Unassigned Topics

Back to Wordpress...

2005-07-31T11:06:00.000-04:00

With the semester over and accessibility to fellow classmates no longer the number one priority of this blog, I'm going to migrate back over to my wordpress site. I was able to import all my posts and comments from this blog over to my original site, and many thanks go to Andy Skelton for writing a great script and Catstutorials for a great walkthrough on the import. The formatting got a little screwy in parts, but the good news is that all the content got ported over--even the pictures!

Anyone who commented on this blogger site should have a login already created on my wordpress site: just use your blogger handle as the login and "password" as the password, and you should be ready to rock. Otherwise, just use the links at the top of the page to create a user profile.

That said, I'm not sure how much I'll be blogging again, though I certainly hope to at least a bit. But we'll see what happens with a new semester, maybe a new job, and who knows what else. In the meantime, I'm off to California next week for a vacation from the humidity...

Oh yeah, don't forget the new URL (and new RSS site feed):

http://www.UnassignedTopics.com

What I Learned

2005-07-26T17:07:00.000-04:00

I'd certainly have to say that I know a hell of a lot more about using new media for politics than I did ten weeks ago, and have had my eyes opened to the potential of future technologies as well. But if I had to pick just a few things that really stood out, these would be them:

Usability Rules: The concept of usability was one I had never even considered before learning about it in this class. But, after learning about it, it makes all the sense in the world. How effective could your website be, no matter how awesome your content, if users don't know how to use it?

Enable the Influentials: This is another concept that just makes intuitive sense. A small percentage of the population influences the rest, and these Influentials are overrepresented online. Factoring them into any on-line plan is a must, as they can be the initiators of...

Create Viral Content: If your message spreads itself, you'll maximize your resources and be able to simply sit back and watch voters come to your side. While there's certainly no magic formula yet for creating such self-perpetuating content, there are important guidelines to follow. And definitely add a tell-a-friend link to everything!

Obviously, we learned much more than this over the semester, but these are three major concepts (two if you consider the last two one in the same, which in many ways they are) that I will certainly remember when planning any political website (much less any non-political site). And with that, how about one more cat photo? For whatever reason, both Isis and Penelope love to sleep in upside-down chairs. Weirdos.

Copyright and NY Times Editorials

2005-07-24T15:45:00.000-04:00

Reading the final chapter in Vaidhyanathan's book and thinking a bit more about Lessig's speech got me thinking about how these topics affect blogs in particular. In my opinion, blogs have their greatest use in being a place where information from different sources can be synthesized. Bloggers will never be able to pursue a single story to the lengths that a Sy Hersch can, but they can look at reporting from several different sources and combine it in a way that makes a new and valuable point.

But what if the news sources stopped allowing bloggers to reference their sites? Certainly they'll never have a problem with blogs simply linking to their web pages, but what about excerpts? Most of the time excerpts are kept to at most a few paragraphs, and--like showing a clip from an interview that was conducted on another network or referencing a quote that showed up in a competing newspaper--this is probably considered fair use. But what about subscription sites?

Currently, the Wall Street Journal restricts their online news content to subscribers only, and the New York Times is about to do the same with their editorial page content. In the WSJ's case, they probably don't mind seeing a paragraph or two of a news item on their site showing up elsewhere (it would probably make buying a subscription seem more attractive to a reader, as she can see what she's missing), but it will be interested to see if the NYT takes the same approach.

The amount of content that will be offered under their new subscription system will actually be quite low, just a few articles a day. Considering that I'd probably be interested only in Krugman's and Rich's columns, and a conservative might just want to read what Brooks and that new hack Tierney have to say, that's just 3-4 articles a week. In such a case, seeing the juiciest paragraphs from these few articles excerpted on a blog might alleviate the need to pay $40 a year or whatever it will be to read the whole articles. Therefore, might the NYT crack down on excerpts--much less full articles--being posted on blogs? Certainly seems like they might.

If so, it would truly be a shame (of course, I think the entire idea of setting up a pay wall is pretty lame in the first place). Blogs are a medium that creates real political value for the country, and much of that is based on using copyrighted content as a springboard to explore new ideas. Some may belittle blogs' contribution or decry the rank partisanship that infuses most of these sites, but I think their net contribution to our political system is positive. This contribution moves even further into the black when existing ideas can be expanded upon, and restricting the content that can be excerpted would certainly diminish this. So let's hope the NYT continues to allow fair use excerpts; if not, it could be the first step in closing a promising new avenue for increased civic participation.

The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Oil

2005-07-23T16:07:00.000-04:00

I just finished watching/listening to Lawrence Lessig's fascinating lecture on the challenges facing copyright law in the modern era, and it brought to my mind a topic that has a high degree of relevance to politics.

This topic concerns the first lesson of interest group economics that I learned back in my undergraduate days: a small group that is strongly affected by a particular law or regulation will have a much greater impact on shaping the rules than a much, much larger group that isn't affected as strongly on an individual level.

For example, the National Beer Wholesalers Assocation has been one of the leading proponents of killing the estate/death tax. Their membership really, really cares about this issue because many of these wholesalers are family owned, and would stand to gain an incredible amount of money if the tax were repealed. While this is an incredibly small proportion of the country, this group (and similarly motivated wealthy families) have been successful in almost completely eliminating this tax.

On the other side of the ledger are the 99%+ of the population that will never have to pay this tax, and would probably see it as a fair way for the government to realize the capital gains taxes that are never paid because the owner dies before cashing in. In addition, the approximately $30 billion a year in tax revenue the estate/death tax generates each year will need to be made up somewhere, much of it from those who do not face the likelihood of paying this tax.

However, most Americans care little if at all about this tax; it is thought of most often in the context of conservatives opposing it as an unfair tax, but still in a very superficial way. This is unsurprising: if one person stands to lose tens of millions of dollars from the tax and another stands to lose perhaps a thousand or two over many years, who do you think is going to make noise about it?

There are countless other examples of interest group economics, and I think our current copyright status in this country certainly qualifies as one of them. Before watching/listening to Lessig's speech, I had really only thought of it in terms of sharing music online, since that was really the only way that I had been exposed to it.

I've had a few experiences with music copyrights--basically using copyrighted music as a backing track to a video, a topic we discussed in class a bit last night--and those experiences were certainly more relevant to the stifling of creativity aspect discussed in the speech. For example, I think web video is enhanced considerably by being able to use popular music; it's a damn shame that it is basically impossible given the royalty structures most popular works fall under.

Going back to the interest group economics topic, the copyright holders--in particular the labels, publishers, producers, and distribution companies--are obviously the ones that are affected most by copyright issues. Time-Warner is going to care a hell of a lot more about this than I ever will. Thus it is no surprise that we are where we are today, with a digital space that has eclipsed all fair and unregulated use of media, and a burgeoning guerilla war against private citizens for at most a 5% drop in sales.

I certainly have hope that we'll figure this out over the coming years, but it is clear that this issue needs to be made more relevant to normal people's lives. As Lessig says, the copyright holders have effectively framed this debate in a simple way as one revolving around property; it will not be an easy to task to shift that frame towards one of creativity. But there's always hope; and it's nice to know that there are some very smart minds working on this issue...

My Wife Is Awesome

2005-07-22T10:07:00.000-04:00

Look what I get to bring in to work today:

Regaining Strength

2005-07-21T12:05:00.000-04:00

Still in recovery mode after the awesome event last night.

Fair Use?

2005-07-18T17:12:00.000-04:00

The excerpt from Laurence Lessig's "Future of Ideas" paints a disturbing picture of the"generic-ization" of movies as a result of applying copyright laws:

“Ten years ago,” Guggenheim explains, “if incidental artwork . . . was recognized by a common person,” then you would have to clear its copyright. Today, things are very different. Now “if any piece of artwork is recognizable by anybody . . . then you have to clear the rights of that and pay” to use the work. “[A]lmost every piece of artwork, any piece of furniture, or sculpture, has to be cleared before you can use it.”

The question I have is, what ever happened to fair use? News organizations and others have long been able to use relatively small segments of copyrighted works in their reporting, I assume because showing one question from an interview or news report hardly violates the rights of the copyright holder. So why is it now such a big problem for movie makers to include a fleeting glance of the coca-cola symbol?

I would have to imagine that part of the problem is that for-profit companies not only work incredibly hard to protect their brands, but also attempt to make money in any way they can. There was certainly a time when movie makers could create a film without worrying about this issue, but once the floodgates opened to challenging this use it snowballed. In addition, corporate brands probably fall under a different statute than creative works in terms of fair use.

I think Lessig is ultimately right that property rights need to be reevaluated in light of the recent technological changes our society has faced. There needs to be an understanding of fair use of copyrighted works that makes sense. I'm not sure exactly what these changes would involve (that would probably require reading the rest of Lessig's book, for starters), but it's pretty clear from the examples he presents that the current situation is strangling creativity in movie making, much less in other mediums.

Ethics and Political Web Videos

2005-07-17T12:26:00.000-04:00

After reading the assigned chapter on the ethics of persuasive technologies in B.J. Fogg's book, I'd like to expand a bit on what I wrote about yesterday regarding web video. As the IPDI authors make quite clear, the lack of accountability for web video authors has allowed many unethical videos to be distributed. They predict that as the quantity of videos out there goes up, the number of unethical and manipulative videos will rise as well. I explained a bit of my reasoning yesterday for disagreeing with IPDI's major worry--that unethical web videos will come to have a major impact on the coming electoral cycles--and after reading Fogg's chapter I have a bit more to add.

In discussing the ways that technology can be used to unethically persuade, Fogg lists six different ways in which this commonly happens. I think the first is applicable to the current status of political web videos:

Ethical issues are especially prominent when computer technology uses novelty as a distraction to increase persuasion. When dealing with a novel experience, people not only lack expertise but they are distracted by the experience, which impeded their ability to focus on the content presented. (p.215)

I think this is exactly the way that some of the political web videos of the last cycle were able to cross the ethical line. Ten years ago, professionally edited video almost always came from credible, established sources. As a result, it was rare that video was used for outright manipulation. But today, it is easy for almost anyone to make such videos, and I think that in some ways the public hasn't caught up to this fact.

When a user views one of these videos--especially if the overall message of the video is something he or she is inclined to believe--the newness and uniqueness of the experience short-circuits the normal fact-checking region of the brain. Instead of asking whether the content shown was perhaps taken out of context, the viewer walks away simply believing that Cheney is incredibly mean or that John Kerry sat on stage with Jane Fonda at an anti-war rally. After all, it was in the video!

I think this was particularly the case with the Jib-Jab video, and the authors of that piece certainly could have gotten away with much, much more dishonest content. As mentioned in the IPDI piece, animated web videos often can get away with more extreme content, with the report suggesting that humor is the way they are able to do so. I agree that humor helps, but I also think that it is because watching such a Flash video is such a new experience for most people. They've never seen anything like it, so their reaction isn't to parse it for accuracy, but to simply enjoy it.

But will this always be the case? I'd like to think that the number of people who click on the irritating pop-up ads designed to look like system messages for your computer has gone down as people have become more familiar with the fact that it's a dishonest manipulation, and the same will likely happen with political web video. As the newness of the concept wears out and viewers become more familiar with the medium, they'll take a more critical eye to the actual content of the videos.

Today, political web video makers can get away with a lot of dishonesty, because many of the viewers are still blinded by the science of it all. And there will always be those videos that get made and distributed by highly partisan Influentials, given the lower ethical threshhold, say, an anti-Bush voter will have for anti-Bush content. But as political web videos become less of a novelty and more of an expected part of the political communications process, authors will have to clear a higher ethical bar. In the end, as I said yesterday, it will be the responsible, high quality, effective web videos that end up being the difference makers.

White Stripes Mix

2005-07-16T19:15:00.000-04:00

I've had a few weeks now to digest the White Stripes' latest, "Get Behind Me Satan," and I think it's a very good album. Certainly not their best; "White Blood Cells" and "Elephant"--in that order--share that honor. But it is very good: it has such a laid back, easy quality to it, that I don't mind that it is somewhat half-formed.

But the more important question is: What does this do to my "Ultimate White Stripes Mix"? Satan has a few contributions (how crazy a clause is that?), but the rest of their catalogue still dominates. So, since I love to make mixed CDs and tell everyone about it (could there be a more perfect use for a blog?), here's what I take to be the best 80-minutes the White Stripes' catalogue currently has to offer:

Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
Hello Operator
The Air Near my Fingers
My Doorbell
Offend in Every Way
I Want To Be The Boy To Warm Your Mother's Heart
Fell in Love With a Girl
I'm Bound to Pack It Up
Take, Take, Take
Lord, Send Me An Angel
I'm Finding it Harder to be a Gentleman
Rated X
Apple Blossom
You've Got Her In Your Pocket
Jolene
Little Ghost
The Union Forever
The Denial Twist
Hotel Yorba
Truth Doesn't Make a Noise
Hypnotize
The Same Boy You've Always Known
It's True That We Love One Another
Now Mary
Forever For Her (Is Over For Me)
We're Going To Be Friends
Your Southern Can is Mine

Definitely let me know what I've missed...

UPDATE: What the hell? Blogger ate the track numbers. So imagine this list in sequence, because that's what I burned for my car...

Potter

2005-07-16T18:51:00.000-04:00

Amazon came through on their promise and the new Harry Potter book arrived today. I'm certainly psyched to read it; however, being that it's the end of the semester for me, Kelly's going to get the first crack at it. She can keep a secret well--we did it in the same order last time, and she didn't reveal anything.

One thing that I thought of as the book came was how much I've forgotten from the earlier books, especially the last two (probably in particular since there haven't been movies of them yet). But more than that, I think it's because I read them so damn fast; like all the Dan Brown books, once I get going on a Harry Potter book I just tear through it like butter. It's not like it's reading Patterson, after all. One of these days I'll get around to re-reading the earlier books, but in the meantime I just hope the ending isn't ruined for me before I get to it...

Oh, and did anyone catch Rob Cordry's attempt to impersonate JK Rowling on the Daily Show the other night? Hilarious...

The Future of Political Web Videos

2005-07-16T13:52:00.000-04:00

The IPDI report on Online Political Videos in the 2004 election provides a nice overview of the current state of political web videos. While the idea that they are commonly quite partisan and even ethically dishonest at times was no surprise, the point that I had not really considered was just how cheap it has become to make such videos. Given this low barrier to entry, IPDI posits that these videos will increase the level of partisanship in political debate:

We are at the beginning of an era in which disturbing and powerful videos can be produced by anyone with $1000 worth of equipment and software and moderate technical skills. Judging by the current crop of independently- produced political videos, their likely effect will be to further exacerbate the partisanship of an already polarized electorate.

As someone who is an aspiring video maker*, I fully anticipate creating political web videos in the future (hopefully in the context of working on a campaign, though it could be an amateur thing as well). In that hope I am sure I am not alone, and IPDI predicts (rightly, in my opinion) that we will be deluged with such videos over the coming electoral cycles.

But will these videos continue to occupy the outer fringes of the partisan divide in their content? I think the result of an increase in quantity of these videos could in fact be a tempering of the overall extremism that the category "political web video" emits.

There will certainly always be a ton of extreme videos. And I'll be that there will also be a large increase in the number of dishonest and otherwise ethically challenged videos out there.

But there will also likely be an increase of more moderate videos. By moderate, I don't mean some milquetoast version of ostensibly non-partisan opinion, but just not bat-shit crazy. The quality level of many of these videos will increase, and thus the extremism will cease to be the number one selling point--effectiveness will enter the picture as well.

An increase in the quantity of such videos out there will also increase the need for guidance. Certainly Influentials will continue to be a primary catalyst for promoting these videos, but groups that need to protect their reputations will also begin to serve more of a purpose as far as directing visitors to videos they deem worth seeing. As the media attention paid to these videos increase, these reputable groups will need to be more careful in the videos they choose to promote.

There will also be a ton of crazy extreme political web videos out there. In fact, their number will probably increase substantially over the next few years. But as web video rises in both importance and viewership, a market will be created for responsible web videos that can still be quite powerful. MoveOn certainly learned their lesson from the Hitler video mishap, and other organizations will choose carefully when singling out video for their visitors. In the end, I like to think that relatively responsible, high quality, effective web videos will ultimately rise above their more extremism-based brothers and become what we first think about when "online political video" is discussed.

*Some of you may remember my recent query for advice on buying a video camera. I ended up getting the second-to-the-bottom of the line Panasonic, and after buying Final Cut Express for the excellent student price I am capable of creating decent web videos for less than $500. In theory, at least...I still have to work on making them good. But it does go to show just how cheap it can be to "enter the market," so to speak.

Friday Cat Blogging

2005-07-15T14:32:00.000-04:00

I think these two pictures represent the unique personalities of our cats quite well. To begin with, we have Penelope playing in haphazardly stacked boxes--one of her favorite pastimes, along with chewing on anything plastic.

And second, we have Isis doing what she does best (aside from waking us up in the morning), getting ready to sleep awesomely.

BONUS: Friday Dogblogging. Here's a video I put together starring my office-mate's over-eager bassett hound (her name is Maggie, thus the choice of song)

So, What's Your Take on Rove?

2005-07-13T17:41:00.000-04:00

My feeling is that he's in a world of trouble, but if things stay the same he'll be okay (and by "okay," I mean that he'll keep his position and not become radioactive to any candidate he works for).

The real question regards the grand jury testimony. If only we had Ken Star's team to feed Susan Schmidt all the juicy good stuff! Perhaps Isikoff will get something out of there in the coming weeks; so far, he's the only one who has gotten anything out of the investigation, but his source is probably with Time and not the prosecutor. The bottom line though is that testimony was given back when Rove thought Cooper was going to carry his water and keep his silence; could there be a little bit of perjury in there?

My prediction is that this story still has a massive twist yet to reveal itself. Perhaps Miller was the one who carried Plame's name from the Pentagon to the White House in the first place; maybe Rove and Novak set up a cover story which has been discovered as false; maybe John Bolton is the one who leaked the name (wouldn't that be fun?).

So what's your take? I say this continues to be a major problem, and the only thing capable of knocking it out of the press (provided there are continuing revelations) is the Supreme Court. And even that might not be enough if more damning info is released on Rove.

I for one will anxiously await Fitzgerald's findings; it may be until then before we really know what the hell happened here.

Stella!

2005-07-13T16:39:00.000-04:00

So I'm not sure how many people out there have been watching the new show Stella on Comedy Central, but I think it finally kicked into gear last night. It's definitely a bizarre show; bizarreness that I don't think we've seen since the Strangers With Candy-Upright Citizens Brigade power hour of bizarreness back when I was in college. It stars three The State alumns playing...themselves, I guess, but in a really cracked-out kind of way. The first two weeks were funny, but it was such a unique concept that I don't think I was able to totally wrap my brain around it.

But all the changed last night with the third episode. Maybe it's that I've finally figured out that the show essentially makes no sense, or maybe this was just the best version yet, but I laughed harder than I have at a TV show in a while. So if you haven't seen it yet--and you like crazy comedy--definitely try to catch this week's episode in repeats (it's the Office Party episode). It's nuts.

UPDATE: Looks like this was actually the fifth episode. Gonna have to catch up!

It's All About The Viral Marketing

2005-07-13T11:53:00.000-04:00

Our discussion in class last night on online influentials and the possible exploitation of the media exemption by bloggers and anyone else who wants to claim the title "journalist," combined with some of our earlier class topics, really made one point clear to me: it's all about viral messages. Online Influentials (I suppose I need to put a copyright sign next to that word thanks to Roeper; how lame is that?) are valuable to a campaign in no small part because they will actively spread the campaign's message, and we've seen how the self-perpetuating nature of an effective viral message can spread a campaign message at no cost to the campaign itself. The need to win over these online influential also makes me skeptical that a corporation could simply buy effectiveness on the internet, but that's a subject for another post later this week.

Influentials are valuable to a campaign because they spread the message. They forward emails to their friends, tell their fishing buddies who to vote for, and generally act as a repeater station for the campaign's signal. This is true whether the influential is online or not: they key is winning over that influential, because once you do, she'll take on moving your message to her friends and associates.

One can easily see the value of this in the context of a campaign, especially for smaller campaigns with smaller communications budgets but also for larger campaigns that need to find an effective way to cut through the clutter. As the Bush campaign showed us, hearing a message from a friend of neighbor is much more effective than hearing it through the TV or from outsiders (especially if they are wearing bright orange hats).

I doubt the concept of winning over influentials is anything new in the world of campaigning; after all, isn't that what the old block captains were back in the day? But reaching these influentials takes work, and any new technique that lessens the effort needed to reach these individuals is welcome.

That's where IPDI's work on this topic is so important. It makes all the sense in the world that campaign website visitors would be more likely to be influentials, but six times more likely than the public at large? That's phenomenal! And to combine this easy way to find influentials with the low-cost nature of the web makes this discovery like a gold mine. Using the web to target influentials is an absolute no brainer, no matter the size of the campaign. These are your viral marketers, and any campaign that ignores this self-powered outlet for their message deserves to lose.

News Crawl on the Campaign Site?

2005-07-11T16:43:00.000-04:00

The IPDI report on putting online influentials to work notes that most of these valuable site visitors are news junkies, and one way that campaigns can attract them is by feeding this need:

One of the ways you can engage Influentials in your campaign is by feeding them information through your Web site. For example, one of the interesting features of Congressman Bernie SandersÂ (I-VT) Web site is that the latest campaign headlines scroll across the front. The scroll includes both news articles from local papers and press releases from the campaign.

It seems that most campaign websites feed this need with a static list of recent articles on the candidate or campaign, press releases, or recentannouncementss by the candidate. But too often the presentation is incredibly boring: the listing will only have headlines that don't fully tell what the article is about, or the content is never updated.

The blurb about Sanders' site got me wondering if something similar to the newscrawl that the cable news networks constantly employ could be adapted to a campaign website. It would likely need to be modified--perhaps a single item could appear at a time in a box on the right hand side of the home page about the size of a typical Blogad, and visitors could click on the headline to be taken to the in-depth item. A handful of news items could be rotated through, and a double-arrow navigation button could allow users to either jump forward in the list or back to an item they just missed but want to investigate further.

In this way, the sites could attract users to the latest news in a more interactive way than simply listing the five most recent headlines somewhere on the page. And items that aren't specifically related to campaign news could be cycled through as well: there could be a fundraising appeal somewhere on the reel, a call to sign up for the email list, or appeals to volunteer could all be items that rotate through the list. The campaign could also use the format to promote items on the campaign blog, using teasers like, "Sanders makes waves in campaign appearance today. Read about it at the Sanders Blog" or something like that.

Of course, the trick is to make sure it isn't overwhelming, but using such a rotating system could be a great way to catch the user's eye (especially if he or she happens to be an online influential), further promote the fundraising and volunteering arms of the web operation, and keep the content fresh.

Lower-Literacy Users: Relevant to a Campaign?

2005-07-10T12:56:00.000-04:00

Jakob Nielsen's article on lower-literacy users raises some interesting questions for political operatives putting together a campaign website. The first that comes to mind is, should we care? Do lower-literacy users visit campaign websites? Given that web users have above average literacy to begin with and the on-line influentials a campaign website needs to target probably raise the average even more, should lower-literacy users even be a concern?

After reading the article and doing some thinking, I think the questions is clearly "Yes, we should care." Just because I and just about everyone I know around here would be considered a high-literacy user (we are in a master's program, after all), that certainly doesn't mean every potential user of a site is the same way. Making the assumption that everyone is just like you or your close friends is certainly a good way to quickly find yourself out of touch with reality.

Nielsen estimates that "30% of Web users have low literacy," so this is clearly a demographic that needs to be considered. This is especially true for a presidential or other high-visibility campaign that would be likely to draw more casual users to their sites, but smaller campaigns should keep lower-literacy accessibility in mind as well. While lower-literacy users are probably less likely to be politically active, a local campaign that strikes a nerve with such a voter could be exactly what gets him or her interested in politics, and having an accessible website could be what ultimately draws them in or drives them away.

As Nielsen notes, there are certainly circumstances where it is appropriate to target higher-literacy users, and there will certainly be sections on a campaign website, such as the issues page, that do just that. For a detailed policy brief that is targeted at the media, interest groups, and super political junkies, a higher reading level is acceptable. But the site should also include a summary version, perhaps in the form of bullet points, that is accessible to lower-literacy viewers. Place this summary at the top of each issue page (making sure it's in the first 800x600 so the user doesn't have to scroll), and the section can now be helpful for lower-literacy users while retaining the more specific and detailed aspects for more "serious" users.

While sections like the issues pages can appropriately user a higher reading level, the home page in particular should be made as accessible as possible. Catering to lower-literacy users on this page will also serve to enhance the general usability of the site, and make it accessible for the largest audience possible. Perhaps lower-literacy users will rarely make it past this page, which gives all the more reason to make the home page as accessible as possible. The home page should certainly be designed to reach the lowest common denominator (and I truly mean that in the non-perjorative sense), with the literacy level being ratcheted up when appropriate in deeper pages on the site.

Also, it should be noted that a government-funded website such as an elected official's website should be almost entirely designed with lower-literacy users in mind. Whereas a campaign website presents strategic reasons to increase the accessibility for these users, a government-funded website really should be accessible to as many constituents as possible. And that certainly includes lower-literacy and disabled users.

246 Assignment Ruining My Day

2005-07-09T13:29:00.000-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging

2005-07-08T12:24:00.000-04:00

Special "Dark Side" of the cats edition:

Penelope in her "Big Pimpin'" mode. Who'd fuck with her?

And you thought only dogs did this...

It's Not About You

2005-07-06T14:53:00.000-04:00

As detailed in Dr. Johnson's Congress Online Project, many elected officials make a common mistake in designing their website that was first brought to our attention by Vincent Flanders in week two: they make the website with their own needs in mind, rather than those of their visitors. As Flanders says, there are two things to remember when designing a website:

1. The only reason my web site exists is to solve my customers' problems.

2. What problems does the page I'm looking at solve?

While Flanders had corporate sites in mind, these rules certainly apply to elected officials' websites as well. The website exists for the purpose of providing important information and solving constituent problems, and should be designed with that in mind.

As Johnson describes it, the typical congressional website is primarily updated by the press secretary or chief of staff, and very little thought is given to posting information constituents want (p. 126). As we saw last night, accountability is typically at the top of the list for the average constituent, whereas the candidate often prefers to provide "soft" content like his or her biography.

Elected officials should concentrate more on giving the people what they want, and not only because these sites are paid for with taxpayer dollars. By providing a website that helps constituents solve their problems, the elected official will build up good will that will ultimately translate to votes in the next election. Candidates are elected because they ostensibly show they will be the better man or woman for the job; having a helpful website is a great way to show that to be the case.

If You Release It, You Can Spin It

2005-07-04T12:50:00.000-04:00

Dennis Johnson makes an interesting point in Congress Online about the reluctance of some members to put information on their voting record on their congressional website:

One complaint was that legislators do not want to give ammunition to potential campaign challengers by providing ready-made research on their voting record. This, however, was a false rationale. As a formerr candidate and opposition researcher, I could simply say that any researcher worth his or he salt could easily obtain far more complete information about voting records, impact of votes, cost of programs, and other vital information from sources not even remotely connected to the legislator's official website (p. 136).

I'd certainly have to agree with Denny J on this one: an elected official isn't going to stop many opposition researchers simply by refusing to post information that is available elsewhere in the public record. "Bad" votes will be discovered and publicized regardless of how easy the elected official makes it to find the information.

But perhaps more importantly, by attempting to hide such information the elected official loses the ability to spin the information in advance of a potential campaign. By giving an explaination of why the elected official voted as she did when the actual vote occurs, she is able to frame her vote in advantageous terms; and by getting the information out quickly, she can influence contemporary accounts of the vote and help set the conventional wisdom as to why she voted the way she did.

It will always be better for campaigning purposes if a vote is spun before it becomes an issue rather than after an opponent makes a big deal of it. If a campaign staff is put on the defensive and is made to defend a vote that has never really been addressed by the candidate, suspicion will arise that the current justification is being made up at the current time. But if the elected official released her reasons for voting for the bill when the vote occured, the campaign staff will be able to look back at this advantageously-framed justification and its prior existence will legitimize it.

Johnson also makes a good point about posting the elected official's schedule: by describing her schedule in advantagous terms, constituents will be less likely to think that the official is living easy on the voters' dime.

While some officials may worry about presenting too much information, they should take advantage of the fact that all of this information will come from them, rather than ouside sources that cannot be influenced. Most of this information will get out there anyway, so you might as well couch it in a positive light from the very beginning.

Chap Petersen: New Content, But Who Are You?

2005-07-03T10:34:00.000-04:00

For our upcoming strategic plan for a candidate or organization's web operation, I am assigned to Lieutenant Governor candidate Chap Petersen, who recently finished third out of four for the Democratic nomination.

While I archived the entire site before the June 14th primary, he has thankfully left most of the site up at www.petersen2005.com (and note how well he has handled his loss on the website: he's gracious about his loss, but states his intent to again be a factor). While most of his static content (bio, issues, etc) remains the same, the more timely content has been displaced, so at times I'll refer and link to screenshots I took when the race was still in progress.

What The Campaign Did Well: Provide New Content on a Regular Schedule
I was most impressed by the campaign's focus on adding timely content to the website. From what I could tell, the campaign added new content every single day over the closing months of the campaign. On the day before the primary when I archived the site, the top item on the home page was a countdown to the primary and an update on what was happening that day:

While the homepage seemed to always have the most recent piece of news posted prominently above Chap's welcome (which accompanies the photo of Chap and his family that you can see at the bottom of the screen above), the campaign also had two long running "tours" which had daily updates that were organized into their own sections on the site. The first was his "Uniting All Virginia RV Tour" which ran during the entire month of May. Updates were posted daily (As I recall, the most recent entry was posted on the home page with a link to the rest), and the entire tour was archived into its own page (which is still up here). Here's a screen shot:

In addition to the month-long RV Tour, the campaign started a "Travel Diary" the day after the RV Tour ended. This diary was updated daily until the primary two weeks later, and each daily entry had an update on the events of the day and a few words on where Chap would be heading the next morning. Here's another another screen shot:

So why is this such a good thing? Well, as we've discussed in class, one of the best ways to encourage return visits to a campaign site is to provide new content. With 1 out of 100 visitors on the average making a donation, the more visits the better.

Having a daily update is also a better way to get return visits than haphazard updates, even if the total quantity of new content ends up being roughly the same. For the reasoning behind this, elementary behaviorism will do the trick. If the website is updated with new content daily, then it is presenting a Fixed Interval reinforcement schedule to the user. The user knows that she will be rewarded with new content roughly every 24 hours, and can depend on getting that reward at that time.

On the other hand, if content is updated every couple of days or some other seemingly random schedule, then it represents a Variable Interval reinforcement schedule. While in some instances this can be just as powerful as a Fixed Interval schedule, in the case of campaign websites I think it's fair to say that visitors will get discouraged if they can't tell when and why the site is updated, and will be less inclined to visit.

By having a daily update on the site, Petersen's campaign gave supporters and casual visitors alike a reason to visit the site every day. More visits means more informed supporters, increased connection with those who visit, and potentially increased online donations. The campaign did a good job in providing new content on a regular schedule.

What The Campaign Did Poorly: Where's The Message?

While the campaign did a good job in giving visitors a reason to return regularly, it was less effective in telling these visitors exactly what message(s) the candidate was running on. The home page is a case in point (this is the same pic as above):

We can see the timely news (election day fast approaching!), we can see his great logo, we can see prominent links to contribute or volunteer for the campaign, we can see links to the travel diaries, but we see nothing about what Petersen would do if elected. There's no overriding message as to what the campaign is about. For that matter, there are no messages period as to what the campaign is about. The least he could do is include a meaningless slogan on the home page, a la Jerry Kilgore, but Petersen didn't even do that.

Delving deeper into the site, it is still difficult to determine the theme of Petersen's campaign. The issues section details Chap's positions on various issues, but still lacks any coherence:

I like the title of the section ("Chap's Vision" is much more personable than the standard "Issues"), but it isn't a single vision; instead, it's multiple visions on different topics that never meet. Instead of a candidate with a vision, I see a candidate who has ideas on seven issues, and that's it.

I should also note that the diary entries I laud above read more like itineraries that give the "who" "what" and "where" but not the "why." Instead of sticking mostly to recounting what he did that day, the diary entries could have shown where each campaign stop fit into Chap's vision for improving the commonwealth.

After digging through the site and speaking with someone who worked for the campaign, it seemed that their theme was a combination of "Uniting all Virginia" and "A Positive Vision." The welcome message currently on his site includes the following passage:

The goal of my campaign was to promote a positive message for Virginia and the Democratic Party -- and to expand the Party's appeal around the Commonwealth.

For my strategic plan, I took this and crafted the slogan "A Positive Vision for All Virginians." While I'd prefer something more specific (As Ron Faucheux would say, "Why can't the other candidate offer a positive vision for all Virginians?"), at least this captures his philosophy and presents a coherent message. At least some visitors, if asked, would be able to characterize him as a "positive moderate," which is more than they would take away from the site as it was.

Perhaps the lack of any coherent message was part of the campaign's strategy: as a conservative Democrat, perhaps Chap wanted to conceal his moderate side until after the primary. But as the past two Democratic presidential nominees have shown, it's very difficult to win on individual issues without an overriding message. There are many euphemistic ways to dress up moderation in a primary, and this campaign would have been well served to make such an attempt rather than present their candidate as a cipher. And if the lack of a message on the site was an oversight, then it was a very big oversight indeed.

Tivo, Satellite Radio, and Narrowcasting

2005-07-02T12:15:00.000-04:00

I had a few experiences over the past week or two that made me want to write one last post on narrowcasting, as I think future technologies will allow much more specific targeting. As the Campaign Audit article on narrowcasting put current capabilities,

Narrowcasting is a technique employed by corporate marketers and increasingly by political campaigns. It involves tailoring an influential message for a targeted interest group. Typically, members of the interest group are identified using a mixture of demographic profiling, polling and self-selection.

Self-selected narrowcasting will obviously ensure that your message reaches a good target, as a potential voter who signs up to receive email updates from a campaign is by definition interested. There is almost no waste in the message distribution, but it will always be a limited way to narrowcast.

For targeting non self-selected potential voters, polling can help to identify broad groups that will generally be receptive to your message, but the samples can become so small in the subgroups that the data becomes somewhat meaningless when you try to get specific. A cross-tab of 40 voters isn't going to tell you much.

That leaves demographic profiling as the remaining way to target messages to potential voters in a non-broadcast way, and technological advances in both processing power and consumer research continues to improve the efficacy of this process. But no matter how small the subgroups become (African-American mothers age 25-29 who subscribe to gossip mags and whose husbands work in car manufacturing), we are still fundamentally looking at groups, and not individuals.

Would it be possible to gain more information on individual voters, and thus fine-tune a campaign's predictive power and increase the efficiency of their narrowcasting efforts? I wonder if Tivo might be the answer.

Tivo tracks your television watching and keeps a record of all the shows you watch, how long you watch for, what you decide to record, everything. While most Tivo users are at least somewhat aware of this (since the machine records "suggested shows" based on the other shows the user watches), from what I recall it's a pretty comprehensive record. From an article I read several years ago (sorry, can't even come close to remembering where), Tivo wanted to use this information to eventually provide targeted advertising. If a user always fast forwards through beer commercials, it would make much more sense to give her other commercials that she would actually be inclined to watch. Get enough data, rule out enough types of commercials, and eventually the user would only be seeing a very targeted set of advertising.

While we obviously aren't at this point yet (and Tivo's continued declining market share as a result of the low-budget DVRs pushed by local cable companies may ultimately preclude it), one could see how this could increase the power of narrowcasting. Instead of distributing your message to a group of potential voters who are considered likely to receive it, a campaign can distribute their message to individuals who like to watch political commercials. With more data, perhaps the targeting could even be increased to individuals who like watching political commercials on the outdoor life network, and would therefore be a good target for gun issue commercials.

I'm not sure where this technology will move in the future: is this a viable system? Could viewing data from one medium be extrapolated to other narrowcast mediums (mail, web, even radio)? Would there be a backlash?

Even more interesting, I wonder whether satellite radio has the same tracking mechanisms. A cursory google search this morning didn't turn up much other than this press release from two years ago announcing that Nielsen will start tracking listening on XM; this suggests that statistics can at least be tracked in the aggregate, and I'd assume that, as a recently developed technology, individual listening statistics would have been built in from the beginning. With the amazing growth in this medium, this could ultimately be the playing ground upon which different users first receive different advertisements depending on their preferences.

Perhaps this type of targeting will never be viable, but if it ever does, it could provide a way to distribute broadcast-style messages to narrowcast audiences. Now wouldn't that be the best of both worlds?

Friday Cat Blogging: Lazy Cat Edition

2005-07-02T12:10:00.000-04:00

[Special Saturday Edition]

Isis chilling out in front of my record collection.

Penelope getting her sleep on.

Helping Volunteers Communicate

2005-06-30T16:43:00.000-04:00

One of the first things I learned in this program was the importance of messaging in a campaign. Given the average American attention span and the sheer amount of clutter out there that a campaign has to cut through, it's critical to distill your campaign down into a clear message that voters can latch onto.

While a clear message will obviously help increase the impact of advertisements, speeches, and quotes in the press, it also can have a major impact on the effectiveness of your volunteer communications. When volunteers phone bank or go door to door, they are ostensibly there to persuade potential voters. But oftentimes campaigns don't give them any training on what are convincing messages, and the effectiveness of the volunteer efforts can be wasted.

The Bush campaign clearly had a more coherent message than the Kerry team in this last campaign (of course, that's almost by default, since Kerry didn't even have a message), and one could see how that would make the job of canvassers easier; it is much easier to say "We need steady leadership during these times of change" than "Well, Kerry wouldn't have gone to Iraq in the way Bush did, and wouldn't have put us into debt with tax giveaways to the rich, and..."

On top of that, Matt Taibi's article described how the Bush campaign also distributed a "message of the day" that volunteers could use in their communications with potential voters. In addition to giving the volunteers a subject to focus on (which I think is incredible useful, especially for neophyte canvassers), the campaign used the instant distribution power of the internet to coordinate the message across the entire campaign. Talk about your synergy!

As the fall campaign approaches, someone in Arlington will flip a switch, and the suction will change direction; information will now move primarily from headquarters down to the volunteers. Canvassers in each county will await the message of the day from the campaign, and then, like suburban Paul Reveres, they'll be off to get the word out, by foot or by phone.

Modern presidencies have long used a "message of the day" format to give the press something "new" each day that also helps promote the president's agenda, but this takes it to a whole new level. A voter may get canvassed and listen to the volunteer praise the virtues of the prescription drugs bill, and then later on the evening news see video from a speech by the president on the very same topic. As any media consultant will tell you, repitition is good.

James Verini's article on his experience with the Kerry campaign also brings up another way that a campaign can use the internet to improve its volunteer communications. Verini recounts the almost complete lack of statistics that canvassers had:

No one bothered to brief the ground troops on how to be persuasive or to even get sufficient fact-sheets into their hands. And they didn't take it upon themselves to get educated. I routinely toured neighborhoods with canvassers who were struck dumb when a door opened and an undecided voter asked for specifics.

"But what does Kerry want to do about unemployment, exactly?"

"Um, ah, um..."

"How many people have lost their jobs in the last four years?"

"Ah, um, oh..."

Of course, there were answers to those questions. Kerry proposed tax credits for new jobs created by manufacturers. He wanted to introduce Buy American guidelines in the defense industry and penalize American companies outsourcing jobs overseas. Bush oversaw the loss of about 1.2 million private-sector jobs and allowed 4 million Americans to descend below the poverty line. These facts, which took about two minutes to find out, had the power to sway undecided voters -- I know, because I swayed many with them.

I'm not sure that you could come up with a better example on the importance of giving volunteers the information they need to make a persuasive case. In a campaign the size of Kerry's, there's absolutely no excuse for not getting this info to the volunteers. All it would take would be a few dedicated staffers who can put together a volunteer packet that can be distributed through the web site in a similar way as on-line press packets. Like most intellectual property, the reproduction cost of this information once posted would be zilch, and it would increase the effectiveness of the volunteers substantially.

Sending volunteers out with nothing to say is a waste of resources; volunteers may have all the passion in the world, but if they were natural political communicators they'd probably be getting a paycheck for that talent somewhere. As a result, anything the campaign can do to help them could make a big difference, and crafting a clear and coherent campaign message is a great start (and should obviously be done anyway). Beyond that, the Internet offers a great distribution system for spreading a campaign's messages through its volunteers. From a message of the day to basic facts and talking points that can be used again and again, it's pretty clear that a campaign can benefit from using the volunteer section on its website for more than just capturing contact information.