Social and Political Innovation through Social Media

Last week I attended a great panel on Social and Political Innovation through Social Media as part of Social Media Week NYC. It was hosted by Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) at the New York Times building and organized by Toby Daniels (@tobyd). The panelists included Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook and director of online organizing for President Obama's campaign; Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum, an annual conference and website covering the intersection of politics and technology; and Jamie Daves, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur with more than ten years of experience in the public sector who has helped found a number of successful nonprofit and political organizations. Here are the highlights from my notes:

Jamie Daves emphasized the disruptive effect new media technologies have always had when they shift the social balance of power to new agents. He also mused whether the two components of democratic capitalism can continue to function in their current forms worldwide given the current trends and uncertainty. Daves said that the rise of social media is creating the largest accrual of social capital we've ever seen. This trend forces corporations to no longer be faceless, and it forces the people who work in business to engage as individuals, leading to an increase in personal responsibility and accountability.

Rasiej said Obama scored points by being the first national candidate to use the pronoun "we." He also noted that an organized minority will always triumph over a disorganized majority, and that social media technologies have lowered the cost of organization.

Chris Hughes noted that the strategy behind my.BarackObama.com was to provide an organizing toolset for supporters to do their own outreach, fund raising, and event hosting.

Rasiej noted that Whitehouse.gov is lackluster so far concerning social media. "Technically every citizen should have their own login," he said. But government doesn't have a Chief Technology Officer to guide things yet, and discussion moderation tools are still imperfect.

Hughes said these things require time, technology, and money. The Bush White House had only one person manning the Web. And the goals are more complex once you're in office, whereas a presidential campaign has one focus: winning.

Daves noted that it was naive of government to be scared of contact when it could actually benefit from the crowd-sourcing of answers. The trick is to connect common strands and the people who weave them. To illustrate his point, Daves cited one of the recent crane crashes here in NYC. There had been numerous citizen complaints about the shakiness of the construction site, but the local government didn't put their comments together into a bigger picture, and the people had no means of finding each other online to amplify their message.

Rasiej said 95 percent of human behavior is about maintaining position, so it's no wonder governments are slow to adapt to new technologies. For example, he came to be known as "wifi guy" when he ran in 2005 for Public Advocate in New York City because he wanted to modernize the city's telecom infrastructure. Nowadays a pejorative and reductive moniker like that might not stick, or might be a positive, because the upside is that social norms change relative to power and technology.

Daves emphasized that the universal service model for broadband connectivity is essential. He cited Pew statistics showing that 75 percent of people 18–24 are active in social networking.

Rasiej replied that older demographics are fast catching up and show some of the strongest growth rates. Globally he said many people will receive a mobile phone before they get access to clean water. Old institutions may fade in the face of these new technologies. One example where mobile phones could prove particularly useful is election monitoring. They may also unleash a new type of grassroots populism. For example, reform of marijuana laws consistently rises to the top of online forums where users are allowed to vote on commonsense priorities for their government.

Daves commented on the roles and responsibilities of old versus new media. We shouldn't look to the New York Times for social solutions, he said. They do a great job articulating the problems, but the mobilization will come from elsewhere.

A question was raised about the economic meltdown and whether this signified a broader meltdown of trust in our society. Hughes responded that transparency is actually natural to Internet technology. Rasiej agreed, stating that in a world of social media it's easier to build than destroy, and there's more vetting than ever before. Everything is recorded, meaning that to fear Big Brother is to fear ourselves.

Another question was raised about the momentum built by the Obama campaign and where it will go now. Hughes, speaking now as a private observer, said they had compiled 13 million emails and that 2 million accounts had been created on my.BarackObama.com, so the infrastructure of a movement does exist and could be channeled into activism, service, and other goals.

A question was raised as to whether social media will chip into the two-party system. Rasiej believes we have drifted into a somewhat post-partisan era where people may be more likely to self-identify as empowered citizens rather than Democrats.

Rasiej also discussed the potential of social media to save politicians from being "sound bited" to death in traditional press conferences. Interactivity can spur a virtuous circle between representatives and their constituents, as was somewhat the case when a cadre of my.BarackObama.com supporters staged the FISA Rebellion, forming a popular group within Obama's own site and threatening to suspend their fund-raising if they didn't get some straight answers from him on warrantless wiretapping. Obama responded directly to prove that he was willing to listen.

Rasiej seemed adamant, however, that social media will not morph government into rule by popular referendum, à la thumbs down in the Coliseum. But I wonder if he isn't being a little preemptive in his reasoning here. If the evolution of technology makes it possible to give more power back to the people, A LOT MORE POWER, why shouldn't it? One can conceive of a People's Digital Parliament rising in parallel to the traditional structures of government and wielding significant influence over legislators. Perhaps it would eventually be annexed to the government as a new branch with specific and limited authority. There may come a day when the dusty documents of a predominantly agrarian society, ingenious though they were, will have to be discarded and rewritten to fit the new ethics, politics, and technologies.

Meanwhile, said Daves, Members of Congress pay attention to four "M" words: Message, Membership, Media, and Money. And Rasiej concluded that there will be no expansion of participatory democracy in America without rebuilding education. Education funding and our view of it has been choked for decades, he said, citing the one hour per week that New York City school children spend on a computer.

Stimulus Bill and Internet Transparency

One of the most fascinating transformations we'll watch over the course of the Obama administration is how the U.S. government embraces digital and social media to improve transparency and responsiveness. The wisdom of crowds and loss of total message control are hallmarks of online interactivity, and new technologies such as OpenCongress indicate the enormous potential to improve accountability through greater citizen participation, but these trends often conflict with the traditional patterns of government.

Already we're seeing the limits of where government is willing to go. The Obama transition ran into trouble when it was perceived that the incoming press secretary snubbed the question that the greatest number of visitors to change.gov [now whitehouse.gov] wanted to see answered: "Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor (ideally Patrick Fitzgerald) to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?" And the thorny issue of marijuana criminality almost always rises to the top of online discussions, noted Personal Democracy Forum Andrew Rasiej last week at a panel on Social and Political Innovation through Social Media, indicating that the netroots may eventually push decriminalization or legalization up the ladder of priorities.

For context on how digital accountability is already starting to crop up in legislation, here are two excerpts from the stimulus bill detailing how disclosures will be made public:

With respect to funds made available under this Act in the form of grants for operational purposes to State or local government agencies or other organizations, the agency or organization shall publish on the website Recovery.gov a description of the intended use of the funds, including the number of jobs sustained or created.

Each contract awarded or grant issued using funds made available in this Act shall be posted on the Internet and linked to the website Recovery.gov. Proprietary data that is required to be kept confidential under applicable Federal or State law or regulation shall be redacted before posting.

Media on Gaza: Not enough, not enough, not enough

Not long ago, I went to an event here in London at the Frontline Club on the media's experience 'covering' the conflict in Gaza. The event, aptly titled 'Media Talk: Gaza - Missiles and Messages', brought in a number of media experts to discuss not so much the politics of the event, but the media's experience in attempting to get 'in' the thick of things. Representatives from the Guardian, Jerusalem Post, Channel 4, and Al-Jazeera were more or less allied with or pitted against an Israeli affairs specialist.

I won't go into detail about most of the conversation as it will soon be uploaded on the Frontline website, but one thing I did notice (and, subsequently asked a question relating to), was that despite the complaints from the media about restricted access to Gaza, there seemed to be little done in terms of outreach to the respective Israeli or Palestinian communities, to the potential (or already) citizen journalists. 

Not to risk careless comparison to the respective political situations or the oversimplification of the specific nature of the conflicts themselves, but when the monks began protesting and the Junta effectively shut off all electronic or tele-communication with the rest of the world, there was what almost felt like a mass movement from major newspapers and media outlets requesting that those inside Myanmar should do whatever possible to upload photos via cell phone (as an example) so that the outside world would have some idea of what's going on. Where was this in Gaza? If the media (at least from the side attempting to enter through Israel) keeps saying: not enough access, not enough support, not enough access, not enough support--then why was there virtually no outreach to the inhabitants of Gaza? I wonder if any of our readers can speak to this.