Dr. DigiPol

Today’s question comes from an old friend of mine. Marc earned his Ph.D. in political science studying social movements.

Question (Marc): The thing that most plagues me about Internet advocacy is the unbelievable proliferation of emails. I CANNOT pay attention to them any longer. And most of my friends have unsubscribed because they can’t take it.

Earlier this week, MSNBC’s chief White House correspondent Norah O’Donnell characterized Cindy Sheehan and former FBI agent/Democratic candidate for Congress Coleen Rowley as anti-war extremists. Two days later, President Bush continued this theme of marginalizing the growing anti-war movement, and Sheehan in particular, as not representing the views of most military families .

I would like to see the opinion polls that underlie these two claims.

First, let me say that I am not a Dead Head. I have known Dead Heads. Dead Heads are friends of mine. But I am no Dead Head.

That said, I am a sucker for bad puns and with the onset of recent reports about Blogs and this lovely picture of Joe Trippi and Markos Moulitsas, I had no choice but to write this title. I swear, I had NO CHOICE!

Now on to the Blogosphere, or Blogospheres, I suppose. It seems that there are more than one. There is a progressive one and a conservative one. There are independent ones and apolitical ones. The point is the Blogosphere is not monolithic. It is a collection of communities of communities. Sounds crazy, no? But in our little town of Internatevka Bloggers have been known to spend entire nights sitting on the roof and typing out their little tunes… at least until the pogroms (killer apps of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries) drive all the Bloggers out of their FEC protected shells.

The Internet Advocacy Center hosted its first Internet Advocacy Roundtable this past Tuesday (8/9/2005). The topic was Growing an Online Community of Progressive Activists and featured a presentation by Care2 Vice President Andy Stocking. Andy talked at length about how Care2 has cultivated an online progressive community of more than 5 million activists entirely through viral marketing and providing community resources that allow members to talk to each other and get involved in progressive advocacy campaigns.

It’s a mantra for Internet advocacy: Information, Action, & Community… IAC. Think of it as an escalating scale of how to use the Internet in an advocacy campaign. Whether you are advocating for an issue or a candidate, IAC is the key to getting the greatest bang from your Internet buck.