raising concerns. Coney says voting machines with an infrared access port should be considered with caution, as those ports make voting machines vulnerable to hacking and illegal entry.

...

Other concerns are in the grey area that's emerging between broadcast regulations and telecommunications regulations as the two converge. Thierer notes the coming difficulties involved with separating broadcast content regulation from wireless content regulation. There are broadcasting rules that mandate "equal time" for political candidates. If services that link broadcast television to wireless phones transmit political ads, do the same equal access rules apply? Coney says no, as the signal remains a broadcast signal.

However, some wireless political ads already have begun to blur the line and attract the attention of regulators. Late last year, California passed a law that explicitly prohibits candidates from sending mass text messages to wireless phone subscribers.

Wired: "Election 08: Vote by TiVo"

2006-11-16T22:56:00.000-08:00

So Wired has what is by most accounts a fairly balanced story on Internet voting in the United States. But I do have to point out that the story neglects to reference "Point, Click and Vote: The Future of Internet Voting", or to pick up the point of view that Thad and I articulated there. Maybe next time ...

Michael Cornfield: Internet not producing a revolution in politics, yet

2006-11-16T20:02:00.000-08:00

I've now had a chance to recover from the election, and am catching up on some stuff that accumulated in the past two weeks. One is an interesting article by Michael Cornfield, "The Internet and Politics: No Revolution, Yet." His conclusions are interesting:

Looking ahead, it's clear that the Internet's role in politics will continue evolving as the technology improves and users continuously adapt it for new purposes. And someday, the iconic internet president may emerge, dominating the medium like FDR did with radio and JFK and Ronald Reagan did with television.

But thus far, the most compelling narrative about the internet's political is not about candidates' skill with new media. Rather, it centers on stories from the grassroots: activists' use of email and Web sites; small donors' contributions online; bloggers' passion to tell stories and debate issues; and amateur videographers' quest to record "gotcha" moments. Perhaps that is the most fitting contribution this technology can endow to democracy.

Digital Utopians, Web 2.0: will technology allow people to change the media?

2006-11-05T19:35:00.000-08:00

There's a good story in today's San Francisco Chronicle about Digital Uptopians/Web 2.0.

"Web could give young voters a voice"

2006-11-05T19:33:00.000-08:00

The Los Angeles Times had a story on how the Internet might be a target for online campaigning.

Does technology make candidates wary of public appearances?

2006-11-02T16:21:00.000-08:00

That's the implication I took from reading George Skelton's "Capitol Journal" story today in the Los Angeles Times, "40 years have seen openness, civility fade as cynicism gains." He compares Reagan to Schwarzenegger, and notes that Reagan was much more accessible to reporters than Schwarzenegger. Skelton speculates that technology is to blame:

This governor flies aboard a leased Gulfstream jet with only his handlers, paid for by special-interest donors. There aren't any pesky reporters around to press him, for example, about his plans for a second term.

He rarely holds news conferences that aren't staged photo-ops. But it's not just him; it's too many politicians these days, including recalled Gov. Gray Davis. Courage and confidence have given way to caution and cowering.

In one way, it's understandable because of technology. Sen. John Kerry stumbles on "a botched joke about the president" — it sounds like he may be insulting troops — and instantly becomes a target of political opportunists and demagogues.

In the pre-blog era, the slower communication system was much more forgiving.

And politics was more civil.

...

Technology has made candidates less interesting. They're not speaking from their souls as much as mimicking voters who sound off in focus groups or respond to polls. The politicians' manicured messages lack spontaneity and a sense of sincerity.

If Reagan had studied polls, which back then were slower and less sophisticated, he would have missed one of the most potent issues of 1966: the voters' escalating anger at student protests, especially at UC Berkeley. That wasn't picked up by surveys. Reagan found it himself by listening to audiences' questions. Soon, he was denouncing the "mess at Berkeley" and running ahead of Brown.

...

Politics was more of a fun, community sport 40 years ago. And government generally functioned better.

Worth investigation ...

Rating Congress on technology votes

2006-11-01T20:35:00.000-08:00

The Computer and Communication Industry Association has released an analysis of roll call votes in the 109th Congress, focusing on legislation of interest to high-tech companies:

CIA’s High-Tech Scorecard examined seven important votes in the House of Representatives where, on average, Members voted with industry and consumers about 60% of the time. Congress failed to move on numerous bills of critical importance to high-tech companies. Patent and copyright reform in particular got short shrift, even as junk patents impeded innovators everywhere and outdated copyright laws threatened to cripple the next generation of new media devices.

In the Senate there were too few votes of significance to assemble a useful scorecard for the upper chamber.

“We had some good moments, but this Congress was a real disappointment,” CCIA President & CEO Ed Black said. “Technology is more important than ever, yet our interests and those of the consumers were not addressed and too often sacrificed to election-year politics. The very foundation of our economy is at stake. We hope the 110th Congress will do better.”

On a bright note, CCIA would like to highlight and applaud the Representatives who received perfect scores:
* Rep. Berman (CA-28)
* Rep. Blumenauer (OR-03)
* Rep. Boucher (VA-09)
* Rep. Capuano (MA-08)
* Rep. Eshoo (CA-14)
* Rep. Honda (CA-15)
* Rep. Hoyer (MD-05)
* Rep. Kind (WI-05)
* Rep. Lofgren (CA-16)
* Rep. Murtha (PA-12)
* Rep. Smith (WA-02)
* Rep. Thompson (CA-01)
* Rep. Udall (CO-02)
* Rep. Woolsey (CA-06)
* Rep. Harman (CA-36)

My own congressman, Adam Schiff --- who represents the Pasadena-area and Caltech --- did relatively well overall, getting a 71% score in the CCIA index.

Intellipedia --- cool idea with many applications?

2006-11-01T09:52:00.000-08:00

The intelligence community has come up with another interesting way to use a communication technology, as reported in a number of media outlets yesterday (here I'm drawing upon the story in the LA Times). The idea is to use something like Wikipedia to aggregate information from the CIA and U.S. intelligence community to develop intelligence estimates:

The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have created a computer system that uses software from a popular Internet encyclopedia site to gather content on sensitive topics from analysts across the spy community, part of an effort to fix problems that plagued prewar estimates on Iraq.

The system, dubbed Intellipedia because it is built on open-source software from Wikipedia, was launched earlier this year. It already is being used to assemble intelligence reports on Nigeria and other subjects, according to U.S. intelligence officials who on Tuesday discussed the initiative in detail for the first time.

In some ways, this sounds like a cool idea, and an idea that could have a lot of potential uses.

One potential use that is near and dear to things I've written about in my other blog, Election Updates, is that this technology could be used for any type of risk or threat assessment, in particular, threat assessment by election administrators. Here's more from the LA Times that describes the system:

The system allows analysts from all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies to weigh in on debates on North Korea's nuclear program and other sensitive topics, creating internal websites that are constantly updated with new information and analysis, officials said.

The system, which the public cannot access, is divided into classification categories starting with "sensitive but unclassified" and ending at "top secret." The program is still being developed, officials said, and has not replaced procedures used to create intelligence reports for President Bush and other policymakers. But it is being used to assemble preliminary judgments for a National Intelligence Estimate on Nigeria and may replace unwieldy methods for creating such reports.

Imagine such a system set up for election officials, academics, and knowledgeable policymakers. They could access the system and update it with news and information about election problems and threats, and thus aggregate information effectively about different types of threats and problems. Might be an interesting idea for development!

The Economist: "whn u cn fon u r in chrge 4vr"?

2006-10-31T13:22:00.000-08:00

This week's Economist has a nice story, "Liberation Technology: Mobiles, Protests and Pundits", on how mobile phones are influencing politics. The subhead of the story, though, lays out the dilemma for social scientists and technologists: "Mobile phones are changing politics faster than academics can follow." The story presents a variety of examples of situations where mobiles are being used to influence political behavior:

Chroniclers of cellular people power identify two big landmarks: the rallies that toppled President Joseph Estrada of the Philippines in 2001, and South Korea's presidential election a year later, when text messages among the young brought a surge of support for President Roh Moo-hyun. In both those countries protests are still convened by text message not just at critical times, when national leadership is at stake, but to highlight almost any sort of grievance.

For Europeans “mobile democracy” came of age with the Spanish election of March 2004, immediately after a terrorist attack in Madrid: the Socialists rode to power on a wave of text-driven anger with the ruling conservatives. In America some claim the same happened at the Republican convention in 2004, when text messages helped protesters play cat-and-mouse with the New York police.

It is also true that modern telephone technology has its uses, for sophisticated armies, as a weapon of war. The Chechen leader, Jokar Dudayev, was traced and killed by the Russians through his satellite phone; and the Israelis used an exploding handset to assassinate a leading Palestinian bomb-maker.

But in the competition to use mobiles in a more benign way, ordinary people often prevail over their masters. When governments try to crack down on the mobile phone as a popular tool of communication, their efforts usually go haywire. During the SARS epidemic in China, for example, the authorities tried to censor text messages that mentioned the disease, but their attempt proved easy to circumvent.

In the run-up to this year's elections in Congo, all the parties used mobiles to summon the faithful. That prompted the security services to shut down several numbers used by opposition leaders. But in such a mobile-savvy country, the effect of such clumsy repression was short-lived.

The story closes by noting that four "eggheads with links to California's Annenberg School of Communication" have a book coming out next month on the use of mobiles in politics!

Cell-phone only voters, and their impact on political polling

2006-10-30T11:51:00.000-08:00

There's an interesting study out from Pew, looking at who Americans are who only use a cell phone, and who are thus not represented in most political polls (relying upon random-digit dialing technologies and telephone land-lines). Here's a brief description of the study from Pew's website:

Cell-Only Voters Not Very Different; Fewer Registered, More First-time Voters
October 26, 2006

Polls/Survey Results

Political pollsters continue to cast a wary eye on the growing number of Americans who only have a cell phone and no landline. The Pew Research Center estimates that this group now constitutes one-in-ten adults, and its demographic characteristics are very different from the landline population. But three Pew surveys of cell-only Americans this year, including a political poll earlier this month, have found that the absence of the "cell-only" population from telephone surveys is not creating a measurable bias in the overall findings.

Pew's early October survey of 2,004 adults, conducted Sept. 21-Oct. 4 in conjunction with the Associated Press, included a sample of 200 people who were reached on their cell phone and said that they had no landline phone. As previous studies of the cell-only population have shown, this group is younger, less affluent, and includes a greater proportion of men and minorities than does the landline sample.

However, the political attitudes of cell-only respondents are not substantially different from the landline respondents. In the generic congressional ballot, the Democrats held a 20-point lead among the cell-only sample (54 percent-34 percent), and a more modest 13-point lead in the landline sample. But when the cell-only respondents are included with the respondents reached on a landline and this blended sample is weighted to match the full U.S. population demographically and with respect to telephone status the overall estimates of the vote are unaffected.

For further details, check out the link above!

Where are voters in competitive districts getting their political information?

2006-10-28T09:22:00.000-07:00

The most recent Democracy Corps survey, conducted October 22-24 with 1200 likely voters in 50 Republican-held Congressional Districts, contained an interesting set of questions on this point. If you scroll down to questions 52-56 in the frequency questionnaire (linked above) you'll find this question:

Now, I'd like to ask you something different. Over the course of the campaign, have you (READ ITEM) more from those who want you to vote for the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate?

The inserted items were:

Seen TV ads.
Gotten information on the Internet.
Received mailings.
Been contacted face to face at home.
Received phone calls.

And here is the data, showing some interesting partisan differences --- and some interesting partisan similarities --- in voter contact strategies in competitive Republican-held districts.

At this point in these campaigns, Republicans hold a lead in mail contact, with 27% of likely voterss stating they had received more mailings from Republicans, and 14% from Democrats. 35% of likely voters said they had received mailings from both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans also hold slight leads in television contacts, and phone contacts.

But when it comes to the Internet, the data show that candidates in these competitive districts are using the Internet for contact:

70% of likely voters said that neither Republicans nor Democrats had contacted them via the Internet.
7% said that they had received Internet contact from both parties.
8% said they had received Internet contact from Democrats, 7% from Republicans --- virtually no difference there.

What is netPAC?

2006-10-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

So, Google is entering politics ... with netPAC. Here's some details from a recent story in the San Jose Mercury News:

Google NetPAC, launched last month, is contributing to three Republicans, including two of the most endangered GOP House members. In the past, Google executives have given overwhelmingly to Democrats and liberal groups.

The Republican recipients include Reps. Heather Wilson of New Mexico and Deborah Pryce of Ohio, whose districts are now rated as a tossup in the Nov. 7 election, and Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin. He chairs the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over some Internet commerce laws.

...

The new Google PAC also gave $1,000 each to two Democrats: Rep. Anna Eshoo of Palo Alto, whose district includes Google's headquarters, and Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who is running for re-election.

The even-handed PAC contributions contrast with the Democratic tilt of Google employees.

Out of 145 contributions from Google executives and employees in the past two years, all but four went to Democrats and liberal groups including moveon.org, according to data from Political Money Line, which tracks money in politics.

One top executive, Vint Cerf, gave $2,000 to New York Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign. Several employees gave to Ned Lamont, the anti-war candidate in Connecticut who defeated Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary.

During this year's debate over Net neutrality -- a complex battle between Internet companies and telecommunications giants over future regulations and pricing -- telecom lobbyists worked to marginalize Google as a ``liberal'' company.

NPR: "YouTube Emerges as Political Tool in Campaigns"

2006-10-25T15:16:00.000-07:00

NPR had a good story on the political use of YouTube, including some links to some interesting ads.

Technology changing politics

2006-10-22T19:22:00.000-07:00

That's according to Bush media advisor Mark McKinnon, who made that argument during a recent panel discussion at Harvard. More detail is provided by the National Post, in this article.

Here's more:

"In 2000, we had no BlackBerrys but the Democrats and Al Gore did," he said Saturday during a select panel discussion sponsored by Harvard's Shorenstein Foundation.

"In fact, Gore was on his way to the podium in 2000 to give his defeat speech and got a message on his way which told him not to concede. Because of the BlackBerry technology, we had a recount in 2000," he said.

Such technology, combined with blogs, the Internet and a decline in quality journalism, has changed politics, he added. "One button can be pushed and your message, both 30 seconds or 20 minutes, can go to six million in two seconds. Punch it again and it can go to 18 million," he said.

Also making a difference is the noisiness of the blogosphere and hundreds of media outlets. But the development represents both good and bad news. Voters are bombarded with ever-shallower information but also with the opportunity to obtain more in-depth information. "We still use the 30-second commercial, but now we can use the larger-format video. Interested people can view videos that deal with issues and candidates in depth. They can hear and watch the speeches," he said.

Voters can correspond with candidates. For the first time, roughly 23% of U.S. Senators have blogs, along with many Congressmen in this election.

I've not done a survey myself, but it would be interesting to compile a list of exactly which Senators are now using blogs --- and which are using blogs in a year (and then in two years). Not to mention what they are writing about on their blogs!

Riverside (CA) to adopt free wireless for residents

2006-10-20T20:29:00.000-07:00

In a story this morning, the Los Angeles Times notes that Riverside (CA) has inked a deal with AT&T to provide free wireless access to city residents. The story gives a bit of detail: "Riverside is the latest city — others include Philadelphia and Anaheim — to embrace a nationwide trend of creating citywide wireless internet access for residents and businesses. Many cities charge users monthly fees to go online, with free access only in isolated hotspots, but Riverside residents will be offered unlimited broadband Internet access at no cost."

The deal will start with a 2-square mile test area, and by 2008 there should be a network covering 55 square miles. This will cost AT&T $8.8 million dollars.

"Blogging the 5th District"

2006-10-17T20:25:00.000-07:00

There was a fun story in a recent issue of the Long Beach Press-Telegram on how Long Beach City Councilwoman, Gerrie Schipske, is using a blog to keep her constituents informed about her work for the City. Her blog is at http://district5journal.blogspot.com. The story quotes Shipske as saying that a blog "is one additional way to communicate to constituents. And it's absolutely free. We should take advantage of that."

I agree, and as the reporter noted: "Experts say blogging has become a popular tool among politicians because it's cheap, easy to start and reaches a wide audience."

But as I pointed out in a quote in the story, it is quite unusual to see a city councilwoman, even in a city as large as Long Beach, with a blog!

Email as a voter contact method

2006-10-17T20:13:00.000-07:00

There is some new survey data out from Pew, and the new survey contains an interesting set of questions about candidate and political group contact methods. The survey asked:

Here are a few ways that candidates and political groups contact voters to encourage them to vote a particular way. Thinking about the past few months, have you been contacted [METHOD] by any candidats or political groups? Have you been contacted [NEXT ITEM]?

Among registered voters, 38% said they had been contacted over the phone, 14% by someone coming to their door, and 15% by email. I don't know of any past surveys using this same question on email contact, but given that roughly the same number of registered voters reported email contact as reported traditional contact in person, this is quite interesting data.

Of course, it is also the case that we are still a few weeks from the November election, and we are only now entering the period when parties, groups and candidates will be maximizing their traditional, in-person, get-out-the-vote efforts.

(BTW, I blogged about some of the other results in this recent Pew survey on electronic voting on Election Updates.)

More on politics and YouTube

2006-10-17T06:55:00.000-07:00

Does the success of YouTube represent the "triumph of bottom-up culture and another sign that old media businesses, from record companies and TV networks to newspapers like The Times, are going to see more of their audience migrating to the Internet", as claimed this morning by Patrick Goldstein in the Los Angeles Times?

As Goldstein wrote:

YouTube is already having an impact on this year's election cycle. In years past, political candidates were sold essentially in the same way as movie stars — in carefully staged settings and market-tested ads. Now the scripted veneer has been stripped away by young volunteers, armed with video cameras, who stalk opposition candidates, record their gaffes and post them on YouTube, not unlike the way the Smoking Gun displays embarrassing photos of badly behaved celebrities.

The best-known gotcha YouTube post came from an Indian American student tailing U.S. Sen. George Allen (R-Va.). The student recently captured an irritated Allen pointing him out and telling his supporters, "Let's give a welcome to macaca here — welcome to America." The slur prompted a tsunami of media coverage that sent Allen's campaign into a tailspin. Another popular series of clips shows U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) on the campaign trail, joshing about his Guatemalan gardener and struggling to stay awake during a Senate hearing.

At this point it is not entirely clear that YouTube itself has altered how candidates are marketed to voters, but it does represent a phenomenon of potential voter empowerment.

There are many things standing in the way of realizing this potential. For one, YouTube is not necessarily easy to use: even over a university Internet connection like I have, downloading even relatively short video clips can take some time, and can try one's patience. Also, searching and navigation of the video clips, for someone who might be interested in only certain races or candidates, is far from straightforward: simple searches for prominent candidates yield a lot of content that has little to do with politics (search for Governor Schwarzenegger, for example --- a lot of the non-political content is funny, but is non-political), and quite frankly, watching much of the content reminds me of those long Saturday evenings when I was a kid watching my neighbor's slide shows of their RV trip to South Dakota.

Finally, it's hard to know the credibility of much of the political material. Some of it is clearly intended to be funny (though even then much of it falls short), but of the other material, it is hard to know whether it is credible and whether it presents the full picture of a candidate or campaign. Here I'm thinking of short clips for candidate press conferences, or other types of short, and heavily edited, political material that might be significantly distorted from the original context and thus not necessarily very informative for the electorate.

Yet, YouTube is a phenomenon. But it is far from an ideal way to empower voters, at least as it currently stands, in terms of technological and content development.

Internet changing petition politics worldwide

2006-10-16T19:59:00.000-07:00

There's an article in the Times of India, "Interent reinvents politics of petitions." The article argues that from West Virginia to India, the Internet is changing how petitions are being circulated and publicized. Interestingly, the story mentions two petition-collection websites (petitiononline.com and petitionthem.com) that are worth checking out.

Next question: will websites like these be used in the near future for collecting signatures for initiatives, referendum and recalls in American states that have relatively frequent use of these instruments of direct democracy (like California)? Proponents of ballot measures do use the Internet to get the word out, and to distribute petitions. But I'm not aware of any American states or lower-level election jurisdictions that currently allow the return of signed electronic ballot measure petitions. (Of course if readers have information to the contrary, please send it along and I'll post it here).

Statewide voter registration systems need overhaul

2006-10-16T09:30:00.000-07:00

There is a great extended interview in the MIT Technology Review this morning, where colleague Thad Hall discusses the problems with the existing technology in the US for statewide voter registration databases, and in which he talks about the future of these systems. A link to the story is on Election Updates.

Recently, the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project hosted an interesting conference on voter registration and voter identification. There was a brief presentation at that conference by Stephen Ansolabehere (a political scientist at MIT), in which he noted that the new statewide voter registration databases would be "dynamite" for political campaigns --- and that they will open the doors for all sorts of new political communications strategies. Exactly how they will be used, of course, is not clear --- but given the highly competitive nature of American politics today, no doubt campaign managers and consultants are today devising new ways to use these developing databases. (Here's another link to Election Updates, where I briefly described Ansolabehere's presentation).

Call for papers, "Technology and Campaigns"

2006-10-15T21:32:00.000-07:00

The following call for papers might be of interest to readers of "Politics and Technology":

mailto:costas@post.harvard.edu

CALL for PAPERS

Social Science Computer Review

*Special Issue*

"Technology and Campaigns"

Special Issue Editor: Costas Panagopoulos

Technology will be featured in the 2006 election U.S. cycle in prominent and unprecedented ways. Campaigns will capitalize on advancements in technology to inform target and mobilize voters. This special issue will explore the impact of innovative uses of technology for electioneering purposes. It will also consider the effects of political blogs, email and text-based mobilization efforts, developments in electronic voting, survey research and database management for campaigns. This is an intriguing area of inquiry for scholars who explore the linkages between technology and elections. The issue will be a collection of high-quality scholarship from a variety of related disciplines including political science, computer science, sociology, psychology, and economics.

Proposals for submissions will be due September 15, 2006. Proposals should be no longer than one page in length and include a tentative title, abstract and a brief explanation of what is new and interesting about the proposed work. Submission of the full manuscript for accepted projects will be due on March 1, 2007. Manuscripts will be double-blind reviewed, and authors will be notified about the decision by April 1, 2007. Revised manuscripts will be due by May 30, 2007. Authors are invited to review formatting and style details on the SSCORE website for direction. Please email proposals as .pdf documents to costas@post.harvard.edu with the following included in the subject line: SSCORE Proposal.

Politicians and "Internet candid cameras"

2006-10-15T11:29:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post has a very good story this morning on the use of websites like YouTube.com by political campaigns throughout the United States.

It goes without saying that this is an area that has seen very little systematic study by those who research elections and political communications --- what campaigns use this technology? Are they effective in distributing information about candidates? What are the attributes of the views of these sites, and what are the attributes of the voters who view the materials on sites like YouTube.com? In short, there is virtually no systematic research at this point in time regarding the influence of this new use of Internet technology in political campaigns in the US (or abroad -- see my post a few minutes about about how YouTube.com is being used in a Mexican gubernatorial election).

YouTube.com used in Mexican gubernatorial election

2006-10-15T11:26:00.000-07:00

I ran across this short but interesting snip in the Los Angeles Times this morning about how YouTube.com is being used in the Mexican gubernatorial election in Tabasco:

Ojeda supporters posted a video on YouTube.com that shows a warehouse with hundreds of new bikes that they allege the PRI had planned to give to voters. The video, indexed under "mapacheo," slang for vote-buying, shows the warehouse being emptied within minutes by passersby after its discovery by Ojeda campaigners.

Downside risk of government databases --- identify theft

2006-10-14T10:47:00.000-07:00

According to a U.S. House Government Reform Committee report (quotes here from a Los Angeles Times story):

Incidents of lost or stolen personal data at federal government agencies are more widespread than previously thought, affecting all 19 federal departments and millions of citizens since 2003, according to a congressional report released Friday.

Most of the nearly 800 incidents of data losses have never been publicly reported. The "vast majority" were not accidental misplacements, but rather outright thefts of computers or data disks containing sensitive information such as Social Security numbers. In some cases the data were used inappropriately by employees and private contractors, the report said.

And here are some of the specifics:

According to the report, recent incidents included:

• The loss in March of a Defense Department portable data drive that included personnel records of more than 200,000 Marines who served from 2001 to 2005. The report said the department sent a notification letter to the Marine Cops and the affected Marines.

• The loss of a Department of Education magnetic tape containing the personal information of more than 11,000 student loan borrowers.

• An unauthorized breach of an Air Force database compromising personal data of more than 30,000 members of the military.

Other incidents of data loss were reported to the committee by the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, State, Treasury, Commerce and Veterans Affairs.

The Commerce Department, for example, reported 214 incidents of lost or stolen computers at the Census Bureau. Veterans Affairs officials reported their data on two large spreadsheets covering hundreds of security and privacy breaches, the report said.

In most cases, the report said, there was little evidence that thieves used the data to steal people's identities. However, the report did cite one identity theft scheme last year by a Health and Human Services contractor that affected more than 1,500 people.

A few incidents have involved hackers looking to use citizens' personal data for illegal purposes, the report said.

Report finds that four of the top blogs are about politics

2006-10-13T10:31:00.000-07:00

A report by Edelman and Technorati found that four of the most influential blogs in the U.S. relate to politics:

A research project by public relations firm Edelman and blog search engine Technorati ranked the 10 most influential blogs in five markets. In the U.S., four of the top blogs were tech related and four were devoted to political passions on the left and right. (Boing Boing, another blog deemed "most influential," covers society and culture with a heavy dose of tech trends.)

To rank a blog's status, the study relied on Technorati's system of tallying a blog's unique in-bound links from other blogs as a proxy for influence. By this measure, techy site Engadget ranked the most influential. The site is part of the AOL-owned Weblogs network. Boing Boing and Gizmodo, another gadgets blog, follow. Other top 10 blogs include The Huffington Post, Daily Kos and TechCrunch.

And of the top 100 blogs in the U.S., 25% deal with politics.

More on campaign trackers

2006-10-13T10:24:00.000-07:00

There was recently an article in the Chicago Tribune on "political trackers", focusing on a series of other examples of "political tracking."

"Trackers" using YouTube

2006-10-12T08:32:00.000-07:00

Today's Los Angeles Times has a story on political "trackers", following the Burns Senate campaign in Montana:

Trackers — using inexpensive hand-held cameras and having the ability to post clips almost instantly on YouTube and other video-sharing websites — have become a major element in several campaigns.

The most notable tracker moment this year came in Virginia when Republican Sen. George Allen used the word "macaca" to describe his Democratic tracker, a 20-year-old Indian American man.

Allen's critics say the word was a racial insult; Allen says it was a "made-up word" that intended no offense. The senator nonetheless apologized, and the issue dominated news coverage of the campaign for days.

In some ways, the work of trackers is not new. Opposing campaigns have long followed what the other guy was saying, trolling for a slip or worse. In 1987, for instance, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s presidential campaign was torpedoed when opponents unearthed the Delaware Democrat's use of bits of speeches lifted from other public figures.

But back then, opposing campaigns had to either persuade the news media to pick it up or invest in a campaign ad to get their message on the air, said Michael Cornfield, vice president at ElectionMall.com, a nonpartisan campaign-technology firm.

With YouTube and related technologies, publicizing material now is much less cumbersome — and less expensive.

But here is an interesting claim in the story:

Although candidates of both parties post their television advertisements on YouTube, the Democrats appear more inclined — so far — to use the technology.

In the Montana race, Republicans have periodically tracked appearances of Burns' Democratic opponent, state Senate President Jon Tester.

But the GOP has posted only one: a recent call by Tester to repeal the Patriot Act.

That opens the door to some interesting research questions: Are Democratic campaigns more likely to use YouTube for "tracking"? Is that because their campaigns are more tech-savvy, or because they perceive that YouTube's demographics are ones that Democrats wish to target? And of course there is the bottom-line research issue here: do voters view these materials on YouTube, and are they influencing their decisions?