Working the Circuit: 1.4

Every once in a while I get a small shock when I see who is following me on Twitter. Those two lovely ladies I thought were legitmate fans? Yeah, not so much. So the presence of porn marketers on twitter should not be a surprise. However, I did find one other follower a bit of a surprise. Augustine25 is not somebody I know. I’m not even sure why he/she is following me. That is, I didn’t know why I was being followed until I realized that Augustine25 was having a Twitter debate with someone I am following, Drdigipol. The debate, at turns sarcastic and informative (sometimes both), was a broad ranging political debate that touched on many of the issues one which the American right and left are facing off. You know, the Hitler-Obama comparisons, etc.

I have spent a lot of time wondering what the tactic in following someone who is arguing with someone you follow may be. Perhaps Augustine wants to see what his opponents followers think. If some might be moved to join the fray against their colleague? I’d welcome any comments on this.

On a separate note, joining the mailing lists for two separate online campaigns is proving very telling. My email inbox is full of requests to sign online petitions to legalize bhangi and end the death sentence. We’ll see about that. Perhaps the current administration can do both and I can follow Augustine25 as he/she tears his/her hair out over it.

A Journalist Unafraid

When it comes to web based social media, 2004 seems decades removed from the current landscape. Surely a book written in 2004, before the arrival of facebook and twitter, would have little to tell us about where things are “going.” Not so. Dan Gillmor’s We the Media: Grassroots Journalism for the People, By the People does an excellent job framing the overall direction mass media and journalism are taking and how new internet applications are driving this change. For the most part, Gillmore is enthusiastic about the possibilities for decentralized media today. He spins tales of larger than life bloggers and citizen reporters who are steadily replacing mass media outlets.

As a journalist, Gillmore is, surprisingly, unsympathetic to the diminished influence newspapers and traditional media hold. In fact, he singles out traditional media as a potential threat to innovation and future applications of citizen reporting. Keep an eye on them, he suggests, as they are likely to force copyright and protections to protect their interests.

Gillmore’s analysis of the three main stakeholder groups in modern web media is spot on. Journalists, newsmakers and former audience are a concise and telling division of the constituents. Of these, Gillmore’s understanding of traditional media’s former audience is most useful. This newly empowered group is the driving force behind the growth of news by the people, for the people. Equally interesting is his own interpretation of the journalists’ lot. Gillmore isn’t threatened by informed and verbose readers who can comment on his writing; he finds it “empowering.’ Of course, not every journalist out there may take such a prosaic view of things. Nevertheless, Gillmore does well not to dwell on the gloom and doom surrounding newspapers and traditional media.

Gillmore’s premise may be five years old, but with every passing his day, his predictions and analysis grow in validity.

Working the Circuit 1.3:

To get a sense of how different campaigns are using facebook, twitter and myspace to champion an issue, I joined the mailing list and discussion groups of two campaigns: The Marijuana Policy Project and Amnesty USA’s End the Death Sentence. So far I have been reading comments and conservations on the campaign’s facebook pages and have been checking the MPP’s Twitter feed. For obvious reasons, I do not want to actually follow the MPP Tweets formally. Both campaigns have active membership although Amnesty’s campaign seems to draw more active memberships into blog discussions and online events.

I have been spending more time on twitter. I’m still not convinced this is for me, but I have had some interesting exchanges and chased down some interesting wormholes. One of the people I followed linked to an interesting blog post about how an old school friend de-friended her over politics. I found it a funny and stirring commentary on how we engage with each other. I spent more time searching blogs with similar writings and came across some interesting online tutorials for how to de-freind on facebook (including tips on diplomacy). Fascinating.

Politics To-Go?

Thumbs up to the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet (IPDI) at George Washington University. IPDI continues to churn out amazingly practical tools and guidebooks to help the navigate the intersection of political influence and the Internet and other digital technology. The Politics-to-Go Handbook: A Guide to Using Mobile Technology in Politics is another well-structured product. Bringing together ten different subject matter experts to share their experience with mobile technology on political campaigns and their outlook on the future of mobile technology is no small feat.

While the chapter range in style, level of detail, and practical advice, they are all useful. One chapter provides clear guidance on using mobile technology to fundraise while another raises the issue of user privacy and protection, an emerging and important area of debate that will likely frame the parameters of mobile advocacy in the future. The book’s final chapter is a reflection on America’s slow start to mobile technology and the implications this may have on global competiveness. The latter subject makes a perfect concluding chapter leaving the reader with a sense of portence that reinforces the relevance of mobile technology to more than reality contest shows.

In trademark IPDI fashion, the book has a top ten take-aways for those unable to complete the entire book. The introduction is also excellent. Even better is the podcast available from the IPDI website.

Finding the Blogger-King

I often wonder who decides what constitutes a “power blogger” or an “A-list blogger.” I mean, having them makes sense. I should know. I will generally watch movies that ratchet-up their “golden-leaf” status. Or I’ll see how many stars a new artist gets from Rolling Stone Mag. We all like things to be rated. Hierarchy is important. There’s no getting around that. But, I’ll be honest. I’ve read some blogs considered as bloggie-award candidates and not been moved. At all. I’ve also read some blogs doing random searches on blogger and come upon some amazing stuff. So who decides? What are the metrics? What constitutes a top-blogger?

These questions take on significant importance when you’re looking at political blogs. Why? Because the political blogosphere is fast becoming the platform for political dialogue. Understanding how blogs are ranked is tied in with how we assess the climate of political dialogue. The key to understanding the importance of a political blog is understanding how influential it is. David Karpf gets this. The Blogosphere Authority Index is a novel way of measuring a blogger’s influence by aggregating a number of existing blog ranking mechanisms. Taken separately, these rating systems only tell part of the story. But by combining systems that report on site visits, interactive participation, socio-metric patterns and political blogger interest, the BAI offers a much deeper assessment of a blog’s influence.

Krap’s findings are significant. Understanding blogger influence is likely to lead to significant political campaign strategy shifts and holds potential for enhanced online marketing. Also, it helps us understand who in the blogosphere really deserves the laurels.

Picking Students Over Banks

October 7, 2009

In the next few weeks, the US Senate will review the House-approved Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act. We should all hope that the Senate will move quickly to pass this legislation as-is. The bill expands student loan programs by ending subsidies to private lenders who, for too long, have been turning a tidy profit on the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP). Killing FFELP is a small sacrifice of mostly nostalgic significance. In the wake of controversial bailouts to the financial sector, the idea of continuing, what essentially amounts to a grab-bag for lenders, seems utterly out of tune. But even without TARP’s bad aftertaste, ending subsidies to financial institutions makes sense.

There are a host of reasons why.

The most obvious is money. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the government will save close to $87 billion over 10 years. Those savings will fund lower interest rates for students and add roughly $40 billion in additional Pell Grants. Since these grants are not repaid, more young Americans will enter the workforce with less debt. This is significant when you consider that Americans carry more individual debt than any nation in the world and that the current economic crisis is closely tied to this predicament.

The new act will be relatively painless. The government already runs direct loan programs and has the capacity to manage more. Getting rid of the middle man is just a good business decision. Keeping the subsidies alive at the behest of banks and their advocates follows a perverse logic that suggests national spending priorities are designed to sustain overhead, not achieve results. The priority should be on expanding access to education, not funding banks.

Oddly enough, it seems the government may even do a better job of getting its student loan money back. If current trends are anything to go by, ending FFELP will actually help curb rising student loan defaults. Even before the current recession, subsidized loans defaulted at a greater rate than direct loans. While all default rates for all loans have increased since the recession hit, recent Department of Education data shows default rates on subsidized private student loans are accelerating at a much faster rate than direct loans.

The poor default rates on private loans are only part of the picture. Even more alarming are the rising college drop-out rates in America. Often citing debt as a major reason for dropping out, more and more young Americans are leaving school without their degrees or diplomas. In 1965, When FFELP was enacted, the college dropout rate in the United States was 20%. Today, the Department of Education estimates that 50% of college entrants never graduate. It’s a telling equation: although more and more students take subsidized private loans, fewer and fewer are graduating.

The bill will do more than save money or curb drop out rates. It will expand access to higher education and reshape America’s workforce. Pell grants help fund undergraduate study and technical training that could revolutionize a US workforce that is losing pace against China, India and others. America has the best private universities and colleges in the world. Ending subsidized loans will not change that. It will give more Americans access to that education and improve other higher education programs such as community colleges and technical schools.

It’s no surprise that the bill’s main criticisms come from the financial services industry and their stalwarts on Capitol Hill. FFELP has been a sweet deal for many of them. In the absence of any substantive arguments for maintaining subsidies, the scattered objections to the new bill verge on the ridiculous: students will need to sign a form in person; government bureaucracy will confuse students, and so on.

Thankfully, this one does not need to be debated along the traditional grow-vs.-shrink-government-line. This is not a government takeover. Banks can, and will, continue to loan money to students. Unless they have a personal fortunate, most post graduate student in America borrow money from banks. Banks will continue to service the financial needs of such students.

But the banks are not who the Senate need to think about. This bill is about America’s schools, her students, her very future. Ending subsidies and providing more funding for education and training is critical. Congress knows this. Opposition to the bill is flaccid and, despite the de rigueur partisan House vote count last month, nobody is really fighting to keep FFELP. The reasons are obvious, and the Senate would do well to act accordingly.

Working the Circuit: 1.2

I’m finally twittering. I have a handful of followers and a number of people I am following. Last week I tweeted about some of the new Gates Foundation public service ads in support of US Government Foreign Assistance. I thought they were fairly effective. I also highlighted a recent digital media event I went to at Georgetown. That event was picked up by a blogger for the “one” site. The organizer and I had an interesting exchange offline about the challenges to media coverage of Africa. I also caught up on some of the tweets from my company’s feed. I didn’t realize we had one. It’s not very active and only has a handful of followers. I think there needs to be some thinking about what value there is in corporate twittering. Frankly, there could be some thinking on personal twittering as well. I mean, some folks can tweet all night long. I feel major twitter inadequacy. I also confess that I will not be able to tweet every hour, on the hour. Not even close. For one thing, I just don’t have that much to say. Also, I like my job and would like to keep it.

I Had limited time on Facebook this week. I did, however, look for Facebook groups in support of a public option for healthcare reform. I followed some of the discussions on the “No Public Option, No Vote” group page. I was curious that a movement which supposedly has the support of over 50,000,000 American has less than a thousand members. I noticed the group was actively working to recruit more supporters so perhaps that will change. Some of the members had useful links to other webpages with useful information and good articles supporting a public option.

Skinhead or Environmentalist, it Matters Little

It can’t be easy to take the writing of 15 web practitioners and experts and turn them into a cohesive guide for using social media sites as a political tool. Julie Barko Germany does precisely this in Person-to-Person-to-Person, her collection of essays on social networking. What’s striking about the book is not the distinction in the writings of Ms. Barko and her colleagues, it’s the similarity in the assumption of reader agendas made by her contributors. Moving an idea forward, advocating for policy change, political action. All of these seem to be the driving assumption of web practitioners today. Isn't this the reason we are all online? What else would they write about, I suppose. Surely no one needs a handbook on how to use facebook to connect with friends of your grandparents. Or how to embarrass grade school bullies using youtube. Actually, wait. That last one sounds pretty useful. I am trying to make a point that the worth of social networking is defined, by those who are pioneers in the field, almost entirely as a tool for political action. Much of the guidance and orientation material on social networking assumes those using social media sites have such an agenda. But enough on that. It’s actually a great read. Highly informative, and generally useful.

The essays that make-up the book are all written by subject matter experts. Some provide lessons in the form of case-studies, such as the examination of the environmental movement’s mobilization of allies. Others provide specific guidance on tactical approaches to online mobilization such as the use of email campaigns. Some of the contributions conceptualize a project challenge, others seek to address user considerations. Some are high-level, some are very focused. Amazingly, all of these contributions do not overlap in terms of their take-away value and all of the writings reinforce the top ten tactics outlined at the book’s opening. Those tactics, serve as bell-weather indicators for social networking organizers. As diverse as they are, the books subsequent chapters demonstrate how important those “commandments” are.

Its worth noting, as DrDigipol does, that some of this guidance was used by some of the internet’s earliest, albeit unsavory, pioneers, the white supremacist movement. His blog analyzing the early manifesto for online mobilization by Milton Kleim is informative, if not slightly harrowing. Kleim’s guidance to North American white supremacists is, in fact, a level-headed view of the potential and challenges to using the internet to mobilize. Relatively invective-free, the writing outlines many of the same tips and guidance Ms. Barko provides; make it simple, trust but verify and so on. It appears these rules for effective online collaboration hold true for anyone using the web to advance an idea or a cause. The nature of that cause matters little.