whitehouse.gov and Drupal

TechPresident and the Associated Press today reported that www.whitehouse.gov is now using the open-source web content management system Drupal to manage their website - the same platform that we use to manage www.usip.org! Drupal is an awesome software because of its community of developers that are constantly adding and updated the system. The AP says that Drupal will make the site more secure, as well. Kudos to the White House!

We the Media: The Death of Professional Journalism?

I think my greatest fear was realized last semester in a class I took called "Journalism in the Digital Age." My undergraduate degree is obsolete.

I was a dual major in broadcast journalism and international relations at Syracuse University - graduating from one of the top communications schools in the country, The Newhouse School.

Sadly, everything I learned culminating in my top-rate (and very expensive) degree was shot down by my last class and by Dan Gillmor's book "We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People" which sadly realizes the demise of professional journalism and applauds citizen journalism as the future of journalism.

All the standards of professional journalism, the inverted pyramid method of writing, the ethics and morals that journalists should hold when reporting a story are no longer reserved for a trained elite group of "journalists". Today, anyone can be a journalist without any sort of formal training. This brings about an interesting debate of journalism as an activity vs journalism as a profession. Which is it? I graduated thinking that it is a profession - but today's media landscape, and Gillmor's book are undoubtedly proving me wrong. Citizen journalists are proving that journalism is an activity that anyone can participate in.

I'm not denying the power of citizen journalism. In fact, I am a citizen journalist, spreading news and coming up with original ideas through my blog and my Twitter page. But citizen journalism also brings up many complex questions: what about the ethics, morals, and standards that are associated with journalism as a profession? How do laws that protect journalists and freedom of the press apply to citizen journalists, such as a bloggers? While I agree with Gillmor that citizen journalism - "grassroots journalism" - is changing the media landscape and changing the power and influence that "Big Media" companies have held throughout history, I still believe that a business model outlining a symbiotic relationship between grassroots and professional journalism will be the successful one moving forward. Gillmor outlines several business models including the "tip jar" (paying bloggers and other independent writers to cover stories that people want to hear), advertising, paid/content/subscription models, and niche publishing, or "nano publishing" - sites that target very small specific users. Niche groups can appeal to advertisers wanting to reach a particular demographic.

Take the example of OhMyNews, the South Korean news site that's based on citizen journalism that Gillmor looks at as a case-study in his book. Their model is based on the symbiotic relationship described above - they employ a core of professional editors and journalists and then solicit articles, columns, interviews and more from a cadre of citizen journalists. The professional editors then select the stories from the citizen journalists based on their meeting journalistic standards such as integrity, factual accuracy, style, etc. This "collision of journalism and technology" as Gillmor says, is helping to facilitate the rise of citizen journalism: giving citizens the power to select and create the news they digest.

I spend most of my time at work touting the benefits of technology and how empowering it can be. Similarly, Gillmor takes us on a quick trip through the evolution of the Internet, where he explains how the "read only" web developed into the "read/write" web that calls for active participation among users through wikis, blogs, etc. This type of technology is the vehicle for grassroots journalism and can help us understand the direction journalism is moving in and can help us devise successful models for the future.

The Politics-To-Go Handbook

I was excited to read The Politics-To-Go Handbook: A Guide to Using Mobile Technology in Politics because I probably know the least about mobile technology in the technological realm. I've always wanted to create a mobile phone friendly version of USIP.org. This guide, to say the least, was definitely worth printing the 100+ pages and putting into a binder to keep in my library of quick reference guides.

Even though I would have liked to read something that was less of a primer/background guide and more of a analysis of mobile strategy, this guide helped me understand the demographics of cell phone users and texters and helped lay the groundwork for what the future of the mobile industry might look like.

Demonstrating several examples of success -- like the massive texting during the Live 8 concerts and the use of popular bands like U2 to mobilize their audiences toward a certain cause through cell phone registration systems -- this piece also brought about something that I learned back in 2001 when I was studying as an undergraduate in Europe. Texting was rampant in Europe back then (I'd be lucky if someone ever actually called me!) and I remember thinking that it was weird that no one texted in the US. It was still an undiscovered service that would later prove to be a cheap, effective way for communicating with one another. This article touches on the very subject of why the US lags so far behind in mobile technology (an example Dr. Rosenblatt gave in class once asked if you put a cell phone and laptop in front of someone living in Asia and asked them to find an answer using one of the devices, chances are, they'd reach for the cellphone instead of the laptop, whereas someone in the US was more likely to reach for the laptop). Looking further into this issue seems compelling. Exploring cell phone security, mobile campaigning, fundraising capabilities, how to use cell phones for charity, and integrating video into mobile technology are all important topics for analysis in determining the future direction of mobile technology.

No doubt that mobile technology will emerge as a major player in the filed of communications in the next few years and this piece is a good primer in that direction.

The Argument: Inside the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics

You can tell when an author is a journalist. Their books are smooth, easy to read pieces that make sense and somehow make complicated topics easy to digest. Matt Bai, author of "The Argument: Inside the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics" and a journalist covering American politics for the New York Times Sunday Magazine accomplishes the task of showing how grassroots organizations are becoming major political movements and are reshaping a major political party in this country through mechanisms such as the Internet. He portrays a brilliant inside look at the inner workings of the Democratic party.

His behind-the-scenes look at the relationship between grassroots movements like MoveOn.org and blogs such as The Huffington Post and The Daily Kos (both of which I read weekly, if not daily), and huge political players like Howard Dean, Bill Clinton, the Democracy Alliance clearly shows the internal power struggles, obsession with the Republican party, and the clash of egos that have prevented the Democratic party from expanding, succeeding, and become a coherent party with a coherent "argument". While politics are clearly more complex than simple partisanship, Bai points out that the agonizing blows dealt by a cohesive and strong Republican party and the disaster left behind by the Bush administration gave the progressive party the right motivation it needed to regroup and reorganize. The election of Obama was only the first taste of sweet victory for the Democratic party; how he will actually implement his coherent message of "change" has yet to be seen. But the opportunity is there.

This type of comparison kind of reminds me of the organization of the Israeli lobby and the progress they have made through their strategic organization and leadership, as compared to other groups who could benefit from such structure and organization and a clear communications message, such as the Palestinians. Has anyone ever read The Israel Lobby? If not, you definitely should. It's an amazing look into the organization and structure and power of AIPAC (The America Israel Public Affairs Committee). It proves that having a coherent message (or an "argument") will help you succeed. It proves that new ideas backed by effective strategies also help you succeed. It's precisely what the Democratic party needs, according to Bai.

Perhaps most interesting is Bai's account of a MoveOn.org party/bbq he attended that was organized by someone energized by his disdain for FOX news and his Republican neighbor. What Bai noticed at this party was a critical notion to understanding political movements online: the participants were not young, tech savvy kids who are stereotypically known to be the ones controlling the Internet Age; but they were middle-class suburban adults who, for some time now, have felt disenfranchised by American politics, as Bai points out. MoveOn.org helps organize these people and provides a forum to connect with one another and allow their voices to be heard.

After reading the book, I decided to do some research about Matt Bai and his book and discovered that the book was quite controversial, and was actually the only political book in 2007 to be named a New York Times Notable book. I was really impressed by this book - I think Bai has an interesting take on progressive politics and I think he highlights the challenges facing American politics accurately.

O.M.G.

You have to see how amazing social networking is.

Bakcground: My status on Facebook today says: "cheers to Obama and to the nobel committee for taking this action to highlight how important diplomacy is to peacemaking."

The attached is a personal message I received on facebook from someone i went to ELEMENTARY school with and have not spoken to in about 18 years.











Text: Hi Dida - I wholeheartedly disagree with you about President Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize. You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I'm going to choose not to be friends with you because of it.

Dida Atassi: LOL!


Cheers to social networking.

Blogging @ PBS's Idea Lab

I found an awesome blog hosted by PBS called MediaShift Idea Lab.

"Idea Lab is a group blog by innovators who are reinventing community news for the Digital Age. Each Idea Lab blogger is a winner of the Knight News Challenge grant to reshape community news."

Awesome. They have a best practices section, reports from high-level conferences like Gov 2.0 (Check out: "Report from Gov 2.0: A Nerd, Suit, Spook, and Database Smoothie"), and the best part is, you can TALK to the writers and engage in a conversation about any of these topics. I can read Idea Lab's live Twitter feed directly from the page (I love embedded Twitter widgets) and users can declare which articles are their "favorites", and the site pulls out "featured comments" from users. Pretty interactive and comprehensive. Although too bad it appears that their Twitter feed is not actually updated by a human, but rather by an RSS feed directly from their site via twitterfeed.

This, as we've learned in Dr. Rosenblatt's class, is a no-no ---- It's what we're doing here at USIP and something that's on my list of things to change. I've only been here about 4 weeks and one of my top priorities is to revamp the way we do all of our social networking -- which appears to me to h ave been put together rather quickly and without much strategy. Probably from some pressure from the powers that be.

Care2 and Online Advocacy

Care2 is an online advocacy group that I first heard about in Rigby's book (see posts below). The do some pretty cool stuff, so I've decided to get involved by following them on Twitter, and attending a release of an e-campaigning benchmark report they are hosting with Advocacy Online. The event is actually an exclusive simultaneous live webcast in Washington, Toronto and London. I'm hoping to learn a bit more about what works with online advocacy and campaigning, the most effective ways to organize people in a virtual world, and hopefully, this report will also be able to lay out best practices. I'm starting to really get into the strategy behind these campaigns. I'll report back on what I learn. The event is on October 13.

Social Media is Older than the WWW?

This is more of a note to myself to remember to look into Dr. Rosenblatt's idea that social networks existed long before the World Wide Web. I remember being a little confused by this in class once, but now I have a better understanding of what that means.

I just read something that Dr. Rosenblatt posted to his blog that was quite frankly, amazing. It was a memo from Milton John Kleim, a member of the Aryan Resistance, a white supremacist movement in the U.S., on using social networks to their advantage. Disregarding who actually wrote it and the context of the memo, it was written back in 1998 and includes some of the same strategies for using social networks that were outlined in the Person to Person report!

Kleim talks about using USENET, an old online discussion forum, to spread their message. He advocates moving beyond their own social networks into others, warns against spamming, suggests interacting with those who express interest in their cause immediately, and promotes contacting members of the networks with some regularity.

Perhaps Dr.R is right -- this "new technology" isn't so new!

Act.ly and Social Networks

I love act.ly! I am learning about it through my digital political strategy class at JHU. I just participated in a petition/experiment that my professor Dr. Alan Rosenblatt is conducting. Apparently there is a game for Twitterers called Mobster World (I'm not even going to link to it so that this doesn't happen to you too... you can search for it if you want!). If you sign up to play this game, it will hijack your follower list on Twitter and send them a direct message FROM YOU if you sign up to play! There's no way to make this stop - no contact information on Mobster's site and no way for people to click and opt-out.

Not only is this super-annoying but it's just WRONG! This got me remembering how annoying cold calling and automated calling is, especially when the "robot" fails and calls you at 2AM. At least now, I can do something about it from my own desk. I signed up for act.ly and "signed" Dr. Rosenblatt's petition by allowing act.ly to Tweet the cause on my Twitter account. My irritation actually led me to find and follow EndTheRoboCalls on Twitter and all sorts of interesting and cool petitions that I can participate in on Act.ly.

This takes advantage of the essence of social networking: republishing information to individual social networks makes that information viral and reaches many people quickly.

Maybe I'll start a petition to remove tourists who stand on the left of the escalators (when they should be standing on the right, walking on the left) from the Metro system. :)

Person-to-Person-to-Person

It really doesn't seem so hard to use social networking to your advantage - but in reality, it is.

A group of leading expert thinkers on the strategy and the how-to behind maximizing the benefits from social networking sites teamed up to write Person-to-Person-to-Person: Harnessing the Political Power of Online Social Networks and User Generated Content (PDF), published by the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University, and they say that social networks should be a part of a multi-faceted Internet strategy.

This stuff is so interesting to me because it's so new and the rules of the game on the Internet are so flexible. While bringing up some very salient points that all users of social media should remember in order to be successful (keep your information up-to-date, be active in an online community, and build trust among users), the report also suggests very interesting ideas for success such as promoting more user-generated content (letting go of the reigns of control seems to be a difficult thing for many organizations, including mine!) and using the Internet to research and learn more about your demographics and audiences before attempting to target them (the report offers gather.com, asianavenue.com, momsrising.com and more as good research sites). Another measure of success is the ability to translate online action into offline action, or even vice versa, such as in the case of townhall.com. A conservative talk radio company purchased the community website to harness the power of their listeners; the website has now become a place for interactivity, conversation, discussion, and blogging. They therefore turned a passive activity such as listening into activism through Internet technology.

The report also discusses the importance of youth, a historically forgotten demographic. Youth have proven to be strong social movers and shakers and, according to this report, social media strategies should be geared toward attracting and energizing youth as a primary audience. They're the ones who are more likely to use the Internet as a part of their daily lives because they are more accustomed to it, having grown up during the Internet boom.

Another key point that this report makes that I thought was interesting is the role of the "influencer" or the "leader". Finding these people are essential to online success using social networks. Influencers and leaders aren't necessarily people with big jobs or big titles, according to the report, or even people with big names. They are the people with established networks who helps to inform people and successfully changes their minds. Spending time and effort finding and talking to these people is not only beneficial but important in reaching others. These people can also help move online information offline easily.

Why has the Internet been so successful with "bringing grassroots back" as the report says? I think its simply because of convenience. We're in the information-overload age. We are too busy, too tired, and have too many people in our lives to take care of and worry about. Many of us aren't financially or physically able to participate in live demonstrations, protests, or other methods of real-life activism on issues we care about.

The Internet solves this dilemma. We can be contributing citizens, we can rally and organize groups, we can socialize with one another, we can inform each other, we can serve as the highest form of checks and balance for our government and we can bring down corrupt politicians, journalists and others by never leaving our desks.

We just have to let go of our controls and let the audiences speak.