Political Technology

As many of you know, we at NDN and the New Politics Institute are very interested in how people are using the new tools available to them in getting their message out. One of the tools we focus on, mobile media, is one that is catching on at every level. Take the campaign that It's OUR Healthcare! (IOH) recently conducted for example:

IOH launched a text messaging campaign to lobby the Governor on health care. They set up a giant screen displaying text messages (like the one below) that were sent in by supporters and passersbys alike on the grounds of the State Capitol for all to see.

Learn more about their SMS campaign at MobileActive.org or on the IOH home page.

Social networking has always played a key role in impacting others, whether the impact is direct or indirect. The new wave of social networking websites and related tools just supercharge an individual’s ability to do this and make an impact.

Come to a lunch event where the New Politics Institute explores how to use this new social networking environment to enhance your personal or organizational goals. Social networking is one of the least mature of the new media tools transforming the non-profit and advocacy world, so figuring out effective strategies is more difficult than with tools that have been around longer like blogs. That’s why we are ending our fall roll-out of the 2007 New Tools Campaign of eight tools with a whole event devoted to social networking.

Social Networking Tools
Wednesday November 14, 2007
12:00 - 2:00 PM (Lunch will be served)
Phoenix Park Hotel
520 North Capitol Street
Washington, DC
RSVP: Dave O'Donnell - dodonnell@ndn.org - or 202-384-1212

We will be bringing together four experts who know the technology and the best new strategies, and can clearly explain what works. They are:

Chris Kelly, Chief Privacy Officer, Facebook, one of the big two social networking sites where an explosion of politicking is going on. Chris has written a memo for NPI that will be released that day on all the ways social networking is being used in politics.

John Hlinko, President and CEO, Grassroots Enterprise, a DC Communications firm helping politicos use new media and tactics.

Cheryl Contee, Vice President, Fleishman Hillard, San Francisco, has worked with progressive organizations like Amnesty International and Witness to get their messages out through social networks and engage their supporters.

Ben Rattray, Founder and CEO, Change.org, an up-and-coming smaller social networking website dedicated exclusively to serving social and political groups.

The event is open to the public and is free to all. Feel free to spread this to anyone in a progressive organization who might benefit. But make sure everyone RSVPs. Thanks.

Peter Leyden

Each week this fall the New Politics Institute has been sending out a memo on a new tool that progressives can use, but this week we send out a memo on a tool that arguably can be used in conjunction with all of them: databases. More specifically, this memo talks about how to use databases in microtargeting.

“An Introduction to Microtargeting in Politics” is a terrific overview of an exceptionally important tool that, frankly, conservatives have used earlier and much more effectively than most progressives. At more than 20 pages, this memo covers a lot of ground.

The memo explains why progressives should microtarget, and what microtargeting encompasses, along with looking at some case studies where progressives effectively used microtargeting in recent elections. The memo then lays out six steps that any organization can take towards developing microtargeting ability, and concludes with three strategic imperatives that the whole progressive movement might consider as marketing continues to get more and more targeted. As a bonus, the memo ends with a detailed list of resources and organizations that you can turn to for more information.

The coauthors of the memo have a wealth of experience in the database and microtargeting fields. Mark Steitz is a senior advisor at Catalist, which Laura Quinn founded and runs as CEO. Catalist is a voter data and data service company serving a wide range of progressive organizations. Steitz and Quinn also previously founded Copernicus Analytics, a data mining firm focused on providing improved donor and voter analytics to progressive political clients.

You can watch Quinn give a 10-minute overview talk on the subject at the 2007 New Tools Campaign kickoff this summer in Washington DC. And Steitz plans on posting to the New Politics Institute blog this week.

This memo is highly recommended for those working to modernize the way they run messaging and advocacy efforts. Please send this email to those who you think might benefit. Thanks.

Peter Leyden

This post is a follow-up to a prior post from April covering online advertisements in the 2008 campaign.

To show how new technologies are playing a role in the political process, Nielsen recently analyzed the web traffic of the presidential campaigns. A noteworthy part of its analysis is the McCain campaign's impressive online advertising campaign. From PC World:

While he only pulled in 58,000 unique Web visitors in August, Sen. John McCain's (R.-Ariz.) online advertising effort topped all other candidates. McCain had 4.3 million sponsored link impressions in August, followed by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D.-Ohio) with 1.8 million sponsored links, Romney with 1.7 million and Clinton with 522,000, Nielsen/NetRatings reported.

4.3 million sponsored links?! That just goes to show the power of technology in maximizing your reach for a reasonable price. Of course, this is something we at the New Politics Institute have been discussing for quite some time.

The blogs were one of the first new internet-based tools that really impacted politics way back in 2003. If anything, their power and influence have only increased year by year since then. More than ever, progressives need to be engaging the blogs and the larger community of the netroots.

Jerome Armstrong, known as “the Blog-Father” for founding one of the earliest political blogs at MyDD.com, wrote the first new tools memo for the New Politics Institute when we launched our New Tools Campaign in 2006. This year he has updated his “Engage the Blogs” memo to broaden his call to “Engage the Netroots.”

His updated memo introduces key data-points about the blogosphere and makes the case about why progressives need to engage bloggers, as well as how to engage them. Among other points, he shows how local blogs are becoming increasingly useful and influential. He also shows how the blogs are harnessing newer Web 2.0 developments such as video, and how social networks can be used to harness the full power of the netroots.

Armstrong gives some big-picture strategic advice on how progressives should evolve to take full advantage of the netroots' potential. Yet he ends with six very concrete, practical things that any progressive campaign or organization can do.

Watch Jerome give a 10-minute talk version of his memo at a kick-off event this summer in Washington DC. He was joined by other experts from other new tool fields who you also can watch off the NPI website.

For those who feel they deeply understand the blogs and netroots, dig into your address book and find some people who could benefit from a memo like this. Send this viral message along. Thanks.

Peter Leyden

Web video quickly has become a staple feature of the Democratic presidential campaigns, but it’s easy enough for all progressive campaigns and organizations to use. You just need to get past the threshold and try it.

To help you get there, the New Politics Institute is releasing a new practical memo that takes progressives through the process of creating web videos, from what you need to buy to how best to use video in politics.

The memo was written by Dan Manatt, the founder and executive producer of PoliticsTV.com, who has been immersed in the world of web video since the late 1990s. He starts by listing the 10 top ways that your campaign or organization should use web video in campaigns, based on proven methods that others have pioneered.

Manatt then walks through the basic steps to get you to venture into this web video world. These include a sidebar on 5 different packages of equipment that range from the low-end “Volunteer Package” that costs a total of $25 to the top-shelf “Senate Package” that will run you about $10,000.

If reading is not your thing, you can watch a web video of a 10-minute talk that Manatt gave on this topic at last summer’s kick-off event for the 2007 New Tools Campaign.

If you feel that you do know a lot about web video, then forward this to someone who does not. The more progressives creating and sending viral videos this cycle, the better. Help spread the word. Thanks.

Peter Leyden

The New York Times broke a front page story this morning about Verizon blocking the progressive group NARAL from sending “controversial” text messages. Within hours, Verizon has reversed its decision, calling it “an incorrect interpretation of a dusty internal policy.” (The NYT online version has the updated reversal on top of the bulk of the original story.)

The whole episode is a good example of how the new tools of politics, like texting through mobile phones, are challenging the old norms and “dusty” policies and regulations. We’re in that exciting but confusing period when the changeover is happening and many old patterns and habits have to be re-thought and adjusted.

This story has another interesting twist for the New Politics Institute. Just yesterday, we released a major new study on mobile media and politics, authored by Jed Alpert, the CEO of Mobile Commons, which is the company hired by NARAL to get its text messages onto Verizon. Alpert is in the middle of this shifting story, and his NPI Memo on Mobile Media is now available on the NPI website, as well as video of a recent talk he gave on the subject at an NPI event in Washington DC. Alpert also posted on the NPI blog about mobile media this week before this firestorm broke out.

The Alpert memo follows on a major report about the coming power of mobile media released by NPI last year, by NPI fellow Tim Chambers, co-founder of Media 50 Group, a company helping people in politics use mobile media.

This mobile media space is one that NPI has been tracking closely and will continue to do as it gets increasingly important to politics over time. Stay tuned.

Peter Leyden

NPI author Jed Alpert is quoted in the Times this morning on Verizon's decision to allow the disputed NARAL text message to proceed. 

To read Jed's paper on mobile media and politics, click here.  

Almost everyone you want to reach in politics now has a mobile phone that they carry with them at all times. You can’t say that about computers connected to the internet let alone TVs at home. Yet political people are only just beginning to use this critical new tool that holds so much potential.

Read the New Politics Institute’s “Go Mobile Now” memo that introduces people in politics to how this tool is already being used in politics and will increasingly be used soon. The memo was developed by Jed Alpert and Chris Muscarella, the founders of Mobile Commons, a company with experience bridging the gap between what’s possible in the mobile field and what needs to be done in politics.

Watch Jed, the CEO of the company, give the talk version of the memo at the kickoff event of the 2007 New Tools Campaign in Washington DC late this summer. He explains how mobile media is different from other media and why it is so good at getting people to take action, from signing petitions, to calling representatives, to fundraising.

Also this week on the NPI website, Jed will make some blog posts that will point out current references to some of the ideas he laid out it the memo. You can view these blog posts off the NPI front page or the blog itself.

We encourage you to send this email around to those you know who might best use it. And next week we will tee up another of the 8 New Tools that progressives can immediately use this cycle. Thanks.

Peter Leyden

In a first of it's kind study, Purdue University tested 10,000 students on how quickly a text message alert can spread throughout it's campus. This is interesting in terms of emergency announcements and response, but also from the aspect of how quickly political and social issue organizations can get key or timely news or call to action to it's entire distributed user group. The result in the case of the Purdue study was 7 minutes with reaching virtually the entire study group. "Nearly 10,000 students and faculty members agreed to receive a text message at 11:25 a.m. and respond as quickly as possible... "The answer, at least in this case, is seven minutes. That's how long it took his team to send out 9,979 text messages. Replies started coming back within the first minute, he said. Only about 30 people didn't get the text message."