The Web And Politics

Internet campaigning and politics- the state of play in the US and the UK

What is the most formidable web campaign to date?
15 million members.
440,000 events.
Grassroots driven.
Complex social interactions, organised online.
Campaign provides the means, executed by activists interacting with trained organisers.
Funded by millions of small donations.
Embedded in neighourhoods and communities.

Obama 08/ Organizing for America….?

A pretty pale shadow of its former self…..

That’s not the campaign that we’re talking about……….

A new movement...(against change)

The Tea Party Movement

Tea Party Patriots
http://www.teapartypatriots.org/

Other Party Animals

And this guy….

And it’s about to get even bigger…..

Why is the Tea Party Movement important?
History of American anti-state populism. E.g. John Birch Society.
It is not just the left that can organise in this way.
Obama ‘08 was the prototype- others can now copy.
These ‘movements’ through the use of internet and social media can grow extremely quickly.
Very unstable political environment.

But Obama ‘08 was great…
The most integrated and successful national campaign ever -> though built on earlier innovations: moveon.org, Howard Dean campaign, and Democrats 2006 congressional campaign.
New media team reported directly to campaign manager.
Use of social media, egFacebook, to tie together both local and dispersed shared interests.
Coordination with other campaign groups, e.g. trade unions, ACORN.
New media used to empower traditional campaigning.

But it wasn’t (just) the web what won it…
It was traditional campaigning.
Strategy, strategy, strategy:
‘Change we can believe in.’
Expand the base.
Movement based politics.
50-state strategy (OK, targeting more than Ohio and Florida…!)
Caucuses and primaries, delegates.
The ‘new community organisers’ (see Zack Exley.)
AND….advertising.

Plouffe on Obama ‘08
"It was a historic marriage, in US politics at least, between digital technology and grassroots [campaigning].”
"We did have a big Facebook presence and MySpace. When we started, Twitter wasn't really around, it was at the end. The real drivers were old school, email and web [traditional websites for the campaign]. We did build a social networking [presence] but it was web and email."

The Obama ‘08 trick
The campaign was top-down AND bottom-up- the best of both worlds.
There was complete integration.
AN INSURGENT CAMPAIGN THAT WAS UTTERLY PROFESSIONAL.
=> The professional movement…

US blogs and web
Blogs came into their own during the campaign: www.mydd.com, www.dailykos.com, www.fivethirtyeight.com.
But others innovated too, e.g. www.factcheck.org
And news media- cable news- came into its own: astounding levels of detail. E.g. exit polls http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/#VADEM

US conclusions
US politics has entered the digital age.
It is now fully integrated: on and off-line, political communication and organising, media and campaigns, parties and issues.
Political insiders and voters now experience and interact with politics in a different way.
Movements and personalities will come from nowhere…and hopefully some of them will disappear just as quickly.

What about the UK?

It looks like US politics, but it doesn’t taste or feel that way…
Labourmembersnet

The Conservatives have been watching the US too…myconservatives.com

But it’s all a bit free-standing
There are web tools
There are local campaigns
The local campaigns use the web tools…to a certain extent.
But there is no integration.
New media campaigning is not just one arm of a properly integrated camapign strategy….remember the Obama campaign- top down and bottom up.

So the parties haven’t cracked it but some activists have
The UK web space has been colonised by hard-core activists…with an axe to grind.
This takes place in the blogosphere, social media, and bleeds into the media.
Many of the participants are journalists and commentators.
UK web politics is…in some respects…more anarchic that the US…up to a point.

Some pioneers….

But social media has taken off….
Twitter is now the distraction of choice for the political and media classes.
It is tribal…once a Chief goes onto Twitter the tribe follows…
It is raw and it is cacophonous.
Sometimes it creates meaningful dialogue between politicians and opinion formers but more often it’s about the mob and gang warfare
Warning…if you detest political point-scoring and cheer-leading then avoid Twitter when it is PMQs, Question Time, Gordon Brown or David Cameron are on TV, or….during the first Leaders’ debates!

It’s like the motorway…..

From time to time someone combines web, social media, and traditional media and it works….

And some issue campaigns ‘get it’

Hope not Hate
Grassroots
Organising model
Movement principles
80,000 email list from scratch last year, donations over £100,000
Integration- campaign, volunteers, unions, churches, student organisations.
It helped that they hired Obama’s new media campaigning people…..but it was much deeper than that.

It’s not easy to get right….
http://www.therobinhoodtax.org.uk

But……….

Everything has to be right
Compare ‘Robin Hood Tax’ with…..
Make poverty history
How many politicians want to be seen to be supporting a ‘Robin hood Tax.’ And how many want to be seen campaigning to ‘Make poverty history’?

So what can we conclude about politics and the internet in the UK?
It is more free-wheeling
Very creative
Very grassroots
The parties haven’t yet worked out how to blend on and off-line.
Issue campaigns are slightly ahead of the curve (but don’t always get it right…)
BUT there is one key difference in the UK compared to the US……

And that is…..
In the UK politics has changed the way that people who do politics do politics….
In US, it has had a deeper impact on the way politics is organised.

Some final questions….(never finish on a question so I’ll finish on 5!)
Does the way that politics has become a battle of tribes on-line have a negative impact?
Could turnout suffer in GE 2010?
Does online mirror the US’ cable shows and talk radio?
Reflective of the decline of civility in politics (and society?) more widely?
Are we importing too many of the negatives and not enough of the positives?

Finally, some relevant self-promotion…sorry….
Authored:
Viral politics: communication in the new media era (outdated but some bits of interest)
Barack Obama: the movement for change.
LabourList article on politics and the internet in the UK. http://www.labourlist.org/web-politics-not-communicating-anthony-painter
LabourList column http://www.labourlist.org/anthony-painter
Blog http://www.anthonypainter.co.uk
Twitter http://www.twitter.com/anthonypainter

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The Web And Politics

by guestbbf565 on Feb 17, 2010

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