Republican National Convention Organizers Sever Ties With Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Tuesday, May 22 2012
After eight years producing online content for the Republican National Convention, GOP web consultant Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions is off of the project. "Campaign Solutions was retained to help develop our convention website and digital strategy, but they are no longer involved in convention planning," James Davis, the convention's communications director, told techPresident Tuesday. It's unclear what precipitated the of the relationship between the convention organizers and Campaign Solutions, which has been producing the online component of the event since 2004. But Donatelli's name surfaced in a controversial anti-Obama ad pitch sent to a Super PAC backed by TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, which appeared in its entirety in the Times last week. Ricketts has since disavowed the proposal and Donatelli has denied any involvement. Read More
Facebook's Growing Political Importance, Visualized
BY Nick Judd | Thursday, May 17 2012
To commemorate Facebook's impending IPO, the Sunlight Foundation's* reporting group has a new story chronicling Facebook's increasing political spending. Accompanying the story, though, is an instance of their Capitol Words tool that shows Facebook's increasing relevance in Congress as well. Read More
From the Tea Party to Progressives, Outside Groups Look Online to Train New Candidates
BY Miranda Neubauer | Friday, April 20 2012
As city and state legislatures become battlegrounds where the political right and left do combat over education reform, labor organizing and social issues, outside groups from both sides are looking online for recruits to fill their ranks of local elected officials.
Read MoreEnemyGraph, the App that Lets You Share the Names You Love to Hate
BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, April 4 2012
The creators of EnemyGraph, a Facebook app that asks you to indicate your enemies rather than your friends, are back in the laboratory. The application lets users indicate people or ideas they hate — either friends or celebrities — and select an archenemy to tell the world who or what they hate most of all. It was created by University of Texas at Dallas Emerging Media and Communication student Bradley Griffith, the emerging media program director, Dean Terry, and Harrison Massey, also a student in the program. "I feel like our intuition about people wanting to express dislike about a variety of things in an aggregated fashion and in a social context has been confirmed," Dean Terry, the director of the emerging media program at UT-Dalls, wrote to me in an email earlier this week. "The next step is to think about how to facilitate alliances around things people are upset about." Read More
Health Care for America Now is one of many organizations that's already switched to Facebook Timeline.
Facebook Timeline: What Top Politicians and Activists Are Doing to Prepare
BY Miranda Neubauer | Thursday, March 29 2012
Ahead of Facebook's plan to switch all Facebook pages to the new Timeline layout March 30, many government figures and advocacy groups have already made the change. For Personal Democracy Plus subscribers, here's a look at what some politicians and activist groups are doing to make the most of this new tool. Read More
House Subcommittee Approves Global Online Freedom Act
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Tuesday, March 27 2012
A House subcommittee on human rights voted on Tuesday to approve a bill that seeks to promote the notion of global "Internet freedom" by blocking the export of U.S. technologies that overseas regimes would use primarily ... Read More
FIRST POST: To Your Health
BY Miranda Neubauer | Friday, March 23 2012
Today's news: A look at what the Obama team is doing online to publicize the impact of the Affordable Healthcare Act as it heads to the Supreme Court; the Federal Communications Commission is working with ISPs on the steps they should take to fight botnets; A re-design of New York City's 911 emergency call system is $1 billion over budget and seven years behind schedule, the Massachusetts State Treasurer and a former campaign trail opponent fight over his Facebook page, and more. Read More
New Facebook Open Graph App Makes Lawmaking Social, Brings House Bills To The Crowds
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Tuesday, March 20 2012
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor unveiled a clever new Facebook app Tuesday called Citizen CoSponsor. The app enables people to use Facebook to track the progress of House legislation as it makes its way through the ... Read More
Pew: Americans Accessing More News Through Their Mobile Devices; Social Media A Small But Growing Driver Of Traffic
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Monday, March 19 2012
The news industry is still trying to find its financial footing in an über-networked world, according to the 2012 State of the News Media report report by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in ... Read More
Yes They Can: What Voters Have Lost and Campaigns Have Gained From 2008 to 2012
BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, March 13 2012
Is the Internet empowering voters as much as it did in 2004 and 2008? Or have campaigns regained the upper hand, with their sophisticated use of data-mining? That was the question we debated Sunday afternoon in Austin, at the annual South by Southwest Interactive conference. Read More