Earlier this month U.S. Senate candidate Chuck DeVore of California tried a new experiment in fundraising: Tweet for Chuck was the creation of online strategist Justin Hart to tap into the newly organized Top Conservatives on Twitter. The experiment has generated 136 donations so far, mostly between $10 and $25.
Although this was hardly a fundraising haul for DeVore, it was the first time a candidate used the microblogging platform to raise money. It generated positive press and got him noticed in a tough race against incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer. The website Hart built tracks donations (promoting transparency) and referrals (inspiring competition).
After observing the success, my Heritage Foundation colleague Nathaniel Ward and I asked Hart to create a similar effort for Heritage. Year-end fundraising is a priority for every nonprofit, and we saw very few downsides to asking for donations on Twitter. Last week we launched Tweet for Heritage.
Despite having more followers than DeVore, we haven’t enjoyed the same kind of success. That could be because DeVore was the first to do it or the holidays are keeping people occupied. Regardless, I hope the experiment prompts other nonprofits to use Twitter in new and creative ways.
Will fundraising work on this platform? The jury is still out for our experiment. But it would be great to have feedback or suggestions for others considering similar campaigns.
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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A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the change in online communication habits from email to Social Media, suggesting that communicating via social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter could some day replace more traditional email communication as the method of choice for activists.
Many of the follow up comments I received after the post went something along this line: Excellent – I agree, but how can I convince the ‘higher-ups’ in my organization that we need to use these new tools?
At the most recent Innovative Advocacy conference, two attendees asked one of the panelists similar questions:
How can I convince my Executive Director that we should include Facebook in our advocacy strategy when he or she thinks it’s simply a fad for their high school kids? And, how can I get approval for a policy blog when the general counsel’s office is nervous about not having control over what the public can write in the comments section? READ MORE »
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. READ MORE »
Posted by: Alan Rosenblatt
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.
Cross-posted on e.politics
Even in the Early Days of epolitics.com, back when we powered the servers with wood, coal and fuel-grade mummies, plenty of people were already predicting the demise of email as a marketing/communications tool. More than two years later, it’s still a popular hobby among online experts (hi, Jeff!). I understand the logic behind the idea of a slow fade for electronic mail, and I’m sure that those predicting it are at least partially correct — as a communications channel, email’s gained so much competition over the past few years that any other trend would be hailed as an online miracle.
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Earlier today, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Adfero Group and the Politico sponsored the last event in the Innovative Advocacy series: Intelligence, Media Monitoring, and Tracking the Buzz.
Panelists included three K Street Café contributors: Peter Waldheim from the Blog Council, Chris Kinnan from FreedomWorks and Brad Fitch from Knowlegis. Others on the two panel discussions, moderated by Mathew Zablud of Adfero Group and Brad Peck from the U.S. Chamber, were Chris Ramsey from Radian6, James Tipton from Google, and Evan Tracey from TNS Media Strategies.
Here were the key points from the two panels: READ MORE »
Cross-posted on e.politics
A tough question came up in a conversation with a visiting group of Danish communications professionals last week — how do you actually measure the effectiveness of social media outreach? At that moment, the questioner seemed to be looking for some grand sweeping mechanism, but I think the reality is much more complicated: how you measure social media depends on what you’re trying to make it do.
Trying to Grab Hold of a Cloud
Here’s the problem: as with so much communications work, the effects of social media outreach can be quite diffuse. Say your advocacy campaign has a video on your issue out on YouTube — how do you measure the influence it has on the public mind? Some thing with that network of activists you’ve laboriously built up through Facebook — how do you find out how much good they’re actually doing you?
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Posted by: Alan Rosenblatt
The coming of age of the Millennial Generation, the first civic generation since the GI Generation (dubbed the Greatest by Tom Brokaw), is converging with the arrival of the most civic-friendly communication technologies we have ever seen. And with this convergence, American politics is being reshaped. That was the message delivered yesterday by Morley Winograd and Michael Hais at the Internet Advocacy Roundtable. The authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube & the Future of American Politics provided some serious grist for the mill to the audience gathered at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Building on a rich body of research about political realignment in America, Hais and Winograd explained that a key driving force in realigning the political landscape is the arrival of new communications technology, and the coming of age of a new generation that embraces the technology and demands its incorporation into the political process. The rise of radio in the 1930’s and television in the 1960’s both reshaped politics in this country. And today, the rise of online social media is doing it once again. READ MORE »
Posted by: John "CZ" Czwartacki
An inaugural post is always hard lame odd. So I’ll spare you the James Stockdale introduction and just get to it.
One of the reasons you might be here at K Street Café is to get a better understanding of the power of the “network of networks” and tap into the new tactics of the old game.
Understanding the how and why of this new world is important. So, with apologies to the Kennedy family, ask not what the internet can do for you, ask how it is changing the balance of power in the influence game.
To get a better understanding of how these emerging networks of linked citizens is changing that balance, my humble suggestion is to start by reading The Cluetrain Manifesto. It has long been required reading for bloggers, it’s time others glean from its lessons, too.
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