Does Online Politics Get Out the Vote?
After thinking about what I know of online campaigns in this year’s election (I’ll admit, my knowledge is somewhat limited), I wondered how far off the candidates are from truly using the social web as it is intended.
Take Wikipedia for example, a site where you can make changes right away if you have the correct information. You can help shape a product.
But can you shape a candidate? A civic-minded person could post all he wanted all day on political message boards, talk policy, go to a MeetUp, give money to a candidate online, but that person doesn’t really shift a platform. It’s not a wisdom of the crowds mentality here.
Micah L. Sifry’s article in The Nation, “The Rise of Open-Source Politics,” made a good point about what he calls, open-source politics. He wrote, “Applied to political organizing, open source would mean opening up participation in planning and implementation to the community, letting competing actors evaluate the value of your plans and actions, being able to shift resources away from bad plans and bad planners and toward better ones, and expecting more of participants in return. It would mean moving away from egocentric organizations and toward network-centric organizing.”
Are we really participating in politics if we just visit a web site, donate some cash, and still end up with a candidate that just doesn’t “get it?”
Sifry went on to quote Steven Johnson, the author of Emergence, “Using open-source coding as a model, it’s not a stretch to believe the same process could make politics more representative and fair. Imagine, for example, how a grassroots network could take over some of the duties normally performed by high-priced consultants who try to shape a campaign message that’s appealing. If the people receiving the message create it, chances are it’s much more likely to stir up passions.”
I believe Howard Dean was on to something when his staff started a “Ask the Dean Campaign” thread at SmirkingChimp. The staff was really going to listen to the masses and respond. I’m not entirely sure even the Dean campaign got it all right; their method didn’t get him the nomination in the end. And honestly, I don’t remember much of his campaign. I think I blocked most of it out after watching him at a rally in Iowa where Joan Jett opened for him singing, “I Love Howard Dean” to the tune of her song, “I Love Rock and Roll.” Then Dean came on stage and just yelled at us for 30 minutes.
The problem today is that we still aren’t creating the message. I feel like in today’s campaigns we just have to sit around and wait for the candidate who seems like the best fit, but might not stand for what you believe in. I don’t want a candidate who is the least of all evils, but rather one who has listened to my voice, knows what the people want and stands for that
Online campaigns have the potential to allow everyone to be involved in the political process . . . not just those who can afford to. I think the candidates have to really buy into the value of the Internet and not see it as only a moneymaker. I think open-source politics can bring democracy back to a government by the people, for the people.
Tags: online political campaigns, presidential campaigns
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April 15, 2008 at 9:13 pm
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