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DeLay's 75-minute blog

Starting a blog as a politician is not always easy, and Tom DeLay has proved just that. When DeLay recently turned his old campaign address into a blog and made his first post on Sunday, it only took liberal bloggers an hour to turn down the site.

Micah L Sifry of Personal Democracy Forum had this to say about the incidence:

Unfortunately for DeLay, among the first people to notice his outpost in the two-way land of citizen give-and-take, where people speak truth to power, were leading liberal sites like ThinkProgress and Crooks and Liars. In a little over an hour, TomDeLay.com was flooded with comments, nearly all of them negative, many of them flagrantly obscene (and some of them quite funny, like the person who said "everyone already assumes bloggers are unemployed losers...thanks for reinforcing that stereotype").

Since then, DeLay's first post has been taken down, along with 100+ comments. And comments have been disabled on his site. But if you want to read the entrails, you can go to TomDeLaydotcom.blogspot.com, where they have been preserved by a resourceful netizen.

What was DeLay thinking? That people wouldn't talk back?

The DeLay blog was turned back on early Monday morning. The original comments seem to have been removed. It might be a good idea to plan the release of the blog properly.

Update:

More DeLay-stories on Tailrank

The Hill on DeLays new blog career

DeLay enters the Blogosphere,The Galveston Daily News

Online Campaigning 2008

Over at The Bivings Report Todd Zeigler looks towards 2008 and speculates as to how aggressively the contenders running for President will use the Internet in their campaigns. Previewed this week are Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson. Next week Zeigler will turn his attention to the web programs of Wesley Clark, John Edwards, John Kerry and Tom Vilsack.

New study focusing on Facebook as a Campaign Tool

It seems like I have missed yet another important contribution to the debate of whether online campaign tools including blogs can have an impact on elections.

This weeks Personal Democracy Forum article (again, I really like this site, they do an awesome job) on the use of ‘MySpace as a campaign instrument’, lead me to an even more interesting study focusing on the use of Facebook as a Campaign Tool.

The study, conducted by Christine Williams and Jeff Gulati, tries to find a correlation between the support for a candidate's Facebook profile and real-world votes. The goal of the study is to "determine whether candidate postings on the site are a useful viral marketing tool for generating publicity, campaign contributions, and ultimately votes."

I believe this is a really interesting approach to take on the topic. The study is not yet completed, but parts of it can be viewed; here, here and here.

(Interested in reading about the YouTube effect as well? Here is a link)

What's on at RootsCampDC

Interested in knowing what’s being discussed at the RootsCamp 2006, a weekend-long "unconference" for "people (read bloggers) who played a role in the 2006 elections and are prepared to share with others innovations, failures, old wisdom and new discoveries."? Personal Democracy Forum keeps us up to date:

Off to Rootscamp

Rootscamp Note 1

Rootscamp Note 2

Rootscamp Note 3

Rootscamp Wrap-Up

Update

Jerome Armstrong on Rootscamp

CampaignsOnline back in business

Finally things are happening on CampaignsOnline again, and Blog Campaigning will be waiting in anticipation for the latest reports on the 2006 election to be released. Until that happens we will continue to read the CampaignsOnline Blog.

One of the recourses offered on the blog is this article by the Chicago Tribune examining the role of the Internet in campaigns and how it continues to evolve. The CampaiginsOnline blog also debates and argues that Blogging, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Online Donations, and Online Organizing and Communications have become key aspect of political campaigns. Check it out.

 

Personal Democracy Forum workin' hard

The boys down at Personal Democracy Forum are good. If you need proof, take a look at this article by Steven Clift. Its lengthy, but well worth the read. One of the good points he makes is that the problem with democracy really moving online is that up until now, a lot of representatives have been lazy. A system where people can get online and discuss things is great, but not when no one in power or who can make decisions reads it. I also like Steven's idea of sending a personal e-mail to an elected official who you know will reply to let them know you appreciate their cyber presence. Hopefully, this sort of thing will encourage others to get going online.

The Bill is here now.

Espen told me to check out this little article here, as it applies to our site. While the author (Bill Thompson) prefers to make broad statements about the state of things rather than going into detail about the particulars, he says some good stuff. I particularly like the way he identifies the years 2000 and 2006 as belonging to different eras (the post-war era and the 'the first flowering of the network world' respectively). I think that we are not recognizing enough of the changes that have happened in those six, crazy years. Back in the millenium, bloggers were (comparatively) few in number and most people didn't even know what a blog was. Part of our problem with understanding the role that blogs are playing in the world is that we are still trying to slot them in on top of our view of the pre-blog world, rather than realising they didn't just come from nowhere. Events happened, technology changed, society has shifted and we here are blogcampaigning are doing our darndest to try and put it all in perspective for you. Lastly, I want to point out that at one point in his article, Bill mentions that Dell has tried to keep up with the interests of its consumers, but stumbled. Does anyone know what he might be talking about?

How not to blog

It is time for a political blog review again. However, this time I just want to share what I just read in Iain Dale's Guide to Political Blogging in the UK. UK A-List blogger Guido Fawkes  (ranked 1 out of 100 on Dale's Top UK Political Blog-list) has this to say about the blog of David Miliband, Secretary of State for the Environment, in Dale's book:  

"The blogger who breaks all the rules (of how not to blog) is David Miliband, the blogging minister. He doesn't connect with the readers, he writes in the aloof jargon rich language of a true policy wonk. His blog is about as politically honest as Pravda in the days of Stalin. He says it is there "to bridge the gap between politicians and the public" but the first comment on his tax-funded ministerial blog for September 2nd is from a former Labour party press officer and the second from a PR man and Labour councillor. My polite comment was not published, so you get the idea. His blog is more about bridging the gap with people who agree with him… Worst of all he hands down his wisdom in a smug self congratulatory tone. His is a master class in how not to blog."

I think I am starting to like this Guido Fawkes character.

The state of Political Blogging in Asia

New research from Windows Live Spaces shows that: Nearly half of those online in Asia have a blog 74% find blogs by friends and family to be most interesting Young people and women dominate 50% believe blog content to be as trustworthy as traditional media 41% spend more than three hours a week blogging More than 40% have less than 10 visitors per week

Still, Playfuls.com reports that politicians fared poorly across the region with only 14% interested in reading their blogs except in Malaysia where they were quite popular with 20% listing this type of blog as being of interest. The survey however, shows that blogs are a relatively trusted source of information with half of respondents believing that blog content is as trustworthy as traditional media. A quarter of the respondents answered that they believe that the use of blogs is the quickest way to learn about news and current affairs.  Well, it seems to me blogs can be powerful a tool for those politicians who use it as a complimetary communication channel to spread their political message.  

Define 'Netroots'

William Safire looks at the etymological term of ‘netroots’ in the The New York Times.

While Safire in the article argues that term ‘netroots’ is ideologically and politically neutral, Ari Melber of Personal Democracy Forums debates that netroots has developed in the lexicon as a reference to the Internet left, and that many conservative bloggers agree, which is why they’ve staked out their own term, “Rightroots,”, and why some conservatives try to debase the term netroots as “nutroots” or “radical netroots.

However, we will according to Melber be hearing a lot more about the netroots than the rightroots in the future judging by their impact on politics.

Blogs flex their political power in Norway

According to an article in Bergens Tidende (a local newspaper for the second largest city) a politician named Tormod Carlsen might grab the first spot on the list of Venstre, a liberal party, in the local elections in Bergen next year. Currently they are a part of the centre-right coalition that are in charge so it's a sought after spot. Oh yes...how it involves blogs: Well, apparently he just threw out the possibility of trying to grap the top-spot on a blog, against the will of the nomination comittee (which, incidentally, his wife is a part of). According to the article this unleashed a massive wave of support. Possibly even from people who can vote at the nomination meeting... Or not.

Venstre is a party with around 6 % of the popular vote in Bergen. So this could just as well mean that about 20 people in the same party read the same blog and that's all it takes to unleash a wave of massive support in a small party. Also, Carlsen works as a communications advisor, so he might just have realized that it would be more newsworthy if he decided to slap a "blog-label" onto his bid for the top-spot.  And somehow I have a feeling that he'll get more people thinking about his bid if they read it in a newspaper, most people still don't read blogs.

Viral Politics?

I really like this article. I like it because it provides the kind of extremist extrapolation that we often don’t get in political journalism. I know that name recognition alone does not necessarily mean votes for a particular candidate, but it can’t hurt. Spam is certainly not the way to go about doing it, but the potential for bandwagon jumping with the something like the Facebook technology described in this article needs a deeper look. I don’t have exact numbers or the names of any specific study, but I’m sure that there has to be some sort of effect for a campaign when all of a potential voter’s friends are alerted as to whether or not they approve of the candidate.

Ol' School News

Maybe its because it appeared in the newspaper of my old school, but this article appealed to me. Despite the fact that the article is focused more on the music-industry side of things, the basic statements it makes about the PR industry and blogs are worth taking a look at. One thing to remember about the new blog journalism, the author points out, is that many of these journalists are in fact amateurs and more often than not, their sources are simply press releases issued by PR firms. While these same press releases are sent to the more traditional media outlets as well, their journalists have more experience with getting more facts, information, or quotes by digging and looking at other sources. However, as blogs become the dominant form of news media and their authors become more practiced, this will change.

Numbers that might mean something

Bivings Report hotshot Todd Zeigler gives us some great numbers about blogging in his article here. While I don't think many of us are surprised that approximately 1/3 of Americans at least read blogs and that a significat percentage are also actively involved in blogs or take action as a result of blogs, its nice to have some numbers about this kind of thing. However, one comment in the article that took me by surprise was that "swing voters are not really participating (in blogs)." How has this been determined? I think it is much more likely that swinger voters are participating in blogs every bit as much as more strongly-minded voters, but that they use the blogs for information gathering rather than soapboxing.

The main problem with Zeigler's article is that I felt jealous the entire time I was reading it. How come I wasn't invited to the panel discussion? If anyone wants to write a letter of protest about this, you can e-mail it to this address.

A blog this good has bin a Lung time coming

A recent article in AsiaMedia points us in the direction of another blog that has been well integrated into a poltical campaign. Taiwanese mayoral candidate Hau Lung-bin's team seems to have a very firm grasp on the matter. "Voters are not that attracted by campaign platforms," one of them writes "so we first posted Hau's personal stories and experiences on the [first] blog to give voters a better understanding of his character." While I don't read Chinese, I am sure that the comic presented on his blog here will lure more potential voters in than simply talking about his policy. If the comic is updated as regularly as blog should be, then it should not be too difficult for Hau Lung-bin to secure the large, under-29 blogging vote.

More about the Netroots’ impact on the Election 2006

The discussion focusing on the impact of the Netroots on the Election 2006 continues.

According to Ari Melber of The Huffington Post the Netroots’ impact goes beyond wins and losses. Melber argues that by focusing too much about the metric we will miss the role blogs play in the bigger picture. We should focus more on the power bloggers can have in prioritizing substantive issues and changing the direction of campaigns early on in the election race. Melber uses the example of Senator Gorge Allen to state his argument:

Sen. George Allen began the general election as a supposedly unbeatable incumbent and presidential favorite, which seemed to inoculate him from candidate scrutiny. So when much of the Virginia and national media failed to question Allen's despicable record on race, (with the exception of Ryan Lizza), blogger Mike Stark confronted Allen directly about his use of racial epithets, which Allen denied -- the story broke a month later. The Allen campaign later assaulted Stark for asking questions at a public event. This was a courageous example of blog activism prioritizing substantive issues and changing the direction of a statewide campaign. It definitely helped Webb win, but even if he had not, it is the kind of netroots impact that's hard to measure but hugely helpful to the Democratic Party.

I agree with Melber; while it is important to capture the significance of blogs through statistics and quantifications (this is still something we have to do more of) it is also necessary to look for the factors that is harder to measure. Blog Campaigning will try to look more at this in the coming weeks.