A question came up about the new media activities of 501c3 organizations hosting social media platforms for the public (Thank you to Debbie Miller for her assistance with this research):
Question: Can a 501c3 private foundation or public charity put its tax-exempt status at risk by hosting a social media platform? Specifically, could the advocacy and electioneering activities of individuals and groups using that social media platform be treated as the direct action – or facilitation of direct action – by that foundation of activities inconsistent with its tax exempt 501(c)(3) status?
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Crossposted on Mediafuturenow.com
Randall Lane wrote a provocative piece in Monday’s New York Times suggesting a “ballot buddy system” among the states to permit apportioning of electoral votes among counties or congressional districts. The idea seems like one of those suggestions likely to go nowhere, except when you realize that (a) 2 states (Maine and Nebraska) have already moved in that direction, (b) the 2000 election may have permanently disencumbered any remaining pillars of the infallibility of the electoral college system and (c) the Obama campaign’s social media breakthroughs may have demonstrated the irrelevance of the system in the first place.
(Full disclosure: Lane’s current company, Doubledown Media, is a corporate law client of my law firm.)
In “A Ballot Buddy System”, Lane argues that the big win for deconstructing the electoral college was vividly illustrated in Nebraska, where Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin both campaigned in Omaha in the last weeks of the 2008 campaign – something not otherwise thought likely for an otherwise reliably red state. When counties are in play, versus whole states, “winner takes all”, a different campaign dynamic kicks in. (more…)
Crossposted on Mediafuturenow.
Legal issues with privacy in social media stem from the nature of social media – an inherently communicative and open medium. The cliché is that in social media there is no expectation of privacy because the very idea of privacy is inconsistent with a “social” medium. Scott McNealy from Sun Microsystems famously drove home the point with his aphorism of “You already have zero privacy. Get over it.”
But in evidence law, there’s a rule barring assumption of facts not in evidence. Here it’s more simple: Where was it proven that we cannot find privacy in a new communications medium, even one as public as the internet and social media? Let’s go back to basic principles. Everyone talks about how privacy has to “adapt” to a new technological paradigm. I agree that technology and custom require adaptation by a legal system steeped in common law principles with foundations from the 13th century. But I do not agree that the legal system isn’t up to the task.
All you really need to do is look more widely at the law.
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Crossposted on Mediafuturenow.com.
Twitter is not a broadcasting medium. Much has been written about Twitter as the first “true” realization of the power of real-time social media. Twitter is an advocacy medium. Just ask Shaun Dakin.
Dakin is a former FedEx executive and, among other things, a big Twitter advocate. He’s done something kind of amazing. Dakin is CEO and founder of The National Political Do Not Contact Registry, a campaign to restrict “robo” calling and other less automated telephone calls for political and advocacy campaigns.
Perhaps not a particularly glamorous grassroots campaign, the Registry is exactly the kind of political “process” campaign that seeks to better participatory democracy in this country. It’s the nuts and bolts of the workings of elections and advocacy campaigns, and it is worth both the attention of political professionals and (for our purposes) good study by the media and technology communities. It is effective. (more…)
Crossposted on Mediafuturenow.com.
My colleague Brad Fitch writes in the K Street Café about the bailout plan, “What’s Driving Citizen Outrage?”. Fitch takes a smart look at the factors underlying the passion, and recognizes a true “grassroots” advocacy campaign when he sees one. In fact, the bailout may be one of those seminal – and rare – political events where the citizenry is truly engaged in an uncoordinated explosion, and Fitch cites the 2006 immigration debate, the 1998 Starr Report and the 1989 Congressional pay raise as the only seriously comparable recent examples.
Wired magazine makes an analogous point in its coverage of the case, in “Online Bailout Outrage Jumps to Streets, and Into Lawmakers’ Inboxes”. It seems that the major advocacy groups organizing massive email, letter-writing and telephone campaigns are being eclipsed – at least this time around – by the virality of individual journalists and bloggers and websites launching often comical but all-too-effective pitched battles. As just one example, Wired mentions BuyMyShitPile.com, a parody site organizing collections of junk for submission to the government to also be redeemed in the junk mortgage bailout. (As of this writing, BuyMyShitePile claims stated value of its “junk” assets at $801,501,210,139.11.) (more…)
I’m cross-posting today to a blog I wrote the other day for Media Future Now about mainstream radio using streaming video. (As if that makes any kind of sense.)
What amazed me is the power of interactivity actually realized by video coverage of the Democratic and Republic National Conventions last month. I’ll simply refer for the immediate moment to coverage of KCRW radio in Santa Monica, reported on by Anne Eisenberg last week in the New York Times. Eisenberg’s story in the Times ogled at 124,000 views of 67 convention clips shot by KCRW staffers the Democratic Convention last month in Denver. (more…)
