Personal Democracy Plus Our premium content network. LEARN MORE You are not logged in. LOG IN NOW >

Inside Mitt Romney's Digital Mind

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, January 19 2012

From the rise of voters who can only be reached online to increased use of mobile devices and social media, Zac Moffatt recently spoke to Atlantic correspondent Nancy Scola about what it's like running digital for the campaign that now seems poised to confront Barack Obama for the presidency. Read More

Blue State's Lauren Miller Moving to Elizabeth Warren's Campaign

BY Nick Judd | Friday, January 6 2012

Blue State Digital's director of online communications, Lauren Miller, announced yesterday that she is leaving the left-leaning software giant to join U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren's campaign as new media director. Miller starts working for Warren in about two weeks. Read More

Obama for America's 50-State Strategy Shows Up Online

BY Nick Judd | Friday, October 28 2011

In 2008, Obama for America's 50-state strategy contributed to his election. Now it looks like his campaign isn't just adopting it again on the ground — his campaign is rounding up ground troops online as well. ... Read More

'Gaming' the Ames Straw Poll

BY Nick Judd | Friday, August 12 2011

ClickZ's Kate Kaye has a great look at how campaigns are going digital in their quest to win the Ames Straw Poll. Here's her describing how Republican political consulting firm Engage built a platform for former ... Read More

What Do Michele Bachmann and Ozzy Osbourne Have In Common?

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, July 20 2011

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Ozzy Osbourne are both riding the crazy train straight to the bank, political science professor Justin Buchler suggests in a new article in "The Forum," a Berkeley Electronic Press ... Read More

Online Consultant Says 'Web Guys' Need to Put Fundraising First

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, June 23 2011

Justin Hart, who was California U.S. Senate candidate Chuck DeVore's new media director, says online consultants should focus on fundraising to stay relevant to their campaigns: Make it about fundraising; pay your own ... Read More

Facebook Users are More Politically Active, Pew Says

BY Nick Judd | Friday, June 17 2011

A study released yesterday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds Facebook users are far more likely to be politically engaged: Our survey was conducted over the November 2010 elections. At that time, 10% ... Read More

Cato's George Scoville Leaving for CRAFT Media/Digital

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, May 31 2011

Scoville, Cato's new media manager, makes his move next month. (See also Ben Smith) Update: And also Scoville, himself. Read More

Define "Guru": Selling the Obama '08 Online Campaign Abroad

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, April 25 2011

It's a perfectly normal course of events for political operatives to wrangle over who deserves what credit for a campaign's successes (or failures, for that matter). But letting yourself be billed as the Obama campaign's ... Read More

Question: Does Quora Do Politics? Answer:...

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, March 17 2011

Photo by Jason Tester Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed yesterday >

"Power Politics in the Age of Google"

TechPresident's editorial director, Micah Sifry, will be speaking this afternoon on a panel at Harvard University called "Power Politics in the Age of Google," alongside Susan Crawford, Nicco Mele, Elaine Kamarck and Alexis Ohanian. The panel will be moderated by Harvard Shorenstein Center Director Alex Jones, and will be live-streamed here. GO

House Republicans Get a Jump on the Budget

Via Politico's Mike Allen, the House Republicans are out with a video — this one attributed to Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy — getting the drop on President Barack Obama's next federal budget, expected Monday. GO

Mittbucks.com Lets Voters Compare Their Paychecks With Romney's

What would it take for Mitt Romney to be able to relate to the average American's daily economic life? He'd have to pay $1,208.09 for a gallon of gas, according to Mittbucks.com, a web site recently created by Adam Rosenscruggs and his wife Danielle in Washington, D.C. The eye-popping figure results from an annual income that I plugged in ... GO

What Twitter Won't Tell You About the Election

A new study released on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press on Tuesday offers the opportunity to get real about what the political conversation on Twitter and Facebook can — or can't — tell you about the progression of the 2012 political campaign. Pew has found that even among users of Twitter and Facebook, a paltry percentage of people use social networks to get news about politics: Only 24 percent of Twitter users in the sample and 25 percent of Facebook users said they "sometimes" got campaign news through that network, while a full 40 percent of Twitter users in the sample and 46 percent of other social media users reported "never" getting campaign news through either Twitter or Facebook. GO

Navigating New York's "Road Map for the Digital City," One Year In

In May 2011, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg revealed a "Road Map for the Digital City," a plan to use technology to make city government more and participatory, and to leverage the city's tech sector for economic and civic gains.

New York City Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne will join our editorial director, Micah Sifry, on a conference call this Friday afternoon to discuss the progress on that road map so far. The call is free and open to anyone to join. You can sign up here.

GO

tuesday >

Pete Hoekstra's Campaign Website's "Offensive" Source Code Changed After Outcry

As if "chop suey fonts" and obvious graphic allusions to the stereotype of the Chinese as the Yellow Peril weren't controversial enough, the group that created an incendiary microsite for former Rep. Pete Hoekstra's campaign has managed to further fan the flames with what it's calling a mistake in its code. GO

Fidel Castro Loves the Internet

“The Internet is a revolutionary instrument that permits the receiving and transmission of ideas, in both directions, that is something we should know how to use,” Fidel Castro told a crowd of supporters on Feb. 4, according to the state-owned Cuban newspaper Granma International. Castro, who made his first public appearance since April 2011, launched his two-volume memoir, “Guerilla of Time,” and took the opportunity to discuss issues of importance to him. Earlier this week, Miranda Neubauer reported that one of these topics was the need for the Internet. Castro has been a proponent of the Internet as a tool for the exchange of ideas since 2003, but the average Cuban citizen faces great difficulty getting online. GO

Claire McCaskill Hires Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner As Digital Director

Missouri's senior Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill has hired Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner as its digital director. GO

More