techPresident - Twitter - Comments

From a communications theory perspective ...

JonPincus — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:46:37 -0500

One way to think of it is that there are two signals being mixed together here. OFQ's user interaction encourages people to give their opinion of random questions, and with almost 50,000 people involved already that potentially creates a very diverse pool of participants that's a reasonable proxy for online opinion. At the same time, there are organized campaigns trying to influence the votes for and against particular questions or topics -- Bob's is one example, there's another here.

Whether or not links are permitted, it's easy enough to track how successful the various campaigns are and there's useful data about the relative influence of difference authors and sites. For example, Bob's idea was moving very slowly until Ari and then you picked it up. And since Bob's quesions recent rapid rise (from under 100 last night to almost 700 last time I checked, and a word-for-word copy in Foreign Policy has another 350 votes) isn't paralleled by the leading "special prosecutor" idea, it probably reflects the coverage more than voters' opinions. Useful stuff. But you don't need links for it.

And without links questions from those of us who don't have widely-read bloggers writing about us still have a chance. The extra work of having to type in the search term keeps "effective organizing/friends in the media" signal from overpowering the other one.

More generally, Ideas for Change on change.org has very different goals than OFQ on change.gov; and OFQ isn't a discussion system (although it would be very interesting to complement it with something like Yahoo! Answers). For the goal of discovering questions that a lot of people would like answers to, you don't need that extra functionality, and it would arguably get in the way. More is not always better.

jon -- http://talesfromthe.net/jon

re

cle50000 — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:25:25 -0500

thx for that interessting story. I am not realy suprised that besides Obama someone else uses social media for its PR. On twitter they are almost always in the search results 1st page when I look for #gaza, so they get attention. QassamCount is impressing to me.

www.clemens.blogs.com

Here's where I disagree...

Nancy Scola — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:22:47 -0500

Respectfully, of course, Jon. :) OFQ has so little internal navigation that providing links from the outside would, I think, be a way to wade through the sea of questions on any one topic. Take a search for "gay" that I just ran as a sample query. It returned almost five hundred questions -- more than I could reasonably be expected to evaluate. Add to that the fact that without a discussion mechanism like, say, Change.org is using for its Ideas for Change, there's little context for deciding which of the questions have merit. Social tools have flaws, no doubt, but it seems counterintuitive to what we know to respond by stripping them out, rendering us a bit blind in what's supposed to be a marketplace of ideas. I appreciate the idea that links open the possibility of winning through exposure, but OFQ is already online and the format's not immediately intuitive -- so it's not as if this is truly a mechanism for diving the will of the whole of the American people.

It depends

JonPincus — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:13:49 -0500

Organizing support for your interests is a hallmark of democracy, and Open for Questions would be well served by building in the potential to rally the troops.

The ability to link to an individual question would give disproportionate power to bloggers and organizations with large email lists, so if the goal of Open for Questions is to get a measurement of who can organize most effectively, then this functionality would be useful. On the other hand, if the goal is to get relatively-unfiltered input from internet users as a whole (as a proxy for Americans’ opinion), then it’s a good choice not to allow linking.

Even without the links, the pace of votes for Bob's question -- and the multiple copies that people have submitted in different categories -- accelerated significantly after Ari's piece and this post. If I were running OfQ, I'd be looking at the compare-and-contrast between this and other special prosecutor questions (for example, Kaija’s “Will you please have a special prosecutor investigate Bush and Cheney for the laws they have broken? Please don’t let this pass”, which has over 800 votes in the Economy section) as a way of assessing how broad the sentiment for a special prosecutor is. If Bob's question once again shoots to the top at the expense of other questions, that's potentially an indication of high-profile coverage and effective organizing rather than broad support.

jon -- http://talesfromthe.net/jon

RE: Vargas Op-Ed on Voter Engagement

shimanepdf — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:00:00 -0500

This thesis may be true at the sexy presidential level of politics.

The dreary reality, however, for the other 6900 or so races across the nation is that politics is increasingly outsourced to impersonal technology such as robo calls, direct mail, TV, Radio, and other paid media.

According to PEW, robo calls are now the top form of congressional campaign communication.

That is hardly personal engagement.

If you run a local campaign for a state rep race you will not have 100's of small internet donors.

You'll have few if any.

You will not have 1000's or millions of volunteers. Instead, you'll record a message, push a button, and spam your voters with robo call after robo call.

That is the current state of American politics.

--
Cheers,

Shaun Dakin – CEO & Founder
The National Political Do Not Contact Registry
http://www.StopPoliticalCalls.org/
@EndTheRobocalls

eDiplomacy

IrishPrince — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 11:30:16 -0500

Nancy, couldn't agree with you more regarding the approach Colleen Graffy has taken regarding the use of twitter and how it relates to her (State Department) mission. She obviously "gets it". It's too bad the WaPo is still stuck in the 20th century (although this does not surprise me one bit).
-Neil

Social Costs

wadehudson — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:29:02 -0500

I fear that we're paying a price for technological innovations like Twitter. When I googled "Internet social costs," the top result was "Stanford: Internet charges a steep social cost" at http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2005/02/21/daily28.html. Their finding that heavy Internet users spend much less time in face-to-face interaction with family members does not surprise me. I also suspect that the quality of that face time is also diminished, as people really listen to one another on a deep level less frequently. I'm sorry, but the kind of superficial information conveyed on Twitter, and with most "X is...." postings on Facebook, does not interest me. I prefer more soulful connections, and if that is not possible, I accept my solitude.

If others have references to studies on the social costs of modern technology, I would welcome receiving them at wadehudson AT progressiveresourcecatolog DOT org.

Re:

genpolson — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 02:06:20 -0500

breitling replica watch

Responses can come in other ways, too

JonPincus — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:50:29 -0500

While the immediate responses from the Obama team were remarkably bland, they might also use the results to prioritize longer responses -- for example blog posts and videos. Coincidentally or not, Monday's change.gov blog also featured $700 billion of your money which went into some detail on the topic of the #3 question (bailout transparency). Will they do the same with other highly-ranked questions?

jon -- http://talesfromthe.net/jon

Export Presidential Inauguration Donors

OverCaffein8d — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:03:13 -0500

The Presidential Inauguration Donors is easy to export if you use Internet Explorer and Excel. Just right click anywhere on the internet list and select "Export to Microsoft Excel".

Fixed

Nancy Scola — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:53:33 -0500

Ah, yes, of course. Thanks for the catch. I've given the DNC a good exhibit in making their case that the domain name split's confusing.

Correction

liberalart — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:40:44 -0500

The note on Bob Fertik is incorrect, he is behind Democrats.COM, Democrats.ORG is the DNC site.

Blagogate & Emails

Kurtosis — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 07:07:43 -0500

No sense spamming/trolling/astroturfing Change.gov OpenForQuestions with Blagojevich stuff just yet. Let the FBI and media handle it first, leave OpenForQuestions to its purpose - focusing on the significant problems facing the country. If the FBI investigation exposes a link to Obama, then might be the time, but for now it's jumping the gun.

As for Obama's fundraising, I've received all the emails mentioned and am not against it. Email is easy to ignore, which I do. I didn't contribute and support the Obama campaign so he could put Hillary at State, the same boys' club that caused the financial crisis at Treasury, and populate his staff with drama-loving Clintonites, so I don't plan on contributing any more. But receiving those emails doesn't bother me one bit. Probably helps that I use my spam-mail address instead of my private personal address to receive them...

Americans Want Real Change from Obama - Not Media Garbage

bob fertik — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:58:52 -0500

That's why they're voting down questions about Blago-gate. Here's what Americans really want:

http://www.democrats.com/americans-want-real-change-from-obama-not-media...

Who is asking the Questions at Change.gov

shimanepdf — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:50:31 -0500

While it may be "cool" to open up the debate, there is no indication that the Transition team is looking to get input on the website from ALL Americans. I don't believe that the Google tool used to "vote up or down" the questions collects any meaningful data about the citizens that are asking and voting on questions.

This is not campaigning any longer. The O team needs to represent all Americans and needs to figure out how to get feedback from those groups not able to quickly find Change.gov, register to use the Google app and ask questions.

Is this a new "Question Divide"? (i.E. a form of the digital divide)

--
Cheers,

Shaun Dakin – CEO & Founder
The National Political Do Not Contact Registry
-- A non-partisan, non-profit program by Citizens for Civil Discourse
Register Your Phone Number Now for Free: http://www.StopPoliticalCalls.org/