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November 26, 2008

Reawakening The Conservative Blogosphere

A Conservative ‘rightroots’ movement is at play on the Net according to Patrick Ruffini, a Republican political strategist and co-founder of TheNextRight.com.

 

In an op-ed titled, ‘Roots of Defeat’, Ruffini states, “Let us study, and emulate, the Left’s online tactics.”

In an effort to rebuild the conservative blogosphere and persuade the 47% of Americans that did not vote for Barack Obama to “look at what the bloggers in the left have been doing and learn to be activists, too”, Ruffini created RebuildTheParty.com, a web site that went live less than 48 hours after the GOP lost the White House.  Ruffini states in his op-ed, “Republicans are on the outs at all levels of government, they will need the Internet as a tool of opposition…Failure to grab hold of it could signal a long, long winter to come."

However, Obama’s vast grassroots network will not be sitting idly for the next four years while Conservatives play catch up.  As a recent article in the Washington Post’s put it, there are “basically two kinds of influential political Web sites: sites that use a top-down hierarchy, whereby a central organization develops a message and disseminates it using social-networking technology, and sites that use a Wikipedia-type method, in which thousands of individual users contribute content and drive the message.”

Obama has harnessed the “Wikipedia-type” method and is continuing to utilize the Internet in his transition to the White House.  David Plouffe, Obama’s Internet Campaign Manager, sent out an email announcing that Obama had picked his economic team and has continued to seek citizen engagement via technology and online tools:

“On December 13th and 14th, supporters are coming together to reflect on what we've accomplished and help plan the future of this movement.

Many of you have already submitted your feedback through our online survey. Our team in Chicago is reviewing an impressive number of detailed responses, and your input will help guide the future of this grassroots movement.

Sign up to host a Change is Coming house meeting and invite your friends, family, and neighbors to attend.

You'll receive everything you need to make your meeting a success, including a special DVD our team put together just for these events.

Discuss the issues that are most important to you, what you can do to support Barack's agenda, and how you can continue to make an impact in your community.”

Posted by Buzz Webster at 04:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 21, 2008

Obama's Online Operations Tally The Numbers

The final numbers are coming in from Obama's online campaigning and they are truly staggering. The Washington Post reports that in his 21 months of campaigning, Obama raised half a billion online. Equally impressive is Obama's online popularity within social networking sites.

Here is a breakdown of Obama's online operations stats:

• 3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million.
• Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less.
  Obama's e-mail list contains upwards of 13 million addresses.
• In total, more than 1 billion e-mails landed in inboxes....To put this in perspective, John Kerry's '04 campaign collected 3 million email addresses and Howard Dean had roughly 600,000 email addresses on his list.
• A million people signed up for Obama's text- messaging program.
• 2 million profiles were created on Obama's social network, MyBarackObama.com in addition to the 5 million supporters in other social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

Where Obama's online campaign will go from here is still unfolding...it should be interesting to watch how the campaign wields its online power.

Posted by Buzz Webster at 05:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 18, 2008

President-elect Obama has sent out a call for volunteers to help the victims of wildfires ravaging Southern California via change.gov.

The message posted on change.gov reads, “throughout the campaign, we saw time and time again that when ordinary people act together, they can make a huge difference…If you live in or near Southern California you can volunteer now, and no matter where you live you can help by donating to the relief efforts".

President-elect Obama used technology to empower citizens and to strengthen the sense of responsibility within communities across America during his campaign, but there have been questions as to how Obama’s bottom-up grassroots strategy will fare in a top-down government.

This use of modern communications coupled with tech-savvy leadership shows that a bureaucratic government can use the Internet for community outreach and aide in natural disaster relief efforts in a quick and efficient manner.

To learn more about how you can help those affected by the fires, please visit CaliforniaVolunteers.org.

Posted by Buzz Webster at 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 12, 2008

Reshaping the Government Via The Internet

PoliticsOnline has partnered with the Open Debate Coalitioners, techPresident, and CommunityCOUNTS in a cross-partisan initiative called BigDialog.org that brings together academics, bloggers, and e-communities who are creating a precedent for open dialogue by getting President-Elect Barack Obama to answer the people's questions.

BigDialog aims to take video and text questions online and for the President-elect.  The best questions will be voted to the top, with the idea being to promote concerns and questions that are most important to American citizens. 

The whole idea about BigDialog is not replacing professional journalists or traditional media, but rather, the idea is to include a "complementary channel, a new seat at the table. It is about using technology to produce true dialog among a group of thousands. It is about setting a precedent for how the next President interacts with the American people. "

The three best questioners will "be flown to MIT in mid-December, receive a tour of the MIT Media Lab, and engage in a networked event with the Obama transition team, subject to the terms and conditions found on the eCitizen Foundation's website."

Posted by Buzz Webster at 04:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 10, 2008

The Digital Presidency...Obama and the Rise of the Online Right

Barack Obama's presidential campaign success has been attributed to the use of the Internet in political organizing, fundraising, and community- building, being called the most well-run campaign in history. So, what now?

Barack Obama rode the wave of the Internet to the White House and is even using the Net to help with the transition process, so we can safely assume that an Obama administration will be tech-savvy.



Phil Noble, founder of PoliticsOnline, predicts that "as President, Obama will use his grassroots army to support his agenda and his presidency will unleash a veritable explosion of new online tools, strategies and technologies that will change the fundamental way our government and the civic sector works."



Republicans, however, are not sitting on the sidelines, at least not anymore. Young GOP activists are well aware of the growing imbalance between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party in utilizing the Internet and are doing something about it. A new coalition of tech-savvy Republicans have created rebuildtheparty.com, a website dedicated to bringing the Republican Party into the digital age.



According to RebuildtheParty, "We don't need a slight tweak here or there. We need transformation. We can't keep fighting a 21st century war with 20th century weapons...winning the technology war with the Democrats must be the RNC's number one priority in the next four years."



There are great ideas and Republicans are smart to take a page out of Obama's online campaign book, but is it too late? Since the days of Dean in '04, Democrats have been utilizing the Internet in campaigning and Barack Obama's is taking his online business model to the White House.

Posted by Buzz Webster at 03:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 05, 2008

Barack Obama - The 21st Century President

With the help of an army of grassroots followers, Barack Obama has won the 2008 presidential election, becoming the 44th President of the United States of America.

We have been reporting for quite a while on Obama's use of technology in his quest for the White House.  Easily one of the most well-run campaigns in US history, Obama's online strategy must now transcend into a driving force for American policy, continuing to use innovative online tools and strategies that drove American citizens to participate and believe once more in politics and government in the first place.

Below is an excerpt from "Obama's Real Change: $1 Billion, 5 Million People and Global 'Net Politics", written by Phil Noble, founder of PoliticsOnline.

The Obama campaign has brilliantly understood that it is a movement they are creating and thus they have provided the online tools that the movement's supporters can use to achieve the specific tactical political goals of the campaign. But, it goes far beyond just campaigning.

"From the beginning," said Steve Hildebrand, Obama's national deputy campaign director, "Barack was hoping to launch a candidacy that would bring millions of new people into the political process, that would inspire them to stay active in politics so that, should he actually succeed in winning the presidency, he would have additional ability to govern with the backing of millions of activists from all 50 states who could help him pass the progressive agenda through Congress."

Posted by Buzz Webster at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

November 03, 2008

Voter 2.0 - Hot Web Sites and Online Tools for Election Day

An onslaught of information and tools for the tech-savvy voter has hit the Net and 2.0 voters can reap the rewards of the most tech-savvy election in history.  We outline the latest and greatest online interactive tools and hottest web sites to help navigate through the historic election day.

Technology has played an integral role in the 2008 election changing the political landscape of the race, permanently cementing its place in politics.  PC World has outlined the top 20 election day websites and online tools for voting information, results monitoring, interactive analysis, and election humor.

For voting information, head to Google's Voting Info website, which helps pinpoint local polling places by using interactive maps and entering your zip code.  Its also available in a mobile version. 

Last week, POL has dubbed Twitter to be the Election Day Allstar.  Twitter Election is an informative site to check while waiting in line and TwitterVoteReport.com, the brainchild of Rock the Vote, techPresident and many others, is informative too, enabling American voters to "share their experiences and resources with one another to solve problems quickly (e.g. "don't come now, the line is too long") on election day. These messages will then be aggregated and mapped so that we can "see" voting problems around the country in real-time."

Documenting this year's election day is an opportunity to spotlight what happens on election day through the lenses of voters from Alaska to Florida.  VideoYourVote, calls for voters to video their experiences and post them online.  An interactive map flags early voting experiences, notable voters, voting perspective, voter intimidation tactics, polling place problems, and registration problems.

What does it mean to be a 2.0 voter?  Contributing editor Bob Pyke has passed along his recent experience at a polling place in Ohio, noting, "I really did not want to stand in line to vote on Tuesday before I went off to work...so on a beautiful slightly cool fall day I stood in line to vote absentee. The line snaked around the building, over 300-400 people...Inside over 2,000 people waited to cast their votes for 2 -3 hours."  Lines will be long, so bring your mobile phone and a video camera and participate in the 2008 election as a 2.0 voter. 

 

Posted by Buzz Webster at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)