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Howard Rheingold on Using the Internet in Politics
Roland Piquepaille writes "The latest issue of BusinessWeek Magazine, dated March 29, 2004, contains a special report, 'Click The Vote,' which states that 'in the age of Internet politics, the Web can make or break a candidate.' The online version of this report includes an interview of Howard Rheingold, 'A Major Change in the Political Equation.' This overview contains selected excerpts about what is the essential impact of the Internet on politics today or what are the benefits to using the Internet in politics. Finally, if you want to discover the universe of Smart Mobs, be sure to visit regularly the Smart Mobs collective weblog."
in the age of Internet politics, the Web can make or break a candidate
If you ask me, the press and major political parties still have that power. When you are in this industry, it may seem the Web is a new world with new rules, but it's just another technology that exists in the status quo world we have always lived in. And 'smart mob' is just another example of an overblown concept.
If they're going to self-organize Meetups, contribute millions of dollars, and have a blog in which they're making suggestions, they're going to want to have a bit of a say.
Yep, political parties and PAC's are real good at top-down "grassroots organizing" (i.e. sign this petition, write this e-mail). But how long before we have an organization that effectively uses technology to give members a real say in the vision and the guiding of the organization?
I agree, he's got that exclusive I was in the WELL when the internet was young I am an innovator thing going on.
Check out his website for yourself: http://www.rheingold.com/index.html
I personally know a number of academics much smarter and more articulate than all these psuedo-intellectuals who are always getting published and asked for comment. Big deal, any kid in secondary school from here on in is going to treat the web as their primary political tool - they will look back on us and think we were mad for sitting in front of televisions or letting newspaper "opinion makers" and pundits dictate the agendas. They will see reviewing their local candidates blogs, submitting no-cost online freedom of information requests (or just browsing all non-military government documents in an open database) as perfectly normal and marvel at how primitive and distant our relationship with government is now.
This is self-evident, we have know it for years. Why is this guy special for basically stating the obvious?
hell, I should come up with some catch phrases like "flash democracy" and "mobile democracy" and "insta protests" and maybe even "insta flash intellectuals".
Howard Dean had a tremendous online following and couldn't even come close to locking up the Democratic nomination. John Kerry has a website, but I seriously doubt he has even a modest amount of understanding of what the Internet can be used to do.
Yes, the Internet is important as a medium to use in reaching an important voter demographic. But it's not as important as television (yet) because the senior and low-income demographics are larger and have higher voter turn out.
The senior population is the largest it's ever been in recorded history and it's going to get even larger. That's why Social Security is often called the third rail of politics...touch it and you die. Most seniors don't know squat about the Internet except that 60 Minutes tells them pedophiles love it and kids use it to watch porn and plan school shootings. Sarcastic, I know, but the point is that that television is what informs that demographic.
Similarly, the low-income demographic is large and is often the target of "bussing"...a practice whereby a candidate dependent on voter turn out hires out charter buses to carry low-income voters from their homes/apartments/projects to voting stations in their district. These are largely not people that are reachable via the Internet.
Kudos to all the candidates thus far who have taken their message online. It shows a degree of thoroughness that is admirable. But the Internet has not become make-or-break for national politicians yet.
My sigs always suck.
As you say, this technology is a tool to take advantage of, not something that Changes Everything. What _is_ a quantum change is the emergence of (What are they called, 427 groups? I keep wanting to say 420, but we're not yet blessed with 420 groups) like MoveOn -- but that dramatic change has far more to do with McCain-Feingold changing the rules than with any piece of technology.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Here in Spain (you should be aware of the recent goings on) when the protests broke out just before the elections, some commentators said it was due to email and mobile phones being used to organise the protests. Not in my experience it wasn't -- it was people banging on my door and ringing my doorbell, and people tooting their cars horns and shouting up from the street. Emails didn't cause the protests, it was the blatent lies of the government on the eve of an election.
I think you can fully expect to see massive spam "campaigns" from both parties, or people who support them. Usenet is already deluged with pictures of Kerry kissing Hanoi Jane and GWB shooting Saddam and so on.
As the techonologies of the net become more and more mainstream, one of the big benefits that I see is the leveraging of internet technologies to bring together smaller parties and groups that would otherwise be marginalized. In a two party system where the deck is definately stacked for the mainstream (e.g. minimum poll numbers required to participate in a presidential debate, Minimum precent of votes in the previous prez. election to qualify for matching federal funds, it is illegal in some states to register as anything other than democrat/republican, etc.) The internet is that it can be used to help organize smaller marginalized grassroots campaigns without the need for a huge budget for publicity/marketing.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with the politics of these groups, making it easier for them to get their word out forces may force the two major candidates to take a stance on issues that would rather not talk about (e.g. abortion in 2000 election, deficit during Perot timeframe, etc.). . . and this makes for a healthier political system in general.
Given how fast bogus rumours such as the teddy bear virus move around the internet, and how hard they are to kill, the internet represents and easy way to anonymously disseminiate dis-information about a candidate.
Yes; quality of information is generally a huge problem with the Internet. But slandering is something that has followed politics for a long, long time; probably since its very inception.
A famous, historical (though not that ancient) example is when Richard Nixon insinuated in a 1950 senate race that his opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, was a Communist who was "pink right down to her underwear." This is said to have been quite successful.
Also, there ARE reliable news sources on the Internet, and of course ... one can always use the almighty font of wisdom that is Google.
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
They also pointed out at my class that politicians really shouldn't use spam--you get mad at the people who send you "Enlarge your member" ads, but think about what happens if you get that mad at the politician who's asking you to vote for him/her. That makes me wonder about people like Myrick who are sending out a targeted ad per week--counterproductive much?
I gave a speech in Providence this week arguing that smart mobs are also the key to homeland security, drawing an analogy to Paul Revere (the original "weak link" in the Granovetter sense of the term -- member of 5 of the 7 Mass. groups involved in planning for independence) and the Minutemen: linking independent groups, redundant in case of problems, planned in advance, and flexible.
I said that wireless technologies, especially several mesh network variations, SMS texting and camera phones, plus the science of networking made the 2lst century version of the Minutemen possible
I also said -- and I think this is a critical distinction that the Department of Homeland Security just doesn't understand -- that a smart mob strategy could capitalize on the public's massive investment in the latest cell phones, wi-fi laptops and PDAs, allowing a lot more bang for the buck