Archive: Year: 2006

The Washington Post continues to out-do The New York Times in its coverage of the intersection of technology and politics. Two recent examples of smart reporting from the Post: Jeffrey Birnbaum's piece on "Targeting Likely Advocates With Web Ads," and William Booth's piece on Robert Greenwald's net-centric approach to financing and distributing his political documentaries, "His Fans Greenlight His Films." Birnbaum's story gives us a fresh take on how some well-heeled players are using technology to better game the system, i.e., to empower themselves in a top-down way. Want to build a list of citizens who will help your cause? Fine-tuned Internet advertising can get you folks, but it will cost you $5 per advocate, Birnbaum reports. The somewhat creepy example...

My friends at New York's Working Families Party have launched a smart way to engage their members in a very net-centric way of rolling out their online advertising this fall--they've emailed about 18,000 of the most active members of their 58,000 state list to ask their help in picking the best Google search terms to use in focusing attention on Congressional campaigns. Writes WFP online organizer Steve Perez, "We want help shaping our strategy. We need to know what phrases people are likely to use when they search for election information. So here's the question - if you wanted to know more about the Congressional race where you live, what would you type into Google?" Perez is smart; he's tapping into the...

Two examples, one serious and one cute, of how technology is changing the actual conversation between elected officials and their constituents: First, check out this online survey posted on H2otown ("news and events for Watertown, MA") by town councilor John Donohue, which hyper-local blogger Lisa Williams is serializing into individual polls for her readers. The first question is "If you have had interaction with a town department (DPW, Police, Fire, Clerks), how was your experience?" So far, 34 people have responded, which for a town of about 33,000 is pretty good, I think. Second, I can't help passing along this amusing exchange from an "online listening session" conducted by Senator Russ Feingold, which vaguely reminded me of that great Saturday Night LIve...

Joe Lieberman's campaign is charging that supporters of his opponent, Ned Lamont, hacked his campaign website and email system, and his campaign manager is asking for a criminal investigation. The Lamont campaign denies the charges, and has even offered to send their tech guru to Lieberman HQ to help them fix their problem. The Lamont blog even includes a link to a Google cache of Lieberman's website. A lot of charges are being thrown around with little proof offered, and this story is taking a life of its own on the cable news shows ("We decide, then we report later...

The United States State Department is about to launch an intrnal wiki called Diplopedia. That#039s the most interesting news to come out Wikimania today, at least for me. Chris Bronk, who heads the "Office of E-Diplomacy" at State, just gave a preview of what could be a very useful experiment in marrying new communications technology to a very old profession. Here#039s how Diplopedia came to be, as Bronk told it. "Every diplomat moves every two or three years," he said. "How do you pass their knowledge down?" Here's how information gathering works today in a typical embassy. Some event happens--say, an Asian dictator decides to test fire a missile--and State needs new insight on how this is affecting political attitudes in a country...

I'm sitting in a packed hall at the Harvard Law School, listening to Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, talk about the past, present and future of the open information movement. Wikipedia's radical goal, Wales reminds the crowd, is to give all the people of the world free access to the sum of human knowledge. And judging from the milestones he notes--in the past year, the English Wikipedia has topped one million articles, the German one has topped 400,000; the Japanese 200,000; the Polish one 200,000; the Dutch 200,000; and so on. I bet lots of people first heard of Wikipedia last winter when journalist John Siegenthaler attacked the online encyclopedia for an entry that falsely linked him to the...

Looks like some Republicans are taking a page from grass-roots Democrats, and have started their own website to help small donors pool political contributions to candidates for office. A group of high-profile GOP activists, including PDF contributing editor Michael Turk and lobbyist Frank Donatelli (hubby of Becky Donatelli, den mother of all Republican online mavens) have launched RightRoots, a project of ABC PAC. On their site, they say: ABC PAC is a one-stop shop for donations that makes it easy for donors to help in multiple campaigns by simply visiting one place on the Internet. ABC PAC is the answer for those in the conservative community online who have been clamoring for such a site to answer the Democrats who have, so...

Read this article in Human Events Online for a nice round-up of the leading stars of the politech-right, any of whom might well fill the same role for Republican presidential candidates that former Kerry blogger Peter Daou is now playing for Senator Hillary Clinton. Among the familiar names named, PDF contributing editor Mike Krempasky and Chuck DeFeo make the cut. PDFers should also recognize Patrick Ruffini, the RNC's eCampaign director (who spoke at PDF 2006), and David All, Rep. Jack Kingston's communications director. Also listed: Mark Tapscott, formerly of Heritage, Erick-Woods Erickson of RedState.org, Matt Lewis of Campaign Leadership, and Spencer Whelan of APCO Worldwide....

Thomas Jefferson memorably said, "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government," but these days a big part of the problem with that admirable notion is that we're glutted with information and it's hard to take it all in, let alone stay focused. And it's clear that lots of bad and dumb stuff gets done by people in power because they think--or know--that the rest of us aren't paying attention. Along with my partner-in-crime Andrew Rasiej, I've been spending a lot of time lately helping the newly-created Sunlight Foundation figure out how we might be able to harness the internet and the social web to tackle this problem, with the goal of shining more light on...

This kind of opportunity doesn't come around all that often--Personal Democracy Forum is seeking a highly motivated, creative individual to join our editorial team. In tandem with me, PDF's executive editor, our associate editor will oversee the day-to-day life of our website and blogging community; write, assign and edit articles; produce regular email updates; handle site design updates and maintenance; and participate in curating our annual conference. Responsibilities also include managing relationships with vendors and modest bookkeeping. We are looking for someone who is fascinated by and passionate about how technology is changing politics in America. Basic fluency in HTML a must; familiarity with Drupal/Civicspace is a plus. Hours are flexible. Salary commensurate with experience. Personal Democracy Forum is...