October 14, 2008
McCain Commercials Still Available on the Web
An interesting intellectual property donnybrook cropped up today after the McCain-Palin campaign released a letter (PDF) it sent to YouTube complaining that its campaign commercials have been pulled from the site after the Google-owned video giant received take-down notices under...
More...
August 29, 2008
Tech Advisor: McCain’s Kids Use the Internet
Republican Presidential hopeful John McCain has been mocked as an Internet illiterate because he does not use it, a characterization that is unfair according to Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior policy advisor and technology point person for the McCain campaign. Speaking...
More...
August 25, 2008
Tech, Telecom, Media Giants Big Sponsors in Denver
The biggest political party-fest of the year is underway in Denver at the Democratic National Convention. The conventional wisdom holds that the big political conventions are no longer sources of news -- we already know, for example, who will get...
More...
August 14, 2008
McCullagh Outs "Secret" Lobbying Group
(Back after another inadvertent blogging break...summertime and the living is easy - plus I've been playing as a day trader in the stock market. More on that later.) CNET's Declan McCullagh has this illuminating investigative article about a "secret" DC...
More...
August 3, 2008
Does the President Need to Be Tech Savvy? Um, Yes.
A debate has been bubbling in the political blogosphere about John McCain's admitted computer illiteracy and whether the next Commander in Chief needs to be net-savvy. This potential weakness is magnified given that Barack Obama is a plugged-in guy. The...
More...
July 25, 2008
Web Toolbars: The Future of Political Fundraising?
In an election year already dominated by Internet fundraising, a new idea has emerged: customized toolbars that generate revenue from searches and online sales. The GOP, not necessarily on the cutting-edge of all-things-Web, has cut a deal (see WSJ, TechPresident)...
More...
May 14, 2008
Must-Read: Obama's Silicon Valley Money Machine
Joshua Green has this excellent piece entitled "The Amazing Money Machine" in this month's Atlantic that deconstructs how Barack Obama's campaign has rewritten all the rules of campaign fundraising by brilliantly embracing social networking and shrewd Internet and mobile technology...
More...
April 24, 2008
Obama Campaign Video Views Tower Over the Rest
Beet TV draws my attention to a recent Nielsen/NetRatings report (PDF) that shows Barack Obama's web site grabbing the most unique video viewers of all three major candidates. During March, the Obama site snagged 518,000 viewers who watched 828,000 video...
More...
April 19, 2008
Can the GOP Ever Catch Up with Web-Savvy Dems?
Two articles I came across today highlight how amazingly effective the Democrats have been in deploying social networking, direct-to-voters video and online grassroots organization, while the Republicans have generally missed the Web 2.0 boat this presidential campaign season. The first...
More...
April 16, 2008
2008 Election Phenomenon: Amateur Campaign Music Videos
Ethan Zuckerman has this fun and interesting piece about a new Internet phenomenon this presidential election season: the rise of the amateur campaign video. We're all familiar with two pro-Obama pieces, wil.i.am's "Yes We Can" video and the famed 1984...
More...
March 7, 2008
Obama Wins Nomination...Among Googlers Anyway
I've been playing around with FEC campaign contribution databases and hunting for patterns among different media, Internet and technology companies. The databases are huge (the Obama campaign now lays claim to more than one million individiual contributors) and unwieldly and...
More...
March 5, 2008
Dragged-Out Nomination No Doubt Cheers Political Sites
Most of us are mildly annoyed about the dragged-out Democratic presidential nomination process. It's early March and we still don't have a clear nominee, thanks to Ohio and Texas. But, it occurred to me that the top political news sites...
More...
January 31, 2008
Twitter Is the New Political Town Square
Patrick Ruffini has this interesting item that tentatively proclaims that as far as politics is concerned, "2008 could be the year of Twitter in the way that 2007 was the Year of Facebook and 2006 was the Year of YouTube."...
More...
November 29, 2007
YouTube Debates Are Here to Stay
Despite the fears of some Republican candidates that the YouTube-powered debate held last night would lack, um, dignity, it turns out that this second CNN-YouTube debate offered even more insight into the candidates' positions than the first one. Although Billiam...
More...
November 27, 2007
Republican Debate Spurs Bizarre YouTube Questions
After a lot of drama, the Republican presidential candidates are finally going to hold their own YouTube-powered debate tomorrow night at 8 pm ET. As of this morning, 4,927 video questions for the candidates were posted on YouTube's site. Despite...
More...
November 14, 2007
Obama Would Create Nation's First CTO
Venture Beat's Matt Marshall got the first look at a new technology plan that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama plans to unveil at Google's headquarters tomorrow. The most intriguing part of the 9-page plan is that Obama would create the...
More...
October 3, 2007
Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf on the Rise of the Internet
I attended tonight a wide-ranging, sometimes esoteric but always fascinating talk at the National Archives, The Third Annual William G. McGowan Forum on Communications, Technology and Government. The two panelists were Vint Cerf, now Chief Internet Evangelist for Google and...
More...
July 27, 2007
No YouTube for Us. We're Republicans, Thank You.
As successful as the YouTube-CNN Democratic presidential candidate debate was, Republicans, it seems, are loathe to participate in the same kind of open forum. According to the Washington Post, only two of the GOP candidates, Sen. John McCain (AZ) and...
More...
July 23, 2007
Attention Must Be Paid: YouTube Debates Tonight!
The Internet has democratized everything and tonight it will democratize democracy in a dramatic way. The first of the six official Democratic debates will take place (although as the Washington Post points out, it hardly feels like the first), sponsored...
More...
June 26, 2007
Iraqi Insurgents are Web, Media Sophisticates
The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott tipped me off this morning to a remarkable report (PDF) prepared by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty about how Sunni insurgents in Iraq are using the Internet and media to get their messages out. It’s a...
More...
June 21, 2007
We Get It - Google's A DC Neophyte No More
The Washington Post has this piece today that talks about Google’s growing team of lobbyists in DC, eleven today, when just two years ago the company had none. Interesting enough, but this is well-trod territory (see here and here). What’s...
More...
June 19, 2007
First Viral Campaign-Produced Video?
Hillary Clinton’s team has come up with what is probably the first truly clever presidential campaign-produced video, a parody of the Sopranos finale which Patrick Ruffini thinks has a decent shot of becoming a viral video. At first blush, the...
More...
June 14, 2007
The YouTube Generation Tackles Debates
Nothing has charged the under-30 electorate more than the Internet and come July 23rd, the web and politics will reach some kind of milestone when YouTube and CNN jointly host a debate among the eight Democratic presidential candidates. The coolest...
More...
June 13, 2007
Presidential Hopeful Hopewood is a BigFix Fake
An article about presidential hopeful Ray Hopewood fronts the business section of the San Francisco Chronicle today. Like all presidential contenders these days, Hopewood, a Silicon Valley software mogul, has a web site, Flickr page, friends on MySpace and Facebook...
More...
May 25, 2007
Obama Campaign Leverages Facebook's Open API
I’ve run through some of the scores of press reports and blog posts that have erupted today following Facebook’s announcement of a new open application interface that allows developers to create all kinds of gizmos, gadgets and services within the...
More...
May 21, 2007
Republicans and the Internet Do Not Mix...Yet
The Washington Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas has this piece today about how the Democratic party is just much more effective than the Republican party in using the Internet. While Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have mastered the tools...
More...
May 20, 2007
Criteria for a TechPresident
The Personal Democracy Forum held its big annual conference last week (The LA Times’ Scott Martelle has a recap here, Information Week’s K.C. Jones has a good summary here and the PdF itself has a convenient Technorati search of blog...
More...
May 3, 2007
The Obama Campaign Makes MySpace Stumble
Micah Sifry had this great scoop yesterday about a hard-working paralegal named Joe Anthony, a big Barack Obama supporter who has seemingly been given the shaft by the Democratic presidential contender’s campaign staff. Anthony became a big Obama fan back...
More...
April 23, 2007
Presidential Debates to Take Place on Web
With blogs, social networking, live video conferences, YouTube-posted videos and even SecondLife campaigns swirling around the 2008 presidential candidates, it was inevitable that someone would host an online presidential debate. That someone is three entities — Yahoo!, Huffington Post and...
More...
April 18, 2007
Are Internet Users Cyber "Couch Potatoes"?
Two Reuters reports splash a lot of cold water on the idea that the web 2.0 era has revolutionized either Internet usage or politics. The first, by Eric Auchard, recaps a study by Hitwise that basically shows how little true...
More...
April 7, 2007
YouTube is Capturing Political Hearts and Minds
YouTube’s new parent company Google may be having a difficult time landing deals with major media companies, but YouTube is certainly becoming the prime channel for political videos on the web. Two days ago Google officially announced the launch of...
More...
March 30, 2007
John Edwards' Ubiquitous Social Networking
The Washington Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas has this piece today about Democratic candidate John Edwards’ saturation strategy when it comes to social networking. The campaign has a presence on Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and the article even mentions two cool...
More...
March 26, 2007
Republicans Fundraisers: Elevator Music Only
More fun reading today: The LA Times’ Tina Daunt has this piece about how Republicans can’t get cool musicians to appear at their fundraisers. While presidential contender Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) can draw the likes of James Blunt and...
More...
Second Life Plays Big Role in French Politics
Reuters has this delightful piece today about what apparently is a major role that Second Life is playing in French politics. The virtual world is a prime venue for supporters of presidential frontrunners UMP Conservative party candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, Socialist...
More...
March 25, 2007
Google Pitches Political Campaigns
Jim Puzzanghera of the LA Times has this piece today about how Google is pitching the political campaigns. The article focuses on Google’s major presence at George Washington University’s Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet’s annual conference, which was...
More...
March 17, 2007
Quality of Candidates' Videos is All Over the Map
The Washington Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas has this piece today about the role of web video in presidential campaigns. Vargas focuses specifically on the varying quality and effectiveness of the web videos that presidential wannabes are putting out there. Guiliani,...
More...
MySpace to Launch Political Channel Monday
The New York Times’ Alex Williams has this scoop in tomorrow’s edition (which, oddly enough, appears in the Style section) about MySpace’s launch of a political site called Impact channel. It’s a site dedicated to politics with a particular focus...
More...
March 15, 2007
TMZ Headed to DC
The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz has this scoop today on TMZ.com’s plans to launch a DC edition of its gossip-mongering site called TMZDC. For those not familiar with TMZ (stands for the “thirty-mile zone” around Hollywood), it’s a great celebrity...
More...
February 23, 2007
NYT, NY Sun Launching Political Web Sites
Courtesy of techPresident, the Editors Weblog reports that The New York Times and The New York Sun are both launching new political web sites, with initial coverage devoted to the 2008 presidential campaign. In a memo to news room staffers,...
More...
February 21, 2007
Estonia to Hold First Major Internet Election
Reuters’ David Martiste offers a look into Estonia, a surprising hot-bed of technological innovation. The former Soviet satellite has an upcoming national parliamentary election, which will be the world’s first major election to take place via the Internet. Estonian voters...
More...
February 12, 2007
New Online Site About Online Presidential Politics
The New York Times’ Robert Levine whet my appetite to find out more about a new online site, Techpresident.com, which promises to cover the online aspects of the coming presidential campaign. But, either a giant screw-up occurred over at techpresident.com...
More...
February 11, 2007
Obama's Got a Social Network
ZDNet’s Steve O’Hear flags for us this online social network set up by Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Called My.BarackObama.Com, it is seemingly the first dedicated social network mounted by any of the presidential candidates. While virtually all of the...
More...
February 3, 2007
Political Activism Transformed by the Internet
Political activism has been given a shot in the arm by the Internet, a truism that is fleshed out in this piece by Jennifer Earl, Director of the Center for Information Technology and Society at the University of California at...
More...
February 2, 2007
Virginia Partisan Fighting Lands on YouTube
The Washington Post’s Michael Shear has this great piece today about the absurd level of partisan bickering in the Virginia legislature. A Republican v. Democrat rift over a transportation bill is just one example of the sniping across the aisle,...
More...
January 29, 2007
Political Defamation via YouTube
It’s nearly impossible, and extremely unwise, for politicians as “public figures” to pursue defamation of character lawsuits. Yet, the growing importance of video clips in the political realm raises another new, and potentially more damaging, source of false and derogatory...
More...
January 22, 2007
John Edwards' Web-Savvy Campaign
Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton captured attention for the web videos they released when announcing their exploratory presidential campaign efforts, but another Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, beat both of them to the punch in leveraging the Internet’s power...
More...
January 21, 2007
Battle of the Presidential Race Web Videos
The presidential race is now officially joined and the web is shaping up as a new kind of battleground for the candidates, a video battleground. Following Barack Obama’s shrewd move last week to announce his candidacy on the web, Hillary...
More...
January 17, 2007
Obama Embraces Web Video in Presidential Bid
Beet.TV’s Andy Plesser has this item today about rising Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and his campaign’s embrace of Internet video. The Obama campaign kicked off his exploratory committee yesterday with a three-minute video powered by Cambridge, MA-based Brightcove. Plesser...
More...
January 12, 2007
Note to Democrats: Update Your Web Sites
More than a week has gone by since the historic Democratic takeover of the Congress, but you might not know that based on the various congressional and Democratic web sites. Earlier this week, when I was checking out the new...
More...
January 5, 2007
Virtual House of Representatives Now on Second Life
Virtual politics ascended to a new level yesterday when Rep. George Miller (D-CA) gave a speech in the just-opened virtual House of Representatives chamber on Second Life. But Miller had to wait - Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) came first when...
More...
December 1, 2006
Eric Schmidt to Republicans: Use the Internet
Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke to a gathering of Republican governors on Wednesday and offered them excellent advice on how Republicans can turn things around by the 2008 presidential race: take advantage of the Internet’s electioneering power. “The ones that...
More...
November 27, 2006
Germany Leads the Way in Political Videocasting
Wired News’ Andrew Curry has this interesting piece that highlights how advanced Germany is when it comes to using videocasting or Internet video to promote its political parties’ agendas or to gain exposure for its politicians. German Chancellor Angela Merkel...
More...
November 10, 2006
Did Netroots Succeed or Lose?
One of the more interesting parts of this landmark mid-term election season is the role of “netroots” bloggers, the progressive and aggressive bloggers who tried to push the Democratic party farther to the left and bucked the party’s establishment positions....
More...
November 8, 2006
The 2006 Election Night Winner: The Internet
I spent a good chunk of last night standing in the rain campaigning for local candidates, disconnected from the Internet and television, so I have to take it on faith that the Internet and bloggers played their predicted high-profile roles...
More...
November 6, 2006
Google-Bombing the Elections -- Update
Chris Bower’s campaign at MyDD to “Google bomb” the mid-term elections has paid off. To recap, Chris kicked off an initiative to get bloggers to link to negative articles regarding a number of Republican candidates. The goal was to boost...
More...
November 3, 2006
The Era of the Embarassing YouTube Political Video
The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi has this article today which basically reiterates the by-now well-known political phenomenon of posting embarassing candidate videos on YouTube and other Internet video sharing sites. But Farhi does put some new perspective on this trend,...
More...
October 29, 2006
The Comedy Centralization of Political Ads
The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley has this Week in Review piece about a new phenomenon in political advertising: humorous ads. She notes that many of the new crop of campaign ads are funny (or try to be funny), a...
More...
October 27, 2006
Google-Bombing the Elections
I’m a little late to this, but Chris Bowers at MyDD has mounted a campaign (which is either genius or crazy) to get liberal bloggers to link to negative press articles regarding Republican candidates, all in an effort to boost...
More...
October 24, 2006
Google Earth Tracks and Maps Elections
Google has added a very cool layer to Google Earth — the 2006 Elections layer. Users can add this layer to their views of the U.S., zoom in on an icon (see thumbnail), click on a bubble (see second...
More...
October 4, 2006
Google's Schmidt Warns Politicians About the Internet
Google CEO Eric Schmidt made some kind of statements to the Financial Times about the future power of the Internet to be a BS detector when it comes to politicians’ statements. (The FT article is here but it’s behind a...
More...
October 1, 2006
Candid Campaign Videos Cast More Light than Shadow
The Mercury News’ Edwin Garcia has this piece today on the growing role of web-based video in nailing political candidates’ with their less-than-cautious statements. Of course the California gubanatorial race leads the way in making hay out of videos. The...
More...
September 27, 2006
MySpace Launches Voter Registration Drive
Social networking giant MySpace is putting its vast, youth-oriented reach to good use: the News Corp.-owned service has launched a voter registration drive. Working with non-partisan group Declare Yourself, MySpace is running ads on its site to get its users...
More...
September 17, 2006
Google Gets Wise to Washington's Ways
As it turns out, Google may in fact be evil enough for Washington. The San Francisco Chronicle has this piece about Google forming a political action committee while simultaneously reaching out to Republicans. Google has filed the paperwork to register...
More...
September 11, 2006
New Campaign Tool: Targeted Video Emails
The mid-term elections of 2006 will go down in the history books as a watershed in new technology campaigning. MySpace, YouTube, text messaging, Second Life and, of course, blogs play, if not lead, then important supporting roles in the campaigns...
More...
September 5, 2006
C-SPAN and CQ Launch Campaign Web Site
The idea seems like such a natural that I’m amazed it has taken this long to become reality: C-SPAN, in conjunction with Congressional Quarterly, is launching a web site devoted to the current elections. Called CampaignNetwork.org, the site is a...
More...
August 31, 2006
Mark Warner to Appear Today on Second Life
This election season has seen a lot of Internet firsts — candidates podcasting, flocking to YouTube, posting MySpace profiles and distributing campaign literature under Creative Commons licenses. Now, unofficial Democratic presidential candidate Mark Warner will appear today on hot virtual...
More...
August 18, 2006
Campaigns Flock to Social Networking
AP’s Anick Jesdanun has this piece on how political campaigns are waking up to the power of social networking. It uses as its jumping off point the campaign of Phil Angelides, California’s Democratic candidate for governor, whose daughter created a...
More...
August 9, 2006
Is Lieberman a Blog-Related Casualty?
Joe Lieberman’s stunning loss to a political neophyte for his own party’s Senate nomination is widely being blamed on the blogosphere. Pro-Iraq war incumbent senator Lieberman lost out in Connecticut’s Democratic primary to multimillionaire but still darling-of-the-liberal-blogosphere Ned Lamont. You’d...
More...
August 8, 2006
Mark Warner Goes Creative Commons
The all-but-official Democratic presidential candidate Mark Warner has a tech-savvy staff. The former governor of Virginia has made his PAC site a creative commons zone, displaying not only a friendly attitude toward the tech community but also making it easier...
More...
July 23, 2006
The Web and Campaign 2008
Somehow I missed this, but the LA Times’ Mark Z. Barabak did a piece a few days ago on the rise of the Internet in politics. The article starts out with Donnie Fowler, a veteran Democratic strategist who has started...
More...
July 7, 2006
Wikipedia Founder: Ramp Up Intelligence in Politics
Courtesy of Grant Gross at Network World, Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales has started a wiki on political campaigns called the Campaigns Wikia. The mission for Wikia in brief is It’s time for politics to become more intelligent, and for...
More...
June 25, 2006
Equalizing First Amendment Megaphones
A post by Cynthia sent me over to The Nation’s web site to check out some of the articles in the publication’s July 3 National Entertainment State issue. One of the first I saw, by filmmaker and political activist Robert...
More...
Fistfight in the Liberal Blogosphere
In a testament to the power of blogging in politics, a complex, mud-slinging, all-out fight has erupted among liberal writers, much to the glee of scribes on the right. It’s a complicated tale whose moral is this: the blogosphere is...
More...
June 14, 2006
Jefferson's 11th Amendment & Net Neutrality
Cynthia’s intriguing posts on “Internet powered politics” and the political philosophies of those for and against net neutrality rules, got me thinking. My basic point is that old labels may no longer apply and that we may be in the...
More...
Internet-Powered Politics Grow in Importance
The New York Times’ Adam Cohen has this op-ed piece today about the rise of the Internet in politics. He uses as his jumping-off point the high-profile display granted to a homemade video produced by a 15 year-old girl at...
More...
June 11, 2006
Dems Bow to Political Blogosphere
There’s no doubt about the power of blogs in politics, but there is a lot of skepticism about that power. The New York Times’ Adam Nagourney has this piece today about the powerful liberal blog DailyKos’ first annual convention, the...
More...
June 2, 2006
eBay Uses eMail to Push Net Neutrality
CNET’s Declan McCullagh has this piece about a pretty bold strategy undertaken by eBay to advocate in favor of net neutrality regulations. eBay CEO Meg Whitman sent out an email to eBay members urging them to send a message to...
More...
June 1, 2006
Capitol Hill Cottons to Blogs
USA Today’s Andrea Stone has this thumbsucker today about the rise of blogging among Members of Congress and Senators. It’s noteworthy for several reasons. First, as might be expected, politicians like blogs — they’re cheap (although not in terms of...
More...
May 22, 2006
Turning Point: Politicians Flock to the Internet
Both Mitch and I have been following the steep rise of the Internet’s role in politics this mid-term election season, as blogging and podcasting and social networking emerge as key tools in political campaigning. Two AP articles today underscore how...
More...
May 14, 2006
Neutral Networks Feed Democracy's Roots--And Its Future
Working at the computer before checking out the Sunday political talk shows waiting on my DVR (my daughter calls these shows “the windbags”), I received a comment to a post I wrote Friday entitled “Trust, Politics and Internet Policy.” The...
More...
May 12, 2006
Dollars, Democracy & Net Neutrality
Harold Feld over at Wet Machine picks up on themes I raised earlier today regarding the connection between the “neutral vs. two-tiered” Internet issue and the health of our democracy. Harold also digs more deeply into specific net neutrality proposals...
More...
Hack the Vote
Since we’re discussing the political process and political issues more than usual today, it seems like a good time to raise the issue of electronic voting. And it turns out there’s a recent post at Freedom to Tinker that may...
More...
More on Trust, Politics & Internet Policy
After thinking more about the Dallas Morning News article Cynthia cited in her last post, I thought I’d add a little more to my comment on that post. Here’s an excerpt from the article that discusses the campaign for mayor...
More...
Web Video Plays Role in Local Texas Campaign
The Internet has changed political campaigning in ways that are only now — in this mid-term election season — becoming clear. From the biggest to the smallest political races, web video, social networking and, of course, email, are reshaping the...
More...
Issues of Trust
It wasn’t a good day for the Bush Administration or for the nation’s three largest telcos. After reading and watching the torrent of news coverage of the NSA phone-call database triggered by a USA Today story by Leslie Cauley, I...
More...
May 9, 2006
We Really Do Want our Internet
Mike Bookey, a friend of mine who recently published a book called “America at the Internet Crossroads: Choosing the road to innovation, wealth, and a supercharged economy,” likes to say that, before we start debating the details of Internet policy,...
More...
April 27, 2006
Blogs and Politics in Canada
I want to give a plug to an upcoming conference in Canada — mesh. (Only second time I’ve done this.) Founded by a group of savvy journalists and at least one equally hip attorney, mesh is a Canadian forum focused...
More...
April 19, 2006
Social Production and The Wealth of Networks
As Cynthia notes, Yochai Benkler’s new book, “The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedoms” is an important work. Larry Lessig is especially effusive in his praise: This is—by far—the most important and powerful book written in...
More...
April 16, 2006
Will Political Candidates Campaign via Social Networking?
Courtesy of David Weinberger, I discovered that my neighbor and potential Senator Allan Lichtman has a profile on MySpace. He’s a Democrat running for the Senate in Maryland and is clearly hip to social networking. The comments on Lichtman’s MySpace...
More...
April 2, 2006
The Internet is Revolutionizing Politics
The New York Times’ Adam Nagourney has this excellent overview of how the Internet is changing election politics, particularly for Democrats. Email, web sites, blogs, podcasting and text messaging are brand new tools that the til-now stodgy political establishment are...
More...
March 27, 2006
Internet Ads, But Nothing Else, Governed by FEC Rules
The Federal Election Commission made an enlightened decision today — the government agency responsible for election rules decided that political advertising on web sites falls under federal campaign spending and contribution limits, but said that other web-based activities such as...
More...
Text Message Voter Registration Campaign
Courtesy of the Personal Democracy Forum, this intriguing campaign that uses text messaging to recruit new voter registrations. It’s an SMS campaign called TxtPower that will kick off at rock concerts in June — the musicians onstage will ask the...
More...
February 17, 2006
Craig Newmark on Journalism's Evolution
Steve Perry publishes excerpts from a recent phone interview with Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist. He also provides a link to a recent talk Newmark gave to members of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. Perry asks about a news project...
More...
February 3, 2006
Wikipedia Shut Down House Access
A fabulous little brouhaha cropped up this week involving Wikipedia and several members of Congress (but one in particular). It seems that congressional staffers have been going into Wikipedia entries and editing out bad information regarding their bosses and inputting...
More...
January 23, 2006
Bringing Privacy Issues into the Sunshine
The Wall Street Journal’s Dionne Searcey reports that Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, “is seeking information from 20 phone, cable and Internet company executives about whether they provided information to the federal...
More...
January 22, 2006
Technology Tests Sunshine Laws
The Miami Herald has this article today on how “sunshine” laws, laws that are designed to make the public policy making process more open to view, are being tested by technology, instant messaging and cell phone calls in particular. In...
More...
January 11, 2006
Pay-Per-View Democracy in New York State?
Mark Johnson at the Associated Press has this interesting piece on the fact that it costs a substantial sum to watch the web-based video transmissions of PSC meetings in New York state. The company that webcasts the meetings, NewYorkAdmin.com, an...
More...
January 1, 2006
Goverment Officials Embrace Podcasting
President Bush has a podcast, and so do many other national leaders. But the new form of direct communications with the voting public is catching on at the local level too. The Miami Herald today has this piece on how...
More...
November 8, 2005
French Politician Rallies Support with Google Ads
Courtesy of SmartMobs, a French politician is seeking support by buying Google Adsense ads. The UMP, the political party of French interior Minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, has purchased the ads to garner support for a petition to support his tough stance...
More...
November 6, 2005
Blogs Covered by Campaign Finance Laws
After the Online Freedom of Speech Act was defeated in the House by a 225 to 182 vote, the Federal Elections Commission has included blogs in the rules that cover campaign finance laws. The Online Freedom of Speech Act was...
More...
October 28, 2005
Speaker of the House Starts a Blog
Well, there’s not much there yet, but Denny Hastert (R-IL) has started a blog, if you could call it that. Communications flow in only one direction — the site has no room for comments or feedback. The internet is changing...
More...
October 17, 2005
Mastering New Media May Help Win Political Campaigns
At the Huffington Post, James Boyce’s latest post is entitled “Why The Video IPOD Has DC Consultants Shaking In Their Gucci’s.” His basic argument is that the campaign media consulting business based on collecting fees for high-priced broadcast media buys...
More...
October 13, 2005
Memeorandum: Great for Tech, A Question about Politics
Michael Arrington believes “Memeorandum is Changing the Web”. For those not familiar with it, the Memeorandum site has two sections, one covering politics, the other technology. Memeorandum finds blog posts, newspaper articles and press releases that are being heavily linked...
More...
October 6, 2005
Al Gore on Media, the Internet and Democracy
At the Media Center’s We Media conference, held Wednesday and sponsored by the AP, Al Gore gave a speech in which he argued that “American democracy is in grave danger and “that something has gone basically and badly wrong in...
More...
September 21, 2005
Creating an Internet TV Ecosystem
Several players in the emerging Internet TV sector took significant steps forward in the past week. Given the embryonic stage of this potentially huge and important market space, its worth keeping track of all these pioneers, each of which is...
More...
September 10, 2005
Japanese Politics Bar Use of the Internet
A strange little charateristic of Japanese politics: candidates running for office are not permitted to use the Internet for their campaigns. No email, web sites, home pages, no nothing - an odd quirk for a country that is electronically...
More...
August 25, 2005
Hillary Clinton Blogs!
U.S. Senator and would-be presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has a blog on cancer as part of the American Cancer Society’s Blog for Hope campaign. She’s got some interesting company. Joining her in the campaign are Tom Green, Fran Drescher and...
More...
August 23, 2005
Political Parties on the Web
Brian Reich, National Journal columnist and self-proclaimed “life long Democrat,” takes his party’s national committee to task in a comparison of the web sites of the DNC and RNC, published on the Personal Democracy Forum web site. Within two weeks...
More...
August 20, 2005
Steve Jobs for California Governor?
If Arnold Schwarzenegger can govern California, why not Apple titan Steve Jobs? According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Jobs, a big contributor to the Democratic party, is mentioned by insiders as a good candidate to take on the thankless job...
More...
August 13, 2005
Tracking the Blogosphere's Growth
In July 2005, Technorati was tracking over 14.2 million weblogs and over 1.3 billion links, with a new blog created about every second (80k/day) and the blogosphere continuing to double about every 5.5 months. Roughly 55% of blogs were active,...
More...
August 3, 2005
Friedman on the Role of Internet Technology in Politics
New York Times journalist extraordinaire and noted author Thomas Friedman has an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times on how communications infrastructure, particularly Internet-based service, is shaping politics and political campaigns. He focuses on Andrew Rasiej who is running...
More...
June 26, 2005
Public Broadcasting: Another Victim of Partisan Politics?
According to a 6/23 headline in the Los Angeles Times, “Public Broadcasters Face ‘the Fight of Our Lives’”. The Times piece reviewed the heated battle over funding for public broadcasting and the even more contentious debate over claims of political...
More...
June 21, 2005
Sam Whitmore on the "Citizens Media" Business
Forbes columnist Sam Whitmore discusses the prospects and challenges facing “Citizens Media Entrepreneurs.” (Note: Whitmore is also editor of Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey, a Web-based tech-media analysis service). Just as blogs and podcasts have empowered individuals to express themselves, citizens...
More...
June 7, 2005
Internet + Tupperware: A Winning Formula in 2004 Campaign
From today’s Online Media Daily: Michael Cornfield knows why George W. Bush won last year’s presidential election. Bush’s camp, said Cornfeld, used the Internet to find volunteers and then gave them information to spread—via any medium at hand—to friends and...
More...
May 26, 2005
Personal Democracy in Action
A post by Kate Kaye at Personal Democracy Forum asks the question “could online fundraising-fueled campaigns like the ones prompting people to call and email their representatives in support or against John Bolton’s nomination be doing more harm than good?”...
More...
