Category Archives: Digital Politics
Commander McBragg Saves the Daily Show
“There! Zanzibar! Did I ever tell you about the time I won the first Emmy for the Daily Show?” asked Commander McBragg.
“NO, Commander, but I…” Before Zanzibar could respond, the Commander continued.
New (and Old) Reports on Citizen Engagement and Online Strategy
The General Services Administration just released a new report “Engaging Citizens in Government.” The report assembles the thoughts of 24 IT leaders from several nations, states, and local government agencies, as well as other thought leaders. Among them is a piece from White House Director of Citizen Participation Katie Stanton, who played an instrumental role …
Citability.org Offers a Simple Idea to Help Open the Government
The problem is simply stated on the homepage of Citability.org. “Government websites are ever changing and cannot be cited. Content changes without notice or accountability.” The solution has a simple starting point: create permanent, date stamped URLs for each paragraph of every federal document posted to the web. Researchers eyes light up when they hear …
Twitter Tips for Advocacy
I recently gave an interview for Studio 1080 on KUDO in Anchorage, AK about using Twitter for advocacy/marketing and wanted to share it with you. Here is the gist of the conversation: Why tweet? In the US alone, there are 26.5 million people on Twitter and among them are many, if not most of the …
Organizing on the Social Web: A Cold Blast From the Past
While for many the social web seems but a few years old, I have long argued that it has its roots in the pre-web internet. Not only have many of the key online organizing tools (email, chat, and discussion forums) been around since the internet was a text-only platform, but political and issue groups have been using them since those early days. By the late 1990′s, the web was well established and being used much as it is today on Facebook and Twitter, though with somewhat more primitive tools.
One of the more disturbing examples of early online social network organizing involves the Aryan Resistance, a white supremacist movement in the United States. In a 1998 essay by Milton Kliem, Jr. tactics that will seem all too familiar to today’s online organizers were spelled out to help the Aryan Resistance spread its message and recruit new followers.
Social Media Listening Tools
I found a great article on tools for monitoring social media. There are 13 of these tools listed. Some I am familiar with, others I need to explore.
But as we get deeper into engaging the social web, these tools will be very useful. The full article is here and the 13 tools are below:
These are the Networks of Our Lives
When I was growing up in Maine, we had four networks: ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS. When I was a young adult, Fox joined the list. Then cable came along and the number of networks exploded. Sure, cable networks were small, compared to the big 5, but with the reach of cable, even small networks like WGN out of Chicago turned people all over the world into Cubs fans.
These days, we have a new crop of networks. But unlike the last explosion, these networks are not on television. They are on the internet. Yes, the internet; that collection of websites and other platforms that deliver us all sorts of information. We are talking about Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, and YouTube. We are talking Yahoo, Google, lions, tiger, and bears, oh my… oops… that was an old habit slipping in.
National Journal Video on Online Video for Advocacy
Check out this video story from NationalJournal.com the featuring clips from the March Internet Advocacy Roundtable on Video Strategy for Advocacy.
