Month: October 2013

It Still All Comes Down to Money . . . Also, Emails

dobry mppdigital assignments , , , , , ,
[this is one of a series of posts that I did while a student in Nicco Mele‘s class at Harvard in 2013]

What’d I read?

In “Persuasion Points Online” Schlough, Koster, Barr and Davis show how Harry Reid was able to pull off an upset victory thanks to his campaigns embrace of the web. “Yes We Can” by political scientist Kevin Wallsten drills down on this topic further and explores one aspect of OFA’s media savvy – the important role that campaign staff (and bloggers) had in constructing and dismissing some of the viral videos that dominated news cycles in 2008.

The case study, “Obama versus Clinton: the YouTube Primary” by John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld, on the other hand, gives a birds-eye-view of the entire 2008 campaign season and reviews the various candidates strategies in light of the web. Another study, by Mikołaj Piskorski, Laura Winig, and Aaron Smith, “Barack Obama: Organizing for America 2.0”, showcases what is arguably the most effective use of the internet by a candidate for political office.

Zack Exley’s article, “The New Organizers” shows how OFA took a decades-old concept, community organizing, to new levels of effectiveness by harnessing the power of the web to enhance already-existing interpersonal connections. Seth Colter Walls then describes how a piece of that organization, namely VoteForChange.com works in “Neighbor To Neighbor”.

Was it any good?

The Piskorski, et al., case study is well researched and does a great job describing how well-planned the Obama ’08 campaign was. The authors also do a wonderful job projecting some of the things that actually did happen after the establishment of OFA – namely the use of the tools the campaign had developed to help push President Obama’s agenda. While the threatened break with the Democratic party didn’t happen, the analysis marshaled in the case study make a compelling statement about the strength of a permanent campaign/organization that takes advantage of one of the key features of the web – that nothing really ever goes away.

The other case study, by Deighton and Kornfeld, is equally well thought out but more striking because it effectively refutes the conventional wisdom that Clinton was less tech savvy than the Obama team. Both sides knew the importance of the Internet to the campaign, but OFA was still able to come out on top. I think the questions the case study raises about what exactly makes an effective Internet campaign are still worth asking and it will be a while before we sort everything out – at least a few more Presidential campaign cycles, anyway.

The Exley article does a good job of synthesizing the two main strengths of OFA – community organizing and technology. He effectively shows how they really can’t be considered each in a vacuum, but were so effective because they were blended. This may be one of the answers to the questions posed by the Deighton and Kornfeld case study.

So?

The big take away here is this: if the internet has enabled regular people to engage and create in new and interesting ways, it has just as much helped the rich and powerful to magnify their own messages. Schlough, et al., couldn’t have made the point more clearly in their article on Harry Reid’s latest campaign. It was the fact that he was willing to devote significant resources to the Internet side of the campaign that it was successful. The implication is that small-time candidates and regular people simply cannot affect the political process through the Internet anymore (if they ever could).

The Web has been institutionalized and co-opted by the wealthy and powerful, as just one more piece of the toolkit to maintain political power. As the Obama/Clinton case study shows, it isn’t a battle between a scrappy-yet-nerdy candidate and the establishment giant, rather it’s between two establishment figures trying to get an edge. The fact we see it the former way just shows how much we, as a people, love myth-making.

With that being said, the scope and capacity of the OFA organization was, indeed, astounding. As someone who volunteered and worked for campaigns in 2004, 2008, and 2012 for the Democratic Party, it was surprising to see how much changed between elections. It was also amazing to me (and is more fully described in our readings, like the Walls article) how the use of the web and of technology was far more advanced in the Democratic campaign than the Republican one. Even as late as 2012, I noticed that the Republican GOTV efforts were similar to what we had done in 2004 and our GOTV/Voter Protection processes were far more advanced and effective.

“old institutions seemed exhausted while new ones seemed untrustworthy” [Clay Shirky]

dobry Uncategorized
[this is one of a series of posts that I did while a student in Nicco Mele‘s class at Harvard in 2013]

What’d I read?

This week’s readings dealt with the disruptive impact of Internet technology on mainstream journalism, mostly newspapers.

First up, Nicco Mele’s The End of Big describes how the era of big newspaper conglomerates is essentially over. The problem, this chapter points out, is that professional, watchdog-style journalism is vitally important to accountability within our self-governing republic. Luckily, Mele describes several potential models for the future of professional journalism. [Full Disclosure: the author of this book is going to grade this blog post]

“Readings from News Execs” by Dave Winer makes the case that the people running large newspapers don’t understand how the internet will affect their business models. His metaphor of the cardboard box is very useful: if the box is the editorial structure and its filled with news, the execs think they can simply take that box and move it from the print space to the internet space, but that’s not going to work for many of the reasons the other articles in this section flesh out.

Patricia Gray’s article “Owner Mark Cuban Trades Stocks on Sharesleuth’s Findings Before They’re Published” in Wired fleshes out one alternative journalism model in which very wealthy special interests finances the kind of journalism that interests him. This is exactly the type of journalism we need to be done, but it raises serious questions about the motives of the parties involved.

Our friend Clay Shirky’s blog post on “Newspapers and the Unthinkable” is, like the Winer piece, an interesting description of newspapers’ “forward thinking” as really just attempts to preserve current business model. His framing shift is an important one – we shouldn’t worry about saving newspapers, rather about saving journalism and saving society. The business model can go, we need that content, though.

Peter Daou’s article introduces the notion of the Triangle, an interesting take on the relationship between internet journalists and “the old guard” of MSM and establishment figures. Daou convincingly argues that, in order to spread one’s message, political figures need to establish a triangular alliance, a unifying blogs, traditional media, and the political establishment.

Finally, Dean Starkman’s “Confidence Game” attempts to counter the Shirky-style future-of-news (FON) consensus by spelling out the important societal role of professional journalism. The article functions as an apologia for institutions like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Was it any good?

Mele’s point that professional journalism is complicit in it’s own downfall is an especially powerful one. The average mainstream newspaper in the run up to the 2003 Iraq War and the 2008 Financial Crisis certainly “abdicat[ed] its traditional duties as objective, impartial newsgathering organization[].” Just as striking is the recurring theme of the vital importance of professional journalism in ensure that the people can hold their government accountable. It’s therefore a great relief that the chapter ends on a hopeful note, describing potential methods of protecting professional journalism while the newspaper business as we know it slowly collapses.

I wish Clay Shirky had answered the burning question of why someone would want to pirate Dave Barry’s columns. That being said, he did a  better job than Winer did of describing why newspaper owners’ opinions are so retrograde. His (and Mele’s) contention that print journalists’ work is used by everyone and is important is a valid one, while the related notion that “‘[y]ou’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!’ has never been much of a business model” puts the entire downfall of the newspaper industry, which supports such an important societal function, into context.

The Triangle article is great, but it fails to predict (and really, it should’ve) that the battle for Bush’s legacy does not end with him leaving office. In a world where there are so many voices so willing to keep harping on a theme, this is impossible. Things that used to be considered givens are now up for grabs again. So legacy is really a constant battle of revision in which the triangular alliance one has established to make policy or political headway has to be constantly stoked to defend the history you’ve made, apparently forever.

I actually agree with Starkman’s point (if you can find it) that journalists should be empowered and that good journalism involves knowing the issue you’re covering (borrowed from Rosen). That being said, his style is so snarky and off-putting, his straw men so obvious, and his conspiracy theory (that Jarvis and Shirky are out to get him and professional journalists) so weird that I wouldn’t blame anyone for stopping after section two.

So?

In another class, we’re discussing the importance of framing as a way of getting issues in front of the global community. In a nutshell, framing is a concept taken from cognitive psychology: we see the world through “frames” which are points of view loaded with moral and ethical constructs reaching deep into our basic ideas about how the world is meant to work. I think these articles set up an interesting framing question.

If we frame professional journalism as a business model, then, as good capitalists, we can rejoice in its downfall as transactions costs plunge and amateur journalists eat the professionals’ lunch. This, I think, is Starkman’s problem. He’s defending for-profit institutions by claiming public good. I think that its quite a stretch to say that the only way to ensure the public good of journalism is by continuing a clearly inefficient, monopolistic business model.

If, on the other hand, we look through the Shirky/Mele frame – which I think is generally right – then professional journalism should be nurtured as a public good. The newspaper industry as we know it is welcome to fail, but journalism itself must be preserved. The problem then becomes ensuring that the new versions of journalism are trustworthy. Like so many things relating to the Internet, the answer is to encourage diversity and transparency. Corporate or wealthy interests may well bankroll some of the new journalists, but as long as the reader is sufficiently apprised of the conflicts he or she can consider the validity of his or her source. Diversity is then important to ensure that everyone has a plethora unbiased (or at least differently biased) news sources to read.