My toe-dipping debut onto the social media scene has me empathizing a bit with the proceed-with-caution approach that the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee takes in dragging the social media waters for votes and voter data. It means giving up a lot more control than they’re used to, it means being more open and speaking and responding directly to voters via You Tube. It also means politicians who can’t fully embrace social media, won’t win.

Obama’s digital campaign is being called the gold standard. For starters, he welcomes visitors to his official campaign site as if he’s there at the door, offering you a personal invitation to be a part of his campaign. McCain’s page has only a still photo and asks for your e-mail and a donation.

Although it is highly unlikely that McCain will ever keep pace with Obama’s digital campaign express, Republicans have still come a long way. RNC’s Web site is peppered with interactive goodies to draw in Web surfers. Most of the features are there to attract visitors and data. What might be confusing for some voters though is how prominently Obama is featured on many of the widgets and buttons on the page. At first glance it appears as if even McCain is endorsing Obama for president (albeit they change every 30-seconds to other topics). Although the widgets and bells and whistles on the site are shiny and new, the RNC’s approach to getting ahead still rests too heavily on discrediting the opponent versus promoting McCain’s platform and bolstering support from voters who actually share his views.

If only the McCain campaign had used the same level of creativity on his videos that he used on this one  bashing Obama.

On the plus side McCain’s videos as posted on his site are also easily transferred to television. But that’s so traditional. The Republicans will get there, just not in time for the 2008 election.

Mindy Finn, Republican Web strategist

It may be impossible for a leopard to change its spots, but coming across on You Tube as sincere and charismatic appears to be just as challenging for some politicians and presidential candidates. A successful digital campaign is contingent upon a candidates ability to relax and be him or herself.

Mindy Finn agrees that candidates’ who are able to be themselves and come across as sincere will have the most effective campaigns.

“The Internet and the nature of it reveals the truth and reality of who an individual is and shows every single flaw,” she said, during an short interview at this year’s Personal Democracy Forum conference.

When asked what he considers to be the total package, when it comes to digital campaigning, James Kotecki, a digital campaign video critic, identified successful digital campaigns as those offering a candid behind-the-scenes look at the campaign, interactivity, relaxed appearance by the candidate, candidates ability to be him or herself and multi-way communication with public. Kotecki also added that although there are candidates out there doing it right, they struggle to keep the dialogue going.

Go behind the scenes 
The video below of the prank that Mitt Romney’s son pulled on him offers a glimpse of Romney behind the scenes just having lunch until he answered the call, which was intended to be a comic stress-reliever for Romney.

Relax, be yourself
McCain appears very relaxed and shows a little personality at the end of his response to a question about whether his age will interfere with his ability to be an effective president. We’ll keep watching.

Talk back via video and keep it up
Even with the great strides that candidates have made, their ability to keep the conversations going is still a challenge. They’re responding but consistently, which is key in rounding out the elements that make a well rounded digital campaign. Kucinich is one of the most noteable to date. Here one that despite its obvious flaws still offers that personal tone of a one-on-one conversation.

The saying “timing is everything” rings soberingly true when it comes to running a political campaign. Strategists are smart about when to reach out to the voting public. Too much communication can cause potential voters to click delete without even reading. That’s why savvy strategists are careful about the ways and means they use to communicate with prospective voters. They often choose dates around which they can easily build a theme, this maximized their potential to connect with would-be supporters.

The Republican National Committee site capitalizes on commercial holidays like Valentine’s Day to reach out to potential voters with their spoofy post cards that potential voters can send to friends. It’s just another way to get data from the public and create a little buzz in the process.

Targeting potential voters and collecting their data is critical to a successful political campaign.

A database of vitals on potential voters largely determines a candidate’s success at the polls. The more information they can glean about the voting public, the better their outreach strategy. Candidates want to know what’s important to the voters they are targeting: where they shop, religious values, educational values, income level, voting history, etc. It won’t be long before voters are receiving text messages from presidential candidates advising them that they are in close proximity from a polling site where they could go and cast their vote for the that candidate. Campaigning can be that exact with the use of social media. Blackberries and cell phones will become like human tracking devices.

This easy access to voter data matched with consumer behavior is only good if candidates are sincere in their intent to push issues by which their supporters are most affected. If it turns out that the candidate’s just in it to get their votes, voters might easily rally as smart mobs, exerting their power to advocate for their interests on their own terms.

Most social-media-savvy voters are very progressive; they have the power to advocate change and they aren’t afraid to use it. They aren’t shy about voicing their opinions. They know what they want and they support candidates whose core values and political interests best match their own. More importantly, they have the power to influence others and that can either help or hurt a candidate’s campaign.

Datamining, microtargeting, digging for votes — this concept of finding out the public’s “gut values” and tailoring messaging that appeals to them is, from the presidential candidates perspective, a great strategy. This gut-values concept is explored in the book Applebee’s America. However, it seems that the desire to reach the public ends with getting their votes. There seems to be no real plan beyond that to write policy that will appeal to these groups. Does it all really end at the polls for these candidates? Do they have any plans to use the data later to effect any real change in congress?

Microtargeting is extremely time consuming and yet, what campaign strategists are really after is that small group of voters who are on the fence — their minds aren’t made up. These are the voters who are most likely to be persuaded. But more than that, the datamining effort is a tool used best for predicting the probability of winning over certain groups of voters. Anyone and everyone is being microtargeted. If you sign up for the discount card at the supermarket, Borders, Starbucks and any other retail outlets, your data is being stored and it will eventually be sold to campaign strategists or any other think tank who can afford to buy it.

Supporters of Barack Obama prefer Bear Naked cereal. Hillary Clinton’s fans like GoLean. For John McCain’s supporters, Fiber One is favored.

Where do I fit in the datamining dish? Well, i’m not on the fence, and my past relationships with Chips Ahoy and Sun Chips will not translate into a vote for McCain. And Fiber One? Yuck.

Like it or not, datamining is a tool that is useful to every business or organization who really seeks to reach people. The first thing I do before interviewing a subject for a story is to find out as much  about them as possible. This helps break down barriers between me and the subject. Knowing the basics, we can move on to the real issues and the reason for the interview. It also shows the subject that I value their time and I am genuinely interested in hearing what they have to say.

It’s much the same for campaign strategists. It gives them a finite approach to predicting and getting votes. A targeted approach for political success. Datamining also gives strategists an idea of who, among their supporters, has the most influence on other voters. Most of all, datamining offers the best guidance as to who to send an e-mail, a letter, a voicemail and so on. The success of a campaign is as good as the way it communicates with individual voters.

Of all the possibilities that the digital age brings, I find the prospect of social network-driven grassroots democracy — that could actually change congress – to be most intriguing.

It all started after I read the Business Week article about the tech company Blue State that worked on the Howard Dean campaign. The article’s reference to Blue State’s work for AT&T offered a great example of what democracy in the digital age is all about. At that time, 2005, AT&T was trying to expand to its service to include digital television. Considering the hold that existing cable companies had on the market, AT&T really needed help circumventing stiff cable franchise laws in certain states, particularly, Connecticut.

Blue State used the Web and social media networks to rally grassroots support to appeal to Connecticut legislators. The more than 30,000 letters from grassroots groups to the state’s legislators resulted in a new law passed in October 2007 that allows for the issuing of cable franchise licenses to companies other than the tradition cable companies. The new legislation gave AT&T the leverage it needed to compete with that state’s cable giants.

If that kind of grassroots rallying, organized primarily online, helped influence Connecticut legislators, could online grassroots groups influence national policy issues? Groups calling for congressional reform think so. One such movement, I stumbled upon while reading snippets and listening to soundbites from the personal democracy forum conference, was Larry Lessig’s Change Congress movement …

“It’s not enough to change government every four years, we have to build a more sustained movement that after a period a time can really embed the change the government needs to make it a government people can trust again. This ideal has motivated members [citizens] and candidates to build the change congress movement,” Larry Lessig.

Craig Newmark, of Craig’s List, is an expert on the power of “ordinary people,” to take matters into their own hands and get things done when they have access to the Internet. Newmark says he’s endorsing Obama because he embraces pooling people together to effect change. When the government failed to provide relief for Katrina victims, Craig’s list was a valuable resource that resulted in many victims getting temporary housing and reconnecting with displaced friends and family. Another example of ordinary citizens connecting over the Internet to get things done.

 James Kotecki  is an online ’poli-tech-cal’ activist. Would he agree?

Let’s ask him: James Kotecki, who do you think you are? 

I doubt that Kotecki gave much thought to whether he would be viewed as a blogger, or citizen journalist when he made is YouTube debut (from his dorm room at Georgetown University). His mission was simple: use YouTube as a platform to encourage politicians to interact with the online community. He uses the journalistic process to research, compile and analyze the political process and the presidential candidate videos he critiques. He also writes and produces his scripts and uploades his vlog regularly on YouTube. 

What’s more relevant than whether Kotecki is a “real” journalist, is his innovative way of getting politicians’ attention and initiating conversations with them. Kotecki has a humorously natural ability to get young voters interested or more involved in the political process. He presents political information the way online viewers prefer to see it –fast and informal. Kotecki has also changed the way some politicians view the role of Internet in the political process, and that’s a big first step toward his ultimate goal, which is to use online video to change democracy.

“Online video can change democracy by changing they way we interact with our politicians,” Kotecki said in his vlog in which he applauded the video response he’d received from Congressman Dennis Kucinich.

Kotecki’s passion for politics and his desire to have the kind of one-on-one conversations with presidential candidates most journalists don’t have time for, is what initially inspired him to launch his YouTube channel Emergency Cheese. The difference between what Kotecki did from his dorm room and what political pundits like Chris Matthews does on Hardball, is very obvious. Kotecki’s production is more like Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, but way cheaper and up-close and personal. Kotecki also appears to be  non-partisan and he doesn’t have big media breathing down his back.

Yes. Kotecki is a vlog activist who is pro democracy. Instead of ratings and sweeps, he thrives on getting as much feedback and have ongoing conversations with politicians and Web viewers. He’s helping to break down the barriers to online communication and participation. And as charismatic as Kotecki is, he insists that “It’s not about me … it’s about all of us changing politics for the better.”

The following YouTube videos represent the most-recognizable kind of voter-generated content. I realize they’re both from YouTube, but I couldn’t resist.

voter-generated art? Not sure who exactly generated it, but I found this on zazzle.com. This is an example of how a voter-coined phrases meet art. 

Podcasts …
Political Lunch is a daily podcast featuring political hot topics.
Not quite sure if it qualifies as voter-generated, but I figured I’d throw it in on recommendation of a blogger who posted a review of it on his site.
June 23, 2008 … Today on Political Lunch, Rob and Will look at Obama\’s ethanol policy, McCain\’s push for a better battery, Hillary\’s plan to campaign with Barack, and the audacity of… hype? 

It’s so refreshing to read about people who are obsessively passionate about what they do. Joe Trippi’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised– a title he borrowed from 70s poet-activist Gil Scott-Heron’s poem – was a definte shot-in-the-arm promo for democracy.

Although Dean didn’t win the election, it was a win for the democratic process. What Trippi did for the Dean campaign proved that letting go and interactively running a decentralized campaign through the eyes and ears of the people, who best know what they need and who is most likely to give it to them, is simply revolutionary. 

Particularly powerful sections of the book include the very first meetup that Dean showed up in person for. It’s amazing how the meetups determined the campaign events. And Dean’s revelation after meeting people from all across the country that he’d only communicated with online and seeing that, yes, this is real. How Dean supporters rallied and used the attacks of enemy site hackers to raise more campaign funds – how creatively effective! Dean’s first blog entry. How the campaign inspired 89-year-old Lou Stark to start his own meet up. The Dean campaign was also a perfect example of how effective it is to reach out to young people on their terms and use their knowledge — after all the future of this country is in their hands.

Trippi, if you happen upon this post, you and Michael Silberman, who served as Dean’s campaign meet up director and was recently invited by Garrett Graff to speak to his digital campaigns class at Georgetown University, I’d like to know how you feel about the media coverage of the digital campaign support in the 2008 election? Is the media doing any better at capturing the power behind digital political campaigns?

“You will not be able to stay home, plug in, turn on and cop out … the revolution will not be televised … the revolution will put you in the driver’s seat … ” — Gil Scott-Heron, poet

Thanks to the Internet, many citizens are now plugging in, turning on, blogging, chatting, twittering and then some, to reclaim the democratic process that makes this country “the place to be.”

Welcome to the revolution — where for the first time in history a presidential candidate, not to mention an African American candidate, has raised so much money from Internet contributions that he could say “no” to public financing. That’s the power of the people!

Obama’s announcement last week that he would not be accepting public funds to feed his campaign into the general election was met with a firestorm of commentary from political pundits. Why all the fuss? Isn’t this the ultimate move toward campaign finance reform?

In his response to the Midwest Democracy Network’s presidential candidate questionnaire, released Nov. 27, 2007, Obama was asked: If you are nominated for President in 2008 and your major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign, will you participate in the presidential public financing system?

Obama answered yes and went on tout his support of presidential public finance reform . So, the potentate of “Yes, we can change” changed his mind — nearly a year later. What’s the big deal? I guess it’s a hard pill for McCain to swallow given the ground-breaking million dollar online Internet contributions he raised in the 2000 campaign – more than any other candidate had ever raised online that year. McCain could use the public funds, but Obama doesn’t need them. However, Obama is expected to ”on principle” forgo all the private funds that he has collected — the majority of which are from the general “Internet savvy” public who contributed online — to accept the campaign limitations that he will have to adhere to if he accepts the public funding? No. It makes sense to me that, in a democratic society, that if you’re for the people and financially beholdened to the people then you will listen to them and give the people what they want.

Power to the people! Really?
The real success of the movement toward digital campaigns is yet to be seen. The success will be aptly measured by the willingness of the new administration and congress to write policy that supports more jobs, lower gas prices, affordable housing and a substantive investment in the kind of innovative technology that will make all these things possible.

From whiste stops to the broadband express

Presidential candidates’ use of digital media in the 2004 campaign was merely the jumping-off point for an overview of the ongoing technological revolution detailed in Garrett Graff’s The First Campaign. Graff calls for the next presidential administration to invest in technology and education to strengthen its workforce and ensure a solid broadband infrastructure. Political leaders will have to act swiftly to boost the economy and the country’s competitive advantage in the global realm.

The 21st century broadband movement is a throw-back to the 18th and 19th centuries, when the industrial revolution, which began in Great Britain, led to the industrialization of the rest of the world. The demand for a more skilled workforce and federal investment in education is just as critical today as it was then.

And then there’s globalization — not to be confused with outsourcing, which isn’t a bad thing, right? If they can produce it China, why not build a plant here in American and manufacture the product here too. Of course, it’s much more complicated than that. Although there’s evidence to support the theory that outsourcing jobs has mega-potential for boosting the economic bottom line, as minimum-wage jobs continue to leave the country, Americans who are facing foreclosure and high gas prices flock to state unemployment lines screaming “What’s in it for me?”

What else stood out for me?

• Former Virginia Governor Mark Warner’s 2005 broadband proposal for boosting economically depressed Southwest and SouthsideVirginia communities by the laying of broadband cable.
• Columbus, Neb., global businessman Tony Raimondo’s investment in exporting and joint venture in Beijing, manufacturing steel, which led to his near appointment by the Bush Administration as their manufacturing czar, blocked by Democrats. I googled Raimondo and found out that he ran for the Nebraska Senate seat in 2008 in the primaries. His campaign site is “no longer available,” so I guess that means he won’t be on the ballot come November.
• Globalization, get with the program.
  “In their own way, the attacks of 9/11 were a warning of the effects of globalization, but one in which the United States didn’t necessarily learn all the lessons it should have,” said Graff. “In other words, a century ago, all of the firepower of the most powerful military force yet assembled in history would have struggled over several hours to do the amount of damage to America’s largest city today inflicted by a score of minimally trained individuals funded by a shadowy man in a cave half a world away in a country most American’s couldn’t locate on a map.”