Conservative dominance of the airwaves is taken as an article of faith, but Organizing for America is rolling out a new project that intends to equip progressives with the tools to get their voices heard on talk radio. They're calling it "On the Air."
The way is works is that supporters are prompted with the call-in number for a talk radio show that discusses political topics and the option to to listen to the show live. When the timing's right, the volunteer can call the number provided. Importantly, OFA's troops are asked to report back on whether they got on air, and how the call went.
On the Air is a shiny new tool, no doubt. But what might be more important for the long-term prospects of Organizing for America -- and its ability to provide back-up to Obama's agenda -- is how On the Air was engineered in the first place.
Organizers say that when they began the radio project, they found that there was no one good database of call-in numbers for the many talk radio shows that dot the United States.
So OFA built a program, called Groundswell, that slices up certain organizational tasks into discrete bits that can be accomplished by individuals but add up to a substantial effort, a la the crowdsourcing efforts of Pro Publica's distributed Reporting Network.
The benefit for volunteers is that it gives them achievable, tangible tasks to do that fit into the nooks and crannies of their day to day lives. The benefit for OFA is that they get buy in to the organization's missing that also has the effect of multiplying the organizing efforts that those on the Democratic National Committee's payroll might hope to achieve.
Organizing for America's new media director Natalie Foster says that both On the Air and Groundswell are part of a drive within Organizing for America to encourage experimentation and creativity amongst staff, particularly those staff with the programming chops to pull something like this off.
The projects, says Foster, "demonstrate what’s great about the 'labs' concept, and having software engineers embedded with our New Media team. Building out the DNC/OFA Innovation Labs was an early decision last year, and Nathan Woodhull does a great job leading that team."
A year and a half ago, a few weeks before the presidential election, Google CEO Eric Schmidt made a bold claim about the impact of the internet on our public life: "We are witnessing the end of Rovian politics," he ">declared to Arianna Huffington. Many observers, this writer included, enthused at how the internet was enabling the mass fact-checking of political statements--I called it "crowd-scouring"--and imagined that perhaps whatever the outcome of the 2008 election, "these new habits and tools will get aimed at making government more honest, open and effective."
Today, watching how our political discourse seems, depressingly, to still be dominated by blatantly anti-factual claims (such as the notion that $862 billion in stimulus spending didn't create one new job, as newly elected Senator Scott Brown recently claimed), it's worth asking whether Schmidt's pronouncement was way too optimistic. Has something changed? Were we too optimistic back in 2008? Or is there another element (no longer) at work, which people perhaps are less aware of: the existence of a robust, "people's army" of pro-Obama factcheckers in 2008, which has withered away in the last year?
Shorter Pew Internet study: "The public is clearly part of the news process now." Oh, and folks at TheNewYorkTimesFoxABCNBCCBSNPRDrudgeHuffingtonPostEtc: Forget about loyalty to your brand. Those days are gone.
There's a lot of interesting new data in the latest Pew Research Center/Pew Internet & American Life Project survey, which we're all chewing on this morning. After you get past the biggest headline, which is that people are largely infovores who graze everywhere for information, rather than sticking to one source loyally, here's what jumped out at me:
This morning, the U.S. State Department rolled a new project that they developed in conjunction with the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for New Media. They're calling it Opinion Space, and I'll admit that I don't yet understand the "why" bit of it (or even the "how" necessarily), but there's no reason for you not to play with it in the meantime.
The gist is that that Opinion Space is a data visualization tool that collects opinions from people, and then bunches them together into hotspots. There's a good chance that you'll find that you're a lot like people living in other places around the globe. At this point, Opinion Space looks very much proof-of-concept. But what's striking is that it seems a lot more like something that you expect coming out of the MIT Media Lab than the United States State Department. It's a redefinition -- or, really, one more tweak in a continuing redefinition -- of the mission and means of U.S. development and diplomacy, and it's been happening under the purview of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a pretty quick pace.
Back to this particular tool thingy. According the FAQs, the goal of Opinion Space's interface and architecture is to combat three things that are bad about modern "participatory culture." The first is that the data produced in online discussions can be unmanageably large. The second is that people tend to cluster with like-minded folks (see, blogospheres), which leads to "cyberpolarization." The third is that moderate opinions tend to be drowned out by more extreme ones. The hope is that by going the visual, statistical route here, the effect will be to "'depolarize' discussions by including all participants on a level playing field." Plus, people like to look at maps, especially ones with glowy dots.
[MORE] Some initial notes upon playing with Opinion Space: In this iteration, there are two means by which to input opinions. The first is by rating five statements on a sliding scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree; the topics: nuclear weapons, proactive diplomacy, climate change, investment in food, and empowering women.
Neat enough. But it's the second that's particularly interesting. That option is an open "Ideas for Secretary of State Clinton" text field. You can see how that way of getting information in the interface could lead to an interesting clustering of opinions about the role and perception of U.S. diplomacy and development in the world.
"These dudes are old school communications people. They're playing the game the way they know how because it's been lucrative for them. And they're destroying the whole promise of the Obama Administration in the process."


Credit: iTunes Store
One step closer to the dream of canvassers everywhere to have a two-way, digital, portable voter file in their pocket is MiniVAN Touch, the just-released iPhone app version of the Voter Activation Network data program used to power a great deal of Democratic campaigns and the field organizing efforts of a wide range of progressive groups. The target audience: existing VAN clients, as it requires users to already have a way to log into the VAN.
"We definitely feel this has a broader audience than the Palm app it replaced," VAN new media director Mike Sager tells me, "because it is so easy to use and troubleshoot. We think lots of candidates themselves will carry the app when they go door to door."
Are we nearing the promise land of the paperless campaign? Perhaps not quite yet, but Sager says that the iPhone version of VAN can at least cut down on the vast amounts of time and effort that can get wasted during the course of a campaign's pounding of the pavement or working of a crowd. "The app is dramatically more efficient than walking with paper lists," says Sager, "as it eliminates all the follow up data entry -- press one button, and your contacts are recorded in VAN."
What, you don't subscribe to Delta Sky Magazine? You're missing out, then, on this interview with White House director of online programs Jesse Lee. As a Hill and DCCC vet, Lee has depth of experience in government and politics that is probably matched by only a few blog/new media folks. Here's how Lee describes his gig, and the role of the new media team in the White House:
My title is “online programs director,” but given that this is the first New Media department in the White House, we all have to kind of make up our roles on the fly. In practice, I’m the managing editor of whitehouse.gov and the main writer for the blog. I conceptualize and execute a lot of the online engagement from online town halls with the president to the more regular online video chats with senior policy folks. And I also serve as a sort of liaison to bloggers, which means I have one foot in the broader communications and press shops, and am also the main new media contact for other offices in the White House like the Office of Health Reform and the Office of Public Engagement. It’s a lot of hats, but it actually reflects well on how well integrated new media is here, which is a challenge most organizations haven’t conquered yet (we’re not just “the Internet people” as is often the case).
There was a concern when the White House new media team got its start that it would, in org-chart or in practice, be circumscribed by its place as part of the White House's communications wing. But, as Lee describes and as observation tells us, the new media shop seems to have relatively comfortably settled into a role of part outreach, part activism, part organizing, and part a dozen other things. That's probably aided by the fact that they used lingo like "Facetweet," as Lee says. That probably scares the rest of the White House staff into giving them some space.
It's a fun and enlightening interview, in general. And Lee touches on the pressing question of what a guy like him wears to work in the White House:
As a blogger, I’m actually required to wear pajamas to work, and my office was remodeled as a replica of my mom’s basement (which is sad, because it is unfinished and floods in the rain).
Hee. But take this as insight into what passes for wild and crazy behavior in DC:
Just kidding—suit and tie every day, though I have been known to wear brown shoes from time to time.
Brown shoes! Call down the Secret Service. He works in the joint.
If you haven't noticed already, I like "crazy" ideas. That is, notions that may appear like they come from outside the ballpark, but have a germ of possibility and suggest, "There might be a better way to do things than what we're doing now." (Here are some of my more recent ones.) And I like working at the intersection of technology and politics precisely because, well, while politics looks pretty broken (gridlocked, frustrating, money-dominated, etc), technology is bringing us revolutions like clockwork.
Credit:FixCongressFirst.orgLarry Lessig, ever creative, is trying out what does seem to be a new one as far as the field of email techniques goes. Lessig is giving people on his Fix Congress First email list a chance to opt out -- forever and ever -- from fundraising emails sent from his organization (one dedicated, perhaps a tad ironically, to small-dollar election funding). You can still stay opted in for Fix Congress First's requests for help that don't have anything to do with money, or for informational emails.
Lessig's "Do Not Ask" email is after the jump...
Credit: Pavlov MuseumWhile, at this moment in early 2010, a vast majority of Americans believe that the American system of government is broken -- 86%, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll that came out yesterday -- only one in 20 Americans believe that the damage to institutional democracy in the United States is irreparable and the democratic experiment hopeless. Where does that hopefulness find its footing? Of course, the great promise of online politics was, is, that by tapping into the distributed world that the web has helped to cultivate, the channels might open up between the electorate and the elected, and great waves of participatory democracy might gush forth. Maybe the very nature of representative government isn't altered as a result, the thinking behind distributed democracy goes. But in this new world order, Congress and others in office would be forced into a relationship of greater accountability. Good, responsive members of Congress would flourish in a system of incentives that wasn't so dominated by the wealth-funded interests of a few or the hollow arguments of those with the establishment standing to get their voices heard.

How big are the right-roots? And how do they stack up against the net-roots? I've been asking that question of various people lately, and also looking at some of the metrics available, as both sides of the American political spectrum continue to grow and flex their online muscles in this turbulent season. Here's some relevant data regarding their respective online donor bases.
Credit: gibbsphoto
(With Micah Sifry)

This Friday we have a special "Scandinavian edition" of the Europe roundup, brought to you by PDF friend Bente Kalsnes.
If you want you can send us stories or interesting links to look into. And don't forget to check our twitter account!
*Note: Our Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry are senior advisors to the Sunlight Foundation.
As Ben Smith has noted, the National Republican Congressional Committee, chair by Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, has sent out an email to the NRCC mailing list that is designed to look as if Nancy Pelosi is the sender. Pelosi's name is listed in the from field. The actual sender address -- masked by default in many email programs, including Gmail -- is an NRCC one, info@nrccmail.org.
"Dear Naive Republican...," the email begins -- perhaps a clue that the missive didn't actually come from the office of the Speaker.
As it turns out, this post is the second entry in what is shaping up to be a series that we might call the "Sure, you can do that online, but should you?" posts about the possibilities and perils of online politics. The first, from yesterday, involved whether a Texas District Attorney should really be tweeting out the names, case numbers, and other identifying details of people involved in DUI and domestic abuse cases, even if those details are part of the public record.
Credit: NRCCThe outer boundaries of good email practice might be uncharted. But does the NRCC's spoofing the name of an elected official -- or anyone, for that matter -- cross over into the Thar be dragons zone of places to stay away from? Does it make matters worse that the phony email from the NRCC is capped of with what appears to be Pelosi's real signature? (Also, did you know that Wikipedia has copies of famous people's signatures?)
For what it's worth, your humble blogger happened to get a copy of the NRCC email in her inbox. And your gullible blogger, without opening it, totally believed it to be an email from the Speaker.

The theme of last night's event at the New York Society for Ethical Culture's elegant building just west of Manhattan's Central Park was, officially, the somewhat objective question, "Obama: Change We Can Still Believe In?" But the vibe of the evening turned out to be more about relationships than distanced assessments. Whether by providence or a bit of good stage setting, the song that was playing when panelists Katrina vanden Heuvel and Ari Melber of the Nation, the New York Times Gretchen Morgenson, Politico's Ben Smith, and Demos' Ben Barber took to the stage actually seemed more on point. "You've got a friend..." sang James Taylor. On this night, to consider the future of the Obama years, the question was, well, does he?
He does, was the consensus of the evening. And Barack Obama has the poll numbers to prove it. But the sentiment on stage and in the crowd was still that Obama hasn't been much of a pal to the progressive movement in his first 13 months in office. Of course, we've talked here about this question of whether and why all the considerable momentum of the Obama campaign, ginned up and harnessed by the Internet in large part, was allowed to float off into the ether after Election Day. There was a rehashing of that last night, for sure. (13 million names! And for what!)
But Demos' Barber offered a newish take on the question of just where the grassroots aspect of the Obama enterprise went off course. "Narrative is a way of explaining to ourselves the nature of the world that we live in," he suggested, and argued that Obama has failed to provide one that would give his progressive allies a story book to go by. And the web, in particular, loves a good story...

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has emerged at the forefront of an effort to -- successfully, it seems -- reinsert the public option into the Washington debate over where the Democratic push for health care reform goes from here. Rather remarkable for an organization founded by a trio of activists a little more than a year ago.
Alongside Democracy for America and CREDO Action, the PCCC has been pushing a effort to get Democratic senators to sign onto a letter "respectfully" calling for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to "bring for a vote before the full Senate a public health insurance option under budget reconciliation rules." The letter has become known as the Bennet Letter, for its Senate champion, freshman Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado. Where the public option once looked DOA, as of this afternoon 18 Democratic Senators have joined the call to give it another chance at life...


From the great state of California, land of innovation, comes WikiMeg, a crowdsourced repository a la Wikipedia for the collected wisdom and opposition research on the 30-year career of Meg Whitman, a former eBay executive who is now a Republican candidate for governor. The site's creators, the Democratic coalition group Level the Playing Field 2010 -- an outfit affiliated with nurses' and teachers' unions -- call the project "a bold new experiment in democracy," and the site's tag line emphasizes its collaborative bent, call it "a place to discover and share information on billionaire CA candidate Meg Whitman." The San Francisco Chronicle's Joe Garofoli reports on the project:
Wikimeg.com invites the rest of the world to shake the bushes for information about Whitman and enables their new research assistants to post the results on the Internet, Wikipedia-style. But this self-described "experiment in community research and information gathering" comes with potential risks in how that information is vetted.
WikiMeg.com launched this morning. The only substantive section thus far is one on her use of two eBay corporate jets. There's a placeholder for information on "Meg Sightings," too.
The Whitman oppo wiki might be a first for a political campaign, but Organizing for America recently launched something similar with its "Groundswell" project to crowdsource organize efforts amongst volunteers.
I suggested to Garofoli when we spoke for his piece that, in my opinion, that a wiki-fied opposition site on a political candidate like this would probably benefit from requiring that contributors stick to the Wikipedia rules that have somehow made that repository of the world's knowledge into a resource that is generally speaking fairly unbiased. (It also probably marks the first time I've used the word "slime" in conversation.) A big rule: contributors aren't asked for original reporting. Instead, references must be linked to another published source. WikiMeg has adopted the same spirit, though first-hand reports aren't out-and-out banned. Read the rules, "Be factual and always hyperlink to your source. If you are the source of first-hand information, say who you are and how you know what you know."
It's easy to see how something like WikiMeg could descend into mean-spirited chaos, or fall apart as a gimmick. But there's also a chance that this could be a valuable opposition research tool -- particularly since, as contacts in California suggest, Democratic candidate Jerry Brown is known for running particularly parsimonious campaigns. The people's oppo might form of bulk of the challenger-vetting that first-time candidate Whitman gets. And all available reporting suggests that, for example, it's far more of a vetting than the McCain campaign gave to Sarah Palin. So it might not be such a bad thing for the state of the political debate.
Credit: IdealWareThe non-profit IdealWare surveyed more than 400 staffers at various non-profits back in November to find out what social media tools they're using, and whether they're finding those applications are meeting their organizational needs on three fronts: reaching new allies, fundraising, and deepening their relationships with existing supporters:
Respondents considered Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, and video- and photo-sharing sites reasonably effective -- at least at outreach and enhancing existing relationships. MySpace was not as well-thought-of, and ranked lowest for each of the three goals. LinkedIn was considered comparatively effective for fundraising, but lagged behind everything but MySpace for the other goals.
How the reports speaks to your organizational objectives depends on what those objectives are, so check out the full 20-page study here. But spoiler alert: non-profiters seem to find Twitter the Swiss Army knife of social media tools.
