ICTlogy

Notes from the workshop Citizen Politics: Are the New Media Reshaping Political Engagement? held in Barcelona, Spain, on May 28-30th, 2009. More notes on this event: citizen_politics_2009.

New and old strategies of political communication. How to build a 2.0 political movement
Jordi Segarra, Segarrateres

End of a model to do politics. Now, politics is personal, is individual, is targetable, is viral.

Individuals, thanks to user-friendly Internet, have become their own news reporters, and the market can segment at the individual-level targets.

Politics: From a monologue to a dialogue, to a conversation. And messages are no longer aimed to the group, but to the individual. And the individual has a conversation with the campaign. 35% of adult Internet users have a profile in a social networking site (SNS).

Targeting

Segmentation and targeting. Clear differences between who voted for Obama and McCain: Obama got clear majorities amongst youngsters, women, non-whites (african-americans, latinos, asians and others), lower-income classes, lower-educated (and higher- ones too) voters.

A major difference: 69% of first-time voters voted for Obama (vs. 30% for McCain) and two thirds decided long before the election that they’d be voting Obama.

Through technology, everything is targetable, and the tech-toolkit of Obama’s campaign was really wide.

Through targeting, all politics is viral. Let the campaign flow instead of trying to control it.

Video: Crush On Obama, 100% non-official.

Logobama’08: everyone could create their own Obama campaign logo based on a simple official logo. But the results, were unofficial merchandising that pervaded everything.

In general, Obama directly contacted more people (26%) than McCain, reaching an average of 8-point gap in contact rate.

Virality

Politics are likely to become viral, but maybe not in the short run. TV remains dominant… though no longer exclusive. But, 30% of people surfing the Internet are watching television at the same time.

Twitter surges past Digg, by Erick Schonfeld: will it kill Facebook?

His Choice ad.

Old Media Transformation

Rapid response campaign: using old media (TV) in new ways, creating ads in few hours as responses to other ads or to public debates.

The Path to Change

The center of the campaign is the candidate.

You can change the tactics, but not the strategy.

50 states campaign, aimed towards mobilization.

Don’t try to convince voters: involve people on the campaign. The key to victory was a grassroots campaign.

13 million e-mails on my.barackobama.com database, 2 million volunteers working on the field.

It’s the network, stupid!

Government vs. Campaigning

Is governing different from campaigning? The answer is The White House 2.0, with pages in Facebook and MySpace, profiles in Twitter and Flickr and Youtube, blogs in the website, etc.

Discussion

Q: How could Obama’s campaign be transposed in Europe? A: Negative campaigning and unofficial merchandising are very different to translate into Europe. The problem being that there are no emotions in politics, people (in Europe) do not put emotion into campaigns or messages.

Q: What will happen to “the list” (the 13 million people list on Obama’s database)? How will they keep engaged? A: It’s difficult to act in campaign-war-like times during government-times. Aiming for hope and change is much more difficult from the government than during campaigning — especially if you were in the opposition. In the government, people want more answers, real ones, than engagement. But the least you could do is not let the website die, to keep on contacting the voter, etc.

Q: Isn’t it a bottom-and-up approach instead of a bottom-up approach only? It is my guess that what disappeared was not the top of the pyramid, but the middle of the pyramid.

Q: Is it really true that there was more and new people voting, an increase in the turnout, or just that SNSs were used to squeeze the most of partisans? A: The results in fundraising might tell that it is not true that no new voters came and voted: partisans engaged in fundraising and did it from outside the boundaries of the “usual suspects”.

Q: How one can tell what technology will work or will be just hype? A: Every campaign, candidate, city, etc. are different. Putting all your eggs in one basket is simply a bad idea. All campaigns must begin with research and find your potential target — not the other way round. Numbers, figures and data. And research must be embedded in the campaign, iterative and being nurtured with the feedback of the campaign itself.

Eva Aduiza: In Spain, you tend to mobilize supporters, not swinging voters and even less opponents. Is it the same thing in the US? A: The problem with this approach is that the database is it a drawer. What is needed is datamining, knowing who’s on your database. And then, we can start working either on supporters or in swingers. But there’s a previous and much more important stage that is usually forgotten.

More Information

• Manuel Castells: Politics and Internet in Obama era, blog-post by Ismael Peña-López on a Manuel Castells seminar.

Live notes at the research seminar 2.0 electoral campaigns: how do the new web tools reconfigure local electoral campaigns? by Rachel Gibson. Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Castelldefels (Barcelona), Spain, May 21th, 2009.

2.0 electoral campaigns: how do the new web tools reconfigure local electoral campaigns?
Rachel K. Gibson

• What kind of contents? Impact of content on online campaigning and parties (supply-side)
• Effects on voters attitudes and actual behaviour (demand-side)

Internal side of e-campaigning and factors of web campaign strategy

• Web strategies: to what extent are parties following an organisational strategy in the use of the web
• What’s driving this strategy?
• What effect does web campaigning has? Are old practices being removed and being replaced by web campaigning? How do internal party power hierarchies being affected?
• Digital divide: organisational resources (the capacity of the party) and individual characteristics (demographics, etc.)
• Context: level of competition, Internet use in constituency, size of the electorate, professionalisation of legislature, etc.

Some general findings

• Overall party status identified as most important factor in determining overall presence and quality of sites
• Overtime this has been questioned, particularly since e-campaigning entered the Web 2.0 era. A participatory Web is a much different framework than setting up just a static website.
• Suggests (a) that equalisation hypothesis gaining ground over normalisation ideas; (b) that there may be differentiation in use of web tactics
• If party status (supply side) no longer dominant factor then what explains uptake and usage of technology?

Demand-side explanations of e-campaigns

• Size of audience: how many Internet users (as a share of the population) and how many of these are visiting the canditates’ or the parties’ websites
• Mobilisation potential: in general, e-campaigning has been seen to focus on partisans and “preach to converted”, leaving aside “pockets” of potential mobilisation

Organisational implications

• Obama blended offline and online campaigning: no more “partial” approaches, but holistic crossmedia ones, and integrating old and new techniques
• Obama’s campaign was based on grassroots and community based, challenging the established power structures and the “war room model”
• In local campaigns, there’s evidence of an increase of new (online) methods trading-off with face to face traditional methods, and with an increase of the control in local operations

Research questions

• Is there a difference across parties in the extent to which they adopt 2.0 strategies?
• Do differences account for demand-side reasons?
• Is web campaigning supplementing or displacing traditional methods?
• Is web campaigning decentralizing or concentrating campaigning strategies?

Data from the Australian Candidate Study (ACS) and Australian Election Study (AES), both for 2004.

Australian e-politics timeline

• 1994 ALP “first” party website.

• 1996-2001 National parties move online but subnational presence is patchy. Experimental and cautious approach.
• 2004- expectations heightened for Internet to lay a role
• 2007 “the next election will be the one (Internet election)” feeling, though the 2007 election already credited for having being really present online and much relying from initiatives on YouTube, MySpace… A novelty in 2007 election was the non-partisan site/initiative GetUp! based on volunteers.

Now: The ALP, pioneer of the Internet, out of government for 11 years. What’s happened online?

• The general landscape of candidates and parties online has not changed
• But the ratio of candidates online in major parties has increased, while in minor parties has even decreased
• Party pages (73% of parties got one) still are the main platforms for online campaigning. Personal sites, e-news and social networking sites follow (circa 40%), and rest of platforms (podcast, videodiary, blog…) have minoritary use.

Factor analysis to identify candidate’s use of web campaining showed three factors: web 2.0, web 1.0 and personal sites. Major parties focus on personal sites, and the Greens have a more 2.0 approach.

Concerning voters, their use of the Internet to get information during elections is steadily increasing. Indeed, mainstream media (radio, TV, newspapers) are losing followers while the Internet is both in absolute and in relative terms gaining weight and is by far the most used means where to get information. But, mainstream news are nevertheless the preferred option when surfing the web for elections information.

Factor analysis to identify voter’s use of the Internet showed twofactors: campaigning sites (parties’ and candidate’s, etc.) and web 2.0 (mainstream news and media websites, youtube, blogs, etc.). Internet usage does not seem to be different according to social background and socioeconomic status, but it is different according to web use: people intensively using/visiting web 2.0 applications/sites are more prone to vote Green or more progressive parties.

Traditional campaigning has been affected by online activities: less doorknocking, direct mailing or telephoning; same mainstream media appearances; less campaign workers. While web campaigning has grown over time: more effort on personal websites, considering Internet as important in the campaign, etc.

Personal website strategies are not trading-off with traditional campaign, but e-mailing is: the more e-mailing, the less traditional campaigning.

Local candidates are becoming more self-sufficient and it somehow seems that some degree of decentralization has been made possible through online campaigning.

Conclusions

• The web 2.0 is leading to a differentiation among parties in how they engage in e-campaigning.
• Candidates appear to share a commitment with web 1.0 approaches; minor parties are more likely to go 2.0; major parties favour personalized independent web sites.
• Greens’ supporters are more likely to be users of the web 2.0; the demand seems to be driving different web strategies.
• Not a displacement effect between traditional vs. online campaigning; the web enhances traditional techniques
• e-Campaigning do not reduce the local level actors and increase a centralized national power; if any, just the contraty

Discussion

Ismael Peña-López: Concerning uptake, usage, etc., is it a matter of party status or budget? The web 2.0 is way cheaper. Could this be the reason for more recent uptake? Gibson: we don’t have data about budgets but it looks like budgets would be a perfectly feasible aspect that could explain some issues. On the other hand, we should be seeing some normalization in this aspect (if the web 2.0 is cheaper, it’s cheaper for everyone), and still some differences between parties exist, and some of them within the web 2.0 arena.

Ramon Ribera: Minor parties don’t get as much coverage in mainstream media as major parties do. This should push them towards a major web 2.0 presence. Gibson: Yes, but we are also seeing that what major parties are doing is bring web 2.0 within their websites (e.g. embedding YouTube videos on their sites), so that these sites become hubs of web 2.0 content, where it is combined. So it might not exactly be a matter of shifting towards a more participatory web or a cheaper one.

Mike Jensen: Are candidates turning a necessity (budget) into a virtue (participation)? Gibson: This is definitely an option. But candidates and parties are also “spending time” that saves little money (and time is money, indeed). So there seems to be evidence that even if it might be true that they’re turning a necessity into a virtue, it is also true that there’s a political will to engage online and go ahead with new (e-)campaigning techniques.

Rosa Borge and Ana Sofía Cardenal: Spanish parties have broadly adopted Web 2.0 tools, being the major parties the ones seemingly the more committed with this approach. Nevertheless, partisans are by far the ones that more intensively use these tools to engage and mobilize.

Ismael Peña-López: in Spain, most parties are using web 2.0 tools, but more than using them they are pestering them, using them for unidirectionally broadcasting same as ever in different ways — this is not the case of partisans and some individual politicians.

Rachel K. Gibson: web 2.0 might find a better ground between elections, to maintain the movement, rather than during campaigns.

Some conversations with Ricard Faura — head of the Knowledge Society Service at the Catalan Government — about my recent research have triggered some questions that need being clarified.

The following lines are a very simplified approach on what I think should be the design of public policies to foster ICT usage in a place like Catalonia or Spain, though it is my guess that it can be extrapolated to most developed countries facing similar problems like Spain’s.

Barriers for adoption

In general — and again, being really simplistic with the analysis — there are three main issues identified as a barrier for ICT adoption in Spain and a third issue that, unlike developing countries, it is identified as not being a barrier:

• Age (and some would add gender) is a barrier: younger generations are way more online than older ones, being dramatic in elder people
• Skills present a barrier too, as people do not feel confident, or even threatened, by Information and Telecommunication Technologies
• Indeed, most people not using ICTs also state that they find them useless. Thus, utility and attitude are also a dire barrier and the one with a strongest trend.
• Last, and in general terms, infrastructures and affordability are not a barrier or, at least, they are not stated as being as important as other reasons for lack of usage.

Critique

I believe that the previous barriers can be summed up in just one single barrier: lack of utility of ICTs, with a stress on lack of utility on being online.

This lack of utility can be explained in two ways:

• A real lack of utility, mainly due to lack of digital content and services that fits one’s purposes, be them personal or professional: for leisure, for activism, for work, for training en education, for health, etc.
• A perceived lack of utility, mainly due to lack of e-awareness and not knowing the benefits (or a real measure of the costs) that ICTs can bring to one’s life. This lack of e-awareness, of course, can be accompanied by the lack of several digital skills, which create a vicious circle: less digital skills, less e-awareness; and so.

What about age? I believe that youngsters — besides the fact that they find ICTs not technologies but something that was always there since they were born — have already found ICTs useful: they absolutely fit their needs in matters of education (the Internet is full of stuff) and in matters of socialization (the “communication” part of ICTs), which are the two main “occupations” of people under 16.

Policies

So. We’ve got digitally illiterate people and people that cannot find in the Internet anything worth being connected. What to do from the government?

Concerning utility, my own research shows that pull strategies are the ones that work. It’s absolutely coherent, on the other hand, with trying the Internet to make sense for unconnected people. More hardware or software or broadband will just put stress on the citizen to use something for “nothing at all”. In my opinion, policies should be threefold:

• A high commitment to put public services and the dialogue government-citizenry online, by means of e-Administration and e-Government
• Help the private sector not to have an online presence, but to go beyond and use the Internet for their transactions, with the government (G2B, a part also of the e-Administration strategy) and with their customers (B2B and B2C)
• Last, but not least, empower the citizenry to bring relevant content and debate online. Citizen organizations (political parties, NGOs, neighbourhood associations, patient associations, foundations, clubs, etc.) would be my pick as huge impact collectives which to begin with, as they’ll have manifest multiplier effects by pulling other citizens towards the use of ICTs.

Concerning skills, there three groups of evidences that are worth being remembered:

• People with digital skills are more likely to be more productive and, hence, to earn higher wages. On the other hand, lack of digital skills is likely to reduce employability.
• People with digital skills go more online and happen to meet more people, which improves both their social engagement (and self-esteem and so) and their professional opportunities.
• Digital skills are, by far, acquired on an autodidact basis or, in the best cases, on a P2P basis (family, friends, colleagues). Formal training in digital skills is only partially present in schools and is rare past school age.

That said, and again in my opinion, policies should be threefold:

• Urgently mainstream ICTs — in a very broad and intensive sense — in curricula and syllabuses. This mainstreaming should be based in two approaches: (1) training for trainers and (2) embedding ICT practices in the overall learning process (i.e. not just bound to the computing subject or classroom — though I’m neither saying students should forget about pencil and paper)
• A proactive public strategy aimed to people out of the educational system to catch up with these skills, by means of telecenters and libraries (and other points of access), subsidised courses in computing academies, etc.
• A joint strategy with the private sector to do alike in their in-company training programmes. The public sector could provide training for decision-takers to raise their e-awareness and even help with funding in-company digital skills programmes. But, the private sector should be committed enough, as the benefits are evident and would sooner or later positively impact the firm with higher productivity rates.

Summing up

I honestly think that pull policies to trigger demand (trigger, not contribute to the aggregate demand with direct expenditure) would, sooner or later, trigger to a demand for training in digital skills, which implicitly states in which order I’d be setting these policies.

These what-to-do-policies also, by construction, set aside the what-not-to-do-policies. If we keep in mind we’re talking about (digitally) developed countries and their characteristics, policies not to foster are mainly those aimed at subsidising hardware or connectivity in any way, or fostering the creation and expansion of infrastructures and carriers without anything to be carried on. Static and eminently informational public or corporate websites fully fit in this category; and also fits in this category the creation of content with no further purpose or strategy of usage behind.

Some bibliography

The next 5th Internet, Law and Political Science Congress has been scheduled for 6th and 7th July 2009. Organized by the School of Law and Political Science at the Open University of Catalonia (Barcelona, Spain), the event has evolved into an interesting forum where it is highlighted what’s happening nowadays in the fields of law and cyberlaw, intellectual property rights, privacy, data protection, freedom, political engagement, politics 2.0, empowerment, etc.

Aimed to both researchers and practitioners, during the four editions that we’ve been running the congress, we’ve had here people the like of Jonathan Zittrain, John Palfrey, Eben Moglen, Helen Margetts, Lillian Edwards, Yves Poullet, Erick Iriarte, Stefano Rodotà or Benjamin Barber, among others.

The main topic this year is social networking sites (SNSs, in a broad sense). We want to have sessions were at least two speakers present opposite points of view (pros and cons). The programme (almost closed, though some changes might apply) is as follows:

• Keynote speech with James Grimmelmann, providing an analysis of the law and policy of privacy on social network sites, and an evaluation of some possible policy interventions.
• Session 1: Social Networking Sites and Individual rights, privacy, intellectual property rights, image rights, intimacy…,
  chaired by Raquel Xalabarder and featuring Jane Ginsburg, Antoni Roig and Alain Strowel.
• Session 2: Data protection and SNSs,
  chaired by Mònica Vilasau and featuring Franck Dumortier, Esther Mitjans and Maya Nieto
• Session 3: Access to public information and SNS
  chaired by Ismael Peña-López and featuring José Manuel Alonso, Jordi Graells, and one/two more speaker(s) TBC.
• Session 4: Policies for a secure Internet,
  chaired by Agustí Cerrillo and featuring Salvador Soriano Maldonado and Nacho Alamillo.
• Session 5: Public participation and SNSs,
  chaired by Ana Sofía Cardenal and featuring Rachel Gibson (TBC), José Antonio Donaire and Ricard Espelt.

Daithí Mac Sithigh will be the official reporter of the event, providing, at the end of each day, a summary of the main subjects dealt in that day’s sessions.

More information

• Official website: http://www.uoc.edu/symposia/idp2009/engl/index.html
• Dates: 6th and 7th July 2009
• Venue: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Rambla de Catalunya, 6, Barcelona, Spain
• The event is free.
• Official tags: idp2009 and idp
• Liveblogging at: Lexferenda and ICTlogy
• Event in Facebook (Spanish)
• Event in Facebook (English)
• Notes and videos from the 4th Internet, Law and Political Science Congress (2008)
• Notes from the 3rd Internet, Law and Political Science Congress (2007)

Last May 14th 2009 I imparted a seminar entitled Measuring digital development for policy-making: Models, stages, characteristics and causes. The role of the government in the framework of the Internet, Law and Political science research seminar series that take place at the School of Law and Political Science, Open University of Catalonia (Barcelona, Spain)

Though I had previously presented part of my phd research in public, this is officially the first time that I present final results.

The presentation only shows a brief introduction to Part II (quantitative analysis) and partial highlights from Part III (quantitative/statistical analysis), which makes most slides quite cryptic without a speaker (more cryptic, I mean).

Put short — very short —, after defining a conceptual framework (the 360º digital framework) the research draws 4 stages of digital development (after cluster analysis), the three of which are but different levels of a similar digital development path, and the fourth of them a completely different digital development model: leapfroggers.

These stages of digital development are characterized (a profile for each of them is described), and some determinants (causes) for this digital development (or underdevelopment) are calculated by means of logistic regressions.

Main ideas/findings

The research shows the huge importance of governments in framing and fostering digital development, which is more important and should be more direct the less digitally developed is a specific economy.

It is important to note that government action should be, firstly, focused in framing and give incentives to the real economy, entrepreneurship and innovation; and secondly, to foster the digital economy by means of providing it with an appropriate policy and regulatory framework but also by means of “pull” strategies.

Thus said, the findings show that digital development is compatible with both liberal and Keynesian policies, and that supply-side policies and direct intervention are only worth applying below a minimum threshold of infrastructures. After some infrastructure is installed, policies should especially focus to trigger demand (not to increase the aggregate demand, which is a completely different thing).

This goes against the belief that the government should subsidise computers or content; but it also goes against the belief that the government should just care for the regulatory framework: public policies are a determinant of digital development.

What policies then? Fostering digital services, both private supplied as public e-services, as these services will pull de demand more effectively than other kind of policies.

Two caveats:

• Basic development (income, health, education, equality) accompanies any other kind of digital development, which means that it has to be addressed first hand and, indeed, be the target itself where to apply the benefits of digital development.
• Leapfroggers show that another model from the previous one is possible. It is my concern, nevertheless, how a model based in a powerful ICT Sector aimed towards international trade will impact the domestic economy beyond an eminently direct level. In other words, policies fostering a domestic digital development will have both direct and indirect multiplier effects, the latter being the most powerful ones and, maybe, absent in a leapfrogger model.

Citation and downloads

Kevin Macdonald’s State of Play is not a (good) film about the end of print newspapers and way not about democracy in the age of the Information Society. But watched under these points of view, it does (totally accidentally) provide some materials for reflection worth mentioning them.

A print paper story

The plot can be summarized as old-school investigative journalism star teams up with junior on-line journalist/blogger to uncover case of political corruption, murder, criminal lobbying, bribery and other US Congress political sphere related issues.

When the whole set of conspiracies are about to be discovered, some things happen (caution: simplifications, biases and spoilers ahead):

• These news are too good to be published in a blog, they well deserve being printed on paper (approximate quote)
• As some details lack to complete the news, rotary presses are hold on stand by for hours and the edition is not closed
• In the meanwhile, some criminals die or almost die
• In the meanwhile, some witnesses die or almost die
• In the meanwhile, some reporters die or almost die, risking the loss of absolutely all the relevant information
• At the end, the pieces of news are written, edited, prepared for printing
• Newspapers are printed, cut, folded, packed and put on trucks to be distributed… the day after

On-time democracy

It is under the light of some recent news that we have to interpret the preceding list of events. For instance:

• During the Night of the short text messages, March 13th, 2004, after the Madrid (Spain) bombings of March 11th, 2004, people gathered in front of the headquarters of the party of the then Primer Minister to ask for transparency in the reports of the government (see also ¡Pásalo! Relatos y análisis sobre el 11-M y los días que le siguieron, 619 KB). Millions of SMS where sent and thousands of people literally took the streets angry with the news they where getting.
• On Tuesday, April 7th, 2009, people gathered at the Piata Marii Adunari Nationale, in Chisinau (Moldova), in a demonstration against a possible election rigged by the Communist party. Despite the lack of consensus (see Unpacking “The Twitter Revolution” in Moldova and Studying Twitter and the Moldovan protests) on whether Twitter played an important role in organizing the demonstration, it is beyond doubt that Twitter did create an international debate around it. In a matter of hours.

There are plenty of other examples, like mobilemonitors.org.

The end of paper, on-time democracy

This is not about news, this is about information. This is not about just being “notified” of happenings, but about being informed to debate, create oneself a state of opinion and act. This is not about journalism, this is about government and democracy and freedom.

In the age of the digital revolution, denouncing the Spanish Primer Minister’s lies or the presumably rigged Moldovan election cannot wait until the following day. And, most important indeed, these facts cannot risk not being made public at all because of lack or loss of intermediaries.

In matters of hours — especially in a Globalized and Network Society — governments change hands, people get imprisoned and executed, or citizens lose all their savings.

To me, the last sequence of Kevin Macdonald’s film — a trip through the whole process of printing a newspaper — is not the intended elegy to print newspapers, but a visit to the Jurassic Park of journalism. If newspapers are the guarantors of transparency and accountability, if newspapers do serve the citizenry, they have to do it at the pace of times, at the pace of that citizenry they claim to be pretending to serve.

To me, the first quotation — These news are too good to be published in a blog, they well deserve being printed on paper — should be understood in terms of comfort (paper for the couch and the weekend, online for the mobile Internet and immediacy) rather than in terms of importance (though time will tell what the evolution of e-ink/e-paper will bring).

In the age of crossmedia, McLuhan’s the medium is the message is over. There are no media. No more. As true that there are no Internet users (as an ontology), but people, sheer people that are increasingly adopting yet another device to do what the zoon politikon does best: to communicate and to engage in conversations.