K Street Cafe

By Erica L. Fitzsimmons

A few more thoughts on the new Facebook changes, privacy concerns and what Four Square and Gowalla should be concerned about.

The recent Facebook platform changes may have advantages for advocacy professionals as I discussed in my earlier post, “Facebook Takeover,” but due to widespread privacy concerns, several Facebook members are thinking about quitting the wildly popular social networking site.  And by several, I mean approximately 60% of them — according to a survey conducted by IT security firm, Sophos.
(more…)

By Anne D. Darconte

For over a year now, grassroots practitioners in Washington, DC have been discussing the pros and cons of adopting an ethics code for conducting grassroots advocacy campaigns. While this is not a new issue by any means, it gained renewed attention after the infamous Abramoff lobbying scandal and the presidential election of Barack Obama who promised greater transparency in government. Last summer, more fuel was added to the fire when angry citizens voiced their displeasure at congressional town hall meetings with the health care reform debate. Then the disclosure that bogus letters had been sent to several members of Congress by an employee of a grassroots advocacy firm on behalf of its client resulted in a congressional hearing.

The latest panel to address this issue convened on this week at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. About 75 people turned out to hear the panel participants discuss the pros and cons of a grassroots code of ethics. While most agreed that adopting such a code would be worthwhile, the devil continues to be in the detail. (more…)

This morning at the Public Affairs Council’s National Grassroots Conference, former Member of Congress J. C. Watts spoke on what makes an effective grassroots advocacy strategy. Obviously, every Member of Congress has their own unique perspective, but it was helpful to hear from someone on the “inside” who advocacy organizations are trying to influence.

One interesting point Watts made was that he and his staff took notice of the volume of communications from constituents on any given issue:

“When I ask my staff, ‘Have we heard from constituents about an issue?’ and they say that we have received 47 calls, that does not impress me. But, if we receive 547 calls, then everyone sits up and takes notice. I think there must be something legitimate going on. We need to take notice.”

And then later, during a question and answer period he said:

“When the staff tells me we received 721 communications on an issue it makes me say, ‘Something is going on here – we need to find out more and take notice.’ ”

Watts then outlined some tips for Grassroots practitioners who are trying to influence Congress. He spoke about the good, the bad and the ugly:

(more…)

10 Web Trends to Watch in 2010 (CNN Tech)
Mashable’s Pete Cashmore lists his 10 Web trends for next year.

Online Privacy Quickly Becoming Key Issue for Lawmakers, Activists (The Hill)
The growing gap between innovation and privacy safeguards is driving advocacy groups to request more strict privacy standards on the Web.

In case you missed it, the Hill ran my column “Promoting a Cause Through YouTube,” about the State Department’s use of social media as a powerful diplomacy tool used to promote democracy around the world.

Much can be learned by studying State’s Democracy Video Challenge user generated content campaign.  Launched last year, the Video Challenge invites citizens worldwide to submit videos completing the phrase “Democracy is…”  The campaign had more than 900 video submissions and was successful in engaging the public through social media.

The Democracy Video Challenge provides many good lessons for advocacy organizations trying to recruit and mobilize supporters both here and around the world.

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?

(more…)

Today YouTube announced the official launch of YouTube DIRECT, a tool that allows organizations to collect, moderate and then display videos from users directly on their organization’s web site or an associated YouTube channel. The stated intention of the tool is to allow news organizations to develop an array of user-generated stringers who can upload video reports and commentary to a news web site while maintaining the news site’s editorial control. (At the time of writing it was not 100% clear whether the tool was limited to official news services only – let’s hope not).

But let’s think outside of the box here. Why limit this to news organizations? Could you image what a forward thinking non-profit or advocacy group could do with this kind of technology? (more…)

While I enjoy many of the topics people tweet about—Redskin updates, fashion reviews, restaurant suggestions, and a recent dinner conversation between M.C. Hammer and Robbie Van Winkle (A.K.A. Vanilla Ice)—my favorite tweets come from policy makers. However, while some have learned the art of brevity by using 140 characters or less, others take three tweets to get their point across—the technological equivalent of a filibuster.

(more…)

Nicole Williams of the State Policy Network has launched New Media TV, an online channel for social networking gurus who work for policy organizations, think tanks and advocacy groups. The channel will feature experts who will lead video discussions and share tips on how to better communicate using new online tools.

The ATLAS Economic Research Foundation’s Jason Talley will kick things off for New Media TV with a discussion about Facebook fan pages, Twitter and the social networking aspects of YouTube. Viewers will be able to discuss the video in a live chat on the site.

The presentation will begin today (Friday) at 3:00 pm EST and will be archived for future reference.

For Web 2.0 experts who want to appear on New Media TV, contact Nicole Williams at will...@spn.org.

In 2006, with less money and less name recognition than his opponent for Senate, incumbent Orrin Hatch, Pete Ashdown took an innovative approach to his campaign website. Harking back to a tradition of elected representatives being delegates of their constitutents will (rather than trustees), Ashdown included a wiki on his website where voters could edit and develop his campaign platform. This collaborative process, made easy by the web, foreshadowed a growing practice of letting large groups of citizens to collaborate on developing political messages and policy platforms.

But why should we let the crowd do this? According to James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, large groups of people are simply smarter than small groups and individuals, on average. For example, Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann, in The Spiral of Silence, shows that long before asking people in surveys “who they will vote for” can effectively predict an upcoming election, asking them “who they think will win” will get the prediction right.

On Thursday, October 16, 2008, from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm at 1225 I (Eye) Street, NW, 3rd Floor, the Internet Advocacy Roundtable focuses on crowdsourcing message and policy platforms with a panel of speakers who have managed crowdsourcing programs and developed new software to make these programs more effective.

Speakers include Brian Young, who has been working with the TruthFightsBack.com project, which relies on citizens to help identify smears in the current presidential campaign; Michael Yaki, who crowdsourced language and ideas for the 2008 Democratics Party platform; and David Stern, co-founder of MixedInk, a startup that has created an online collaborative writing tool that allows large groups to weave their ideas together democratically to express a collective viewpoint.

The exciting thing about crowdsourcing’s impact on politics and governance is that it creates new opportunities to further democratize the process. As alluded to above, these tools allow elected officials to more effectively represent the will of their constituents, or as Edmund Burke wrote in the 1770’s, they can be delegates. This is in sharp contrast to elected officials who see themselves as trustees of their constituents. Trustees do what they think is best for their constituents, even if that is in opposition to their will. Delegates work to reflect their constituents’ will; a far more democratic approach.