Colleagues: I've been engaged in an interesting debate via e-mail with a colleague in the U.K. regarding a claim in a recent article, i.e., that in addition to well-known examples of organization via the Internet, etc., it takes _bodies_ to bring about significant political change, as in the cases of Yugoslavia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and elsewhere. In this context, I observed that in the U.S., the view seems to be that politicians are far less impressed with e-mail campaigns, precisely because they're so easy to organize, than with actual paper / postage stamped letters. (The current U.S. administration's ability to ignore e-mail protests over the past year or so regarding Iraq is perhaps an extreme example?) My colleague responded with an example of successfully lobbying the government in the U.K. via e-mail regarding a procedure for classroom evaluation. My response in turn - I should not be surprised that, as the Swiss say, these things vary from canton to canton, much less from country to country. And now, the query: has anyone done a systematic, comparative study of how far electronic democracy initiatives have been successful among a range of countries - especially with a view towards uncovering underlying cultural and other factors that might explain the differences? (I know from her very interesting presentation at AoIR 1.0 that Liza Tsaliki has been involved in an E.U. project on electronic democracy that had to engage with cultural differences, hence this message is copied to her. Any insights and results you can share, Liza?) Thanks in advance for any advice and assistance - and in the meantime, cheers - Charles Ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/ Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23
--On Tuesday, July 01, 2003 6:21 AM -0500 Charles Ess <cmess@lib.drury.edu> wrote:
In this context, I observed that in the U.S., the view seems to be that politicians are far less impressed with e-mail campaigns, precisely because they're so easy to organize, than with actual paper / postage stamped letters. (The current U.S. administration's ability to ignore e-mail protests over the past year or so regarding Iraq is perhaps an extreme example?)
There has been a good deal of attention lately to how Howard Dean, one of the less-well-known contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, has successfully used the Internet both to become better known and to raise money. Just this morning, a front-page article in the Washington Post focused on Dean's fundraising success: <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54865-2003Jun30.html? nav=hptop_tb> Joan Joan Korenman, Director Center for Women and Information Technology University of Maryland, Baltimore County Baltimore, MD 21250 USA korenman@umbc.edu http://www.umbc.edu/cwit/
(Full Disclosure: I am an active volunteer in the Dean Campaign) To get a more complete perspective on what is going on in the Dean Campaign and its use of the Internet, take a look at http://blog.deanforamerica.com It is the official campaign blog. To me, it was interesting to watch the level of excitement and the small efforts at developing community that took place in the comments on the blog. The campaign is very focused on the use of the Internet, stressing its use of Meetup.com to promote self organization of close to 50,000 volunteers, the use of upoc.com for SMS messaging, the use of the campaign blog, which with their internet staff is portrayed as part of the backbone of the organization. A while ago, they moved from blogger to MovableType and this was listed as an important event, yet even with the move to a newer server, they ran out of capacity yesterday as people commented on the blog, talking about their contributions to the campaign. The campaign raised approximate $800,000 online yesterday, falling short of McCain's record of $1 million online in one day after the New Hampshire primary of 2000. Many of the political blogs are talking about what has gone on with this, and the old media is picking up the story. Personally, I would love to hear any comments or insights about the Dean's campaign on the Internet from people who have spent more time studying Democracy and Culture. Aldon --- Joan Korenman <korenman@umbc.edu> wrote:
There has been a good deal of attention lately to how Howard Dean, one of the less-well-known contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, has successfully used the Internet both to become better known and to raise money. Just this morning, a front-page article in the Washington Post focused on Dean's fundraising success:
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54865-2003Jun30.html?
nav=hptop_tb>
Joan
Joan Korenman, Director Center for Women and Information Technology University of Maryland, Baltimore County Baltimore, MD 21250 USA korenman@umbc.edu http://www.umbc.edu/cwit/
_______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l@aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com
The question in 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002 was "did the Internet make a difference in the campaign?" Now, what "make a difference is" depends. The bottom line for a candidate is, did she win? If she did, did the campaign's use of the Internet contribute to that win? When McCain made his $2million dollars online after he won the New Hampshire primary, there was serious speculation that McCain's was the first successful Internet campaign. He successfully used the Internet, particularly his website with its secure server connection, to raise a ton of cash in a short period of time. But, McCain didn't win. More importantly, the website served as a mailbox for people to send money after McCain's surprising, exciting win in New Hampshire. If he didn't have a website it would have been harder, I think, for people to have contributed. But, the people contributed because they saw that he might be able to beat Bush and went to the website as a logical place to learn about him and contribute. But, they didn't contribute because they had learned about McCain through the Internet, through their friends sending email messages or forwarding announcements. They weren't mobilized because McCain successfully used the Internet. Now, Howard Dean. I have watched in amazement at the level of use he and his campaign staff and volunteers have made of the Internet--not just a website, not just an email list, but using MeetUp, MoveOn, and a blog to bolster support, get the word out about his positions, rally the troops, organize events, and raise money. I am going to go a little crazy here and declare that Howard Dean's use of the Internet will make a difference to his chance at winning the election. Put another way, the Internet will make a difference this time. I'll also declare (now I'm really out on a limb . . . .) that the Internet could have made a difference in the 2000 election, but none of the presidential candidates were ready or willing to use the Internet to its full organizing potential. Dean and his volunteers and staff are fully utilizing the many channels and reaching multiple audiences on the Internet. It's exciting to watch. (And, it helps that Dean seems to offer a message to which people are really responding.) Best, ~Jenny Stromer-Galley
-----Original Message----- From: air-l-admin@aoir.org [mailto:air-l-admin@aoir.org] On Behalf Of Aldon Hynes Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 10:47 AM To: air-l@aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] democracy and culture
(Full Disclosure: I am an active volunteer in the Dean Campaign)
<snip>
Personally, I would love to hear any comments or insights about the Dean's campaign on the Internet from people who have spent more time studying Democracy and Culture.
Aldon
If you are a researcher directly focused on e-democracy, e-politics, or e-government, please drop me note <clift@publicus.net>. I have a few behind-the-scenes networks that attempt to connect the research community in this niche on a global basis. I also run a public e-mail announcement list on this topic with 2500 members from 75 countries open to all: http://www.e-democracy.org/do Comments below ...
-----Original Message----- Charles Ess Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 6:21 AM To: aoir list Cc: Liza Tsaliki Subject: [Air-l] democracy and culture
Colleagues:
I've been engaged in an interesting debate via e-mail with a colleague in the U.K. regarding a claim in a recent article, i.e., that in addition to well-known examples of organization via the Internet, etc., it takes _bodies_ to bring about significant political change, as in the cases of Yugoslavia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and elsewhere.
The use e-mail and SMS in the Philipines is well documented: http://www.mail-archive.com/do-wire@tc.umn.edu/msg00471.html A member of their Congress once told me that SMS was the best way to find your friends in a crowd of one million people. The Net also played a role in Yugoslavia as well: http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_4/pantic/ Bodies can be counted, the Net/ICTs can be used to organize them.
In this context, I observed that in the U.S., the view seems to be that politicians are far less impressed with e-mail campaigns, precisely because they're so easy to organize, than with actual paper / postage stamped letters. (The current U.S. administration's ability to ignore e-mail protests over the past year or so regarding Iraq is perhaps an extreme example?) My colleague responded with an example of successfully lobbying the government in the U.K. via e-mail regarding a procedure for classroom evaluation.
It depends upon the level of government. Let's be completely honest - no form of communication on its own has any measurable impact on a member of Congress. If you can't prove that issue advocacy television made a difference (perhaps you could on Clinton's healthcare plan), why expect that you'll find results related to e-mail. This Pew report does show results at the local level with e-mail: http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=74 The real scam is there just isn't the political will in most Congressional offices to ensure that general e-mail from their constituents gets through all the clutter and spam they receive. It is easier to throw up your hands. This is bringing about a great inequity - if you know a staff members e-mail and have a relationship with them (lobbyists, etc.) then e-mail is your best friend, if you are an average citizen, forget it. At a minimum basic CRM approaches for all elected officials at all levels need to be researched and documented so future "will" can be matched with best practice. If you want the word from the government perspective, tune into the audio comments of Christine Nelson, former Citizen Outreach director for Governor Ventura : http://www.e-democracy.org/neoamn/ (online advocacy panel - particularly during the q and a) - very, very insightful) Someone ought to do a survey of the U.S. Governor office staff responsible for receiving and responding to e-mail and other constituent communication. I'd be glad to suggest some questions.
My response in turn - I should not be surprised that, as the Swiss say, these things vary from canton to canton, much less from country to country.
And now, the query: has anyone done a systematic, comparative study of how far electronic democracy initiatives have been successful among a range of countries - especially with a view towards uncovering underlying cultural and other factors that might explain the differences?
"Initiatives" is a very strong term. Realities might be more accurate. I've visited a couple dozen countries and my finger in the wind sense is th at the existing political culture has a lot to do with which aspect of the Internet are pulled into political use. Folks around the world watch the U.S. closely, and we are totally clueless here about the fact that most of non-election/non-advocacy innovations are happening elsewhere. While the EU does fund a number of e-democracy initiatives <http://www.eve.cnrs.fr>, they are stuck in a fairly proprietary mode where commercial partners need to try an create a product that can be sold in the end. What generally happens is that they wait for the next round to EU grants to keep on going. (Anyone from Europe want to correct me on this? I praise the EU, because it is pretty much the only source of e-democracy development funding anywhere in the world.) So while I'd like to import cool tools into E-Democracy <http://www.e-democracy.org> I can't quite figure out how to make that works. I should note that the U.S. foundation community is now completely AWOL on this issue. The NSF has dipped their toes recently at Carnegie Mellon <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/do-wire/message/1194> with some citizen participation technology and in e-rulemaking ,http://www.drake.edu/artsci/faculty/sshulman/eRulemaking/>. As you'll note in the other replies, my fellow Americans are very Internet and elections focused. In other parts of the world, researchers are more Internet and governance focused. I'd love to get you all in the same room and watch some sparks fly. :-) The problem with elections, is that the result is still always the same - someone wins and someone loses. I think the Internet and governance/citizen participation is where the most excitement and need for research exists. More: http://www.mail-archive.com/do-wire@tc.umn.edu/msg00595.html
(I know from her very interesting presentation at AoIR 1.0 that Liza Tsaliki has been involved in an E.U. project on electronic democracy that had to engage with cultural differences, hence this message is copied to her. Any insights and results you can share, Liza?)
Finally, I think it is important to note that despite the current lack of media interest on the role of the Internet in politics (except when Dean raises some bucks, or MoveOn has an "e-election" - money and e-voting ... zzzz), the reality is that more people are using the Internet for political purposes than the day before. The challenge for researchers is to quit patting themselves on the back for refuting trumped up claims about what is "possible" with the Internet and politics and instead focus on what is "probable" and what online tools, strategies, and actions combined with which poltical approaches will help us achieve a democratic/political goal. The scary truth is that ICTs may accelerate our fall into democratic disrepair, so unless ICT-based counter measures are conceived, researched, and deployed, we will be debating just how bad the information age was for democracy. We'll point fingers and lament the fact that we didn't intervene when we had a chance to shape the medium, pass laws requiring its positive use, and most importantly, build the social expectation among citizens that "of course" you would use the Internet to effectively raise your voice and work to improve your neighborhood, city, state, and nation. Steven Clift http://www.publicus.net
Thanks in advance for any advice and assistance - and in the meantime, cheers -
Charles Ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/
Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23
_______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l@aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l
participants (5)
-
Aldon Hynes -
Charles Ess -
Jennifer Stromer-Galley -
Joan Korenman -
S Clift