The Web Difference

The Web effect on politics?:

Apologies for misquoting, misstating, misrepresenting, and missing completely.

DW – a photographer is coming to shoot us because we are typical- (or good-) looking

DW shows us the Mike Gravel Helter Skelter X youtube video
He’s running for President as a libertarian, and today we are talking about whether the web makes a difference to politics.

We have a panel of experts, as well as a bunch of readings.

DW doesn’t have a grand thesis, but wants to go through the Dean campaign stuff.

First thing he’d like to look at is Jim Moore’s rise of the superpower. JM was running the show from VT in the last few months of Dean’s campaign, and it was definitely on his mind when he wrote this.

What does he mean?

He’s talking about a movement. He focused on policy initiatives and people reacting to certain things going on in the world. He mentioned people speaking out against the US government.

DW: The Second Superpower is a lefty progressive politics. How is it different from the first superpower (the US)?

To: Instead of armies or economic superpowers, it’s sort of a collection of people that get things done not through force but through collective effort.

DW: there have been such things before, such as nuclear disarmament movement. So what does he think is new about this?

Aa: There’s no real leader of it

Co: It’s like a school of fish or ants

DW: emergent democracy. What is that?

To: clustering and coping

DW: those are two examples of emergence, but what is the emergence they are talking about?

Co: new emergence is more direct, not as filtered

DW peculiar role of individuals in this. In the second superpower, individuals play a greater role. Back to emergence, which is a key term. If you’re looking at insects, there’s a problem because you can’t figure out how termites can bring about these beautiful nets. Their brains are smaller than the amount of brain we lose in a sneeze, yet they do this. But if u give them a simple rule, such as chew what’s in front of you, and spit to the left, and if you cant spit to the left spit up. This algorithm
Rise of unexpected phenomena out of a group that looks like chaos on the ground
The emergence of incredible complexity out of simple rules. You can’t predict what will happen because the interactions are too complex on first sighting.
You have much richer interactions in this new second superpower than simply the act of voting and it leads to structures. You don’t need a queen of the termites’ nest. It will happen not by magic but what happens through interaction. Ordered, coherent, w/o top down control.

Mi: didn’t see it the reading that way. There are some leaders.

Meg: Yes, but there aren’t three people in charge

KB: use of term second superpower is a false characterization. It’s a tool in the toolbox for everyone to use.

To: difference between the two articles. Moore sees the movement itself as leadership, and Johnson sees a need for more leadership. They are disagreeing about interpretation/looking at different aspects.

DW: Moore says Second superpower should be the balance to US.

KB: Second superpower would not exist if 1st superpower fell. They aren’t two separate things because very different

DW agrees

KB: difference in autonomy. 2nd depends on 1st.

DW this turns 2nd into a movement. Political parties are not a lot like movements. they’re move like corporations . They will change their product to stay in business. Moore gives as examples global warming, Kyoto, land mind movement (had Princess Dianna, but not a pres or a ceo)

Aa: I still have trouble with this… the power to do what? The iraq war? Bush getting elected?

Co – ability to set the gloabal agenda, what will be discussed and whats on peoples mind

KP– might think what they are talking about is what everyone is talking about but not true

Dw – lets say what moore says is true, what would happen

To – he says to think about the world bank, which could work closely with world organizations to get them on their on their side. Lobby the UN, American red cross, to try to get their policies implemented

DW: thinks toms aiming low. Why would lobbying work? What else?

Tom – I was being realistic. UN and world bank would become part of the movement, and eventually push peace, his ultimate goal

DW: I assume moore was thinking: he’s a left wingist progressive politics guy, work on Dean, really unhappy w one super power left in the world and many of their policies. Hoping there will be a distributed group of people that will have the same heft as the ones w the power. This distributed force in the world will consist of the best of the web, thus fulfilling the ideal of democracy beyond simply voting. Countervailing the force of the pursuit of power.
Less interested as a functioning political org as much as how a distributed group of ppl might take up politics

ToTtrippi – intro to his Dean campaign book. What did u think of it?

Ju: Didn’t know about Dean campaign, reminded me of obama.

To: – maybe a little self indulgent.

DW: makes sense for him to open w that given the circumstances

To – maybe not the truth

DW – I was involved in the campaign, and friends w trippi. A lot of controversy about his role in the loss. Many people thought he failed to mobilize ppl on the ground in iowa. But I can verify that he knew they were going to <s>win</s>lose. Is he describing Moores 2nd superpower?
A campaign run by the people.

Ri : just because people were enthusiastic doesn’t mean it’s a campaign run by the ppl.

DW: unclear what he means by campaign run by the ppl. He has a few examples, but not many and very repetitive.

KP – how is this diff from traditional web difference but w better technology. Is this fundamentally different?

DW: I believe it is. Give some examples?

KP – movement based around a particular idea.

DW: what I thought was different. When he describes elsewhere how dean campaign became an internet campaign, it was about how to raise the money, needed 100 mil, but might be possible to raise a little bit of money from a lot of ppl (long-tail) instead of doing sequential big events, so started thinking about the internet. Obscure governor raised tens of millions of dollars. Kerry campaign raised a boatload of money over the internet, but turned off other side of the dean vehicle. Doesn’t agree w term campaign by the people. (except maybe yellow bat example from the blog). If that’s what run by the people means then its not interesting.

Something else was going on: the campaign wanted it to be a peoples campaign w the recognition that the traditional way mitigates against that (extremely top down). Organizing foot soldiers. Extremely hierarchical, top down.

Reagn introduces the message of the day – very controlled, hierarchical
But can’t just reverse it. Because 680k ppl are too much for dean to listen to
So had the idea instead to enable the grassroots to talk amongst themselves and that works. Want to allow supporters to find each other. Techniques included use of meetup.com, monthly real world mtgs, coordinated and encouraged by online activity. Drive ppl from web to face to face. And by inventing social networking software. Open source software to enable people to register, say where they are, what there interests are, so they can organize locally w each other, allowed thousand of groups to pop up, i.e. special interests (environment), howards for howard, etc.
And also put in a blog. Enthusiastic supporter dropped into the campaign and seemed unfiltered and uncorporatized. Evident in the blog and they allowed and encouraged talking about what mattered to people and allowed to argue.
Lack of control changed the campaign.
Not to say that people were running the campaign. Policies came top down but did try to create enthusiastic supporters of a relatively unknown candidate
Example: Campaign would get supporters to write to undecided democrats in iowa. Campaign consciously didn’t provide a template. Didn’t want ppl writing campaign sales literature. DW housed a writing party, and some of the stuff was horrible.

Agreement, disagreement?

KP: is that all different from a traditional structure of a campaign? Seems like a new and interesting way to build buzz about your candidate. Its not actually different, and even it were, its not that important

DW: it is shockingly diff from the normal way that campaigns are run, which are always all about control. Marketing campaign where u win by having a tightly controlled message that you spread.

One of the criticisms of Dean was not enough top down. Young foreigners coming into Iowa turned ppl off.

Ni: points out that the Dean website/blog became a mouthpiece after he started to fall apart.

DW – yes. Not entirely obvious why he was unable to cope

Aa – internet makes is easier to exploit make viral campaign gaffes, so can encourage campaigns to be more vanilla

DW: trippi went on to work for Edwards. “ I feel pretty” youtube clip. Edwards combing his hair before an interview. Edwards got asked bout it. Said he was human and had a moment of vanity. Trippi did a clip to “hair” from hair w a bunch of weird hair and asking, do u care about hair or about important issues
Is web making a difference at a natl level?

CK: the aesthetic of the campaign. Maybe not the policies. Works for obama bc his policy is not so standard. I.e. “yes we can” video – hiphop

Se – huckabee and clinton used it quite a bit. huckabee for his humor (chuck Norris). Hillary’s youtube campaign to make it a personal conversation – she does better in smaller settings. She’s sitting on couch; obama’s at a speech.

Da – interent has affected the campaign from without because everyone has to be on message at all times or the internet will kill them, ie b Clinton might’ve had trouble. Need even greater message discipline.

Me – humanizes, endorsements from people from way back when (hillary)

KB – humanizing and message discipline are different ends of something u have to weigh. Also, campaigning on the internet is ridiculously cheap on the internet. So the effect lends towards closer to perfect information for the votes because there’s more of it out there. Allows people to gain more support and fundraise in ways in which they couldn’t before. (ron paul)

To – you’re always on the record

Do – control over image lost for better or for worse.

Da – allows you to fight back to sound clips. Ie obama speech. Forces media to discuss it in a more nuanced way as well because now people have access to the entire speech and millions have seen it.

DW- political campaigns and marketing have been similar – keep it simple to reach as many people as possible, so diff to get a campaign to be more specific. Specificity costs votes, so tend towards simplicity, bumper sticker slogans. Web tends towards more complication. So the web allows propagation of sounds bites but also allows for more info. One more example: when hillary announced on her website that she was running, on a couch (cheaper than to buy a half hour of tv time but I also assume that she didn’t want to hand over to the networks which 15 seconds to play over and over)

Mi – I think message discipline is lost, but image control is not lost.

Ri – can put more stuff out, didn’t have as much control over image then, and harder to respond. Still a back and forth, but u get more control over your image in that sense

Ch/H– dilution of image as well – obama girl, yes we can, both help, but took down myspace site

Ju – shift, two front war vs mass media and individuals on internet

Se – people realize that hard to trust either front, so more interested in the candidates actual material – enhances control

Ch/H– the identity of the candidates is also encompassed by who supports them (yes we can video v lame hillary video)

DW – on one hand, in marketing, try to show your demographic driving the car, but fan w cam phone dilutes (person that leaked hair video). Perhaps control over image is the wrong question.
Question I want to raise – enabling trusting supporters to trust one another that is not a bunch of points relating up but more like a movement where we’ll all know eachother. Campaigns are out in myspace doing this stuff.

Ri – we just take it for granted at this point. We would be really surprised if a candidate didn’t have a forum, etc.

DW – the fact that people take it for granted is remarkable

What was on the board:

Aesthetics – hiphop, humor, personal, conversational, web meme, humanizes
Policy – not so much
Message discipline – net amplifies
More info for voters – fight against sound bites
Minor candidates can uyn
Control over image lost (for better or worse), lost, diluted, enhanced, shifting