bottom up change

Monday, June 15, Iranian supporters of Moussavi protest the election results (Photo: AFP/Getty)

You may have missed what happened this weekend.  I know I almost did.  No, I’m not talking about the dramatic protests in Iran against the declared election results claiming that President Ahmadinejad defeated Mir Hussein Moussavi by a large margin.  Instead, I’m referring to the use of social media in Iran and in the United States to have an impact on the protests and on the coverage of them in major American media outlets.   Andrew Sullivan has done an incredible job covering the protests and the use of Twitter in particular over the weekend.  For a summary of his work over the past few days, see this post.

So how did Twitter have a significant impact on the events in Iran and on US media coverage this weekend?  First, check out this post by Sullivan called “The Revolution Will be Twittered“, which by the way is a huge rip-off of my post a few months ago, “The Revolution Will Be Tweeted.”  Plus, it’s “tweeted” not “twittered”, Andrew.  But I digress.  Sullivan reports that Iranian authorities had silenced cell phone communications and taken down Moussavi’s website.  Text messaging had been used in the weeks leading up to the election by supporters of Moussavi to organize, so the government wanted to make sure that they did not use this method.  However, they did not disable Twitter, allowing Moussavi and his supporters to send a tweet calling for people to go to the rooftops and yell “ALAHO AKBAR” to protest the election results.  Thousands did so.  In fact, this was apparently the first time that people had spontaneously organized on rooftops since the Iranian revolution in 1979.  (And just as I am writing this post, this news breaks: Moussavi just sent out another tweet telling his supporters that every night in Tehran from 9pm-11pm they should go to the rooftops and shout “ALAHO AKBAR”.)

Twitter also enabled protesters to tweet updates about the violence that the government was unleashing against them so that the world would know what was happening.  They used the hashtag #IranElection to aggregate their tweets, and the stream of tweets was enormous: it has become one of the highest trending hashtags on Twitter over the past few days.  #IranElection is immensely popular internationally on Twitter, with users from around the world sending messages of encouragement and solidarity to the Iranians who are protesting.  Green avatars or avatars with the message “Stand with Free Iran” spread quickly with users who wanted to show solidarity.  In this way, the protesters are getting their message out and breaking news to an international audience, and the audience is able to talk back to the protesters and let them know they have the world’s support.  It’s a nice feedback loop, and one that might help sustain this rebellion or perhaps even help produce a new democratic revolution in Iran.  I am pretty skeptical about the latter, but that’s what many are hoping for.

Many traditional news organizations and reporters have picked up on the story of the role of social media in helping bring about and sustain the incredible events we are witnessing in Iran.  See this report by CBS for another account of Iranians’ use of social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook to organize their protests and let the world know about the crackdown against protesters.  Thomas Friedman also wrote over the weekend about the ways that Iranians, much like the Lebanese in their recent push-back against Hezbollah in a major election, were using technology to increase democratic activism.  Even Fox News jumped on the story.

But the traditional news entities almost missed the significance of this story entirely.  The major media outlets did a miserable job over the weekend reporting on what was undeniably one of the biggest stories of the year so far–a potential coup in Iran and a rebellion against the government by a pro-democracy movement in that country.  CNN and many other news outlets were missing in action over the weekend during some of the most tense moments in Iran shortly after the election results were announced.  Users of Twitter who had been following the story closely noticed this silence in the media, and particularly on CNN, and began a campaign to protest the lack of broadcast news coverage of the rebellion.  They started a hashtag, #CNNfail, which quickly became one of the most popular tags on Twitter along with #IranElection.  CNN noticed the organized outrage on Twitter and by Sunday their coverage of the protests increased.  CNN had to defend itself publicly from the criticism on Twitter.  The Wall Street Journal did a story covering the effects of the Twitter #CNNfail movement here.  A website has even sprung up, CNNfail.com, which includes all the tweeets under the hashtag #CNNfail and #Iranelection.

A lot of people may still roll their eyes and shrug, wondering what the big deal with Twitter is.  But they are missing out on engaging in a new form of communication that is much more than mere entertainment.  Quite simply, Twitter is leading the way in transforming the Internet into a powerful tool for organizing, rebellion, and yes, revolution.

It’s on.  Today marked the beginning of what promises to be an historic push for universal health care in the United States.  President Obama delivered his Saturday address today from France as citizens across America organized Health Care Organizing Kickoff events.  I attended and helped coordinate a very successful kickoff event at Quincy Market in downtown Boston.  34 people came out on a beautiful Saturday to talk about how they could start building support in their communities to help pass health care reform.  ABC’s World News tonight was there, and they plan to show some footage from our event Sunday evening at 6:30pm ET.  You may see me if you tune in.

The New York Times reports that President Obama plans to start the heavy lifting on health care over the next few weeks, and he is eager to make sure that his priorities are not lost in the negotiations over the details of the plan.  But Robert Reich reports at his blog that Big Pharma and the insurance industry is already balking at the so-called “public option” and is working behind the scenes to kill it.  Clearly, this is going to be a major battle.  Besides getting the economy out of the current recession, health care reform is probably going to be the most significant domestic policy challenge that President Obama will face during his first term.

I am optimistic that on the issue of health care, the grassroots army that Obama built during the campaign is going to become activated and intensely involved.  The turnout today at our event and the intensity of the participants leads me to believe that this is the time where Organizing for America has a real shot at making a difference.   It’s going to be an exciting time for organizers and those who want to see health care reform happen.  This isn’t going to happen without significant grassroots mobilization, so I hope readers of this blog will get involved.  Health care reform promises to be as significant a change to the way our country treats its citizens as social security was when it was passed, so we all have a chance to be a part of an historic legislative achievement.

I apologize to readers who have wondered where I’ve been over the past week.  Actually, the past two weeks have been very slow here at Bottom Up Change.  If it wasn’t for Nathan Pyles’ excellent contributions (for which I’m extremely grateful), there would have been little new content.  But I do have a good excuse!  First it was the OFA-MA Organizing Forum, which I posted about last week.  Since then, I have been busy starting up a new grassroots organization in Boston, which I want to write a little bit about here.

The past two weeks have been very exciting for me because I’ve begun to implement some ideas that I’ve been mulling over for several months.  Actually, these ideas date back to the beginning of this blog, when I began thinking about the possibilities of using blogs and other social media to connect with progressive organizers around the country.  But it was only over the past few weeks that my thinking about this topic began to crystallize into something more specific.  It’s been an inspiring few weeks and I’ve been able to confirm some of my suspicions about the power of social media as a tool for organizing.

In early May, I attended a meeting of the Young Democrats of Massachusetts (YDM), where I met with the chair of the Boston chapter, Kevin.  I had originally met Kevin at a “tweetup” (a meetup for users of Twitter) and we later connected on Twitter, where he told me about the YDM meetings.  I then met another YDM member, Ash, a few days later on Twitter.  It was refreshing to finally meet some active progressives in the Boston area who used Twitter as much as I did.  I had been to a half dozen tweetups this year, and while I always enjoyed meeting new people at these events, the attendees were usually in marketing and public relations.

When I met with Kevin and Ash in person at the YDM meeting, I laid out some ideas of holding a tweetup for politicos on Twitter.  They both were very interested in the idea and I began planning it.  My main reason for organizing a political tweetup was to see how much interest there would be in another idea I’d been toying with.  I wanted to organize a forum for the candidates in Boston’s mayoral race since it is the most competitive race for mayor that Boston has seen in over 10 years.  My idea was to make it a “social media” forum, where I would promote the event on Twitter and people could “tweet” their questions for the candidates to a hashtag (such as #Mayor).  I also thought it would be an interesting experiment to make a candidates forum as interactive as possible by making social media a major part of the forum.  The name for this forum would be Tweet the Candidates (of course).  I had been trying for several weeks to get in touch with the campaigns of Mayor Menino and City Councilor Sam Yoon, but not with much success.  It seemed that the campaigns weren’t too interested in attending a forum of uncertain turnout organized by an unknown person–me.  So after I talked with Kevin and Ash about the tweetup and the possibility of a social media candidates forum, I decided that I may have a better chance of persuading the candidates to attend the forum if there was an organization sponsoring it–one with a track record of achieving a solid turnout at events.  This led me to the idea of creating a social media organization in the Boston area that focused on politics and government.  When I began to promote the tweetup, I used the name “Social Media Progressives” for the group.

I wanted this organization to be identified as an association because at this stage, its primary aim is to connect people interested in progressive politics and social media.  I defined the organization as bringing together the tech community and the political community in the Boston area so people could start sharing ideas and collaborating about how social media and other technology can improve our politics.  Or, to use the more formal language I’ve written for the group, “Social Media Progressives is a new association of progressives interested in the ways that technology is changing politics, government, and journalism, particularly through the rise of social media.  One goal of this association is to increase collaboration between the online and offline worlds of politics and technology.”  As you can see, I wanted this group to serve as an umbrella organization for tech and politics broadly conceived, and I wanted the focus to be taking the online conversations offline so that progressives could meet, form relationships, and work together on real projects.  You can read more about our tweetup at the invitation page that we used.  I also created a Facebook fan page (please become a fan) and a Twitter account for our group.  

A few days before the tweetup, I met with Kevin, Ash, and another person I had met on Twitter, Yasmin, whose main interest was in the “Government 2.0″ movement.  Thankfully, they bought into the concept of Social Media Progressives and became founding members.  We didn’t have money and we didn’t have any other members, but our organization was up and running.

As you can see from the pictures on our Facebook page, the tweetup was a success.  We had over 40 people sign up, and over twenty people showed, which was a good turnout for our first event.  People from many different backgrounds attended.  We had the Chief Technology Strategist for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, members of the YDM,  almost the entire staff of Generation Progress, and several prominent members of the social media community in Boston.    We held a raffle for Clay Shirky’s book on technology and social change, “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations”.  When the night was over, people were enthusiastic about the potential of this organization to grow over the summer.  The plan is to have one Social Media Progressives tweetup a month.  In the future, we hope to attract prominent speakers in the world of politics, technology, and social media.  We are still planning a “Tweet the Candidates” forum sometime over the next few months.

Social Media Progressives could be a model for other online organizing efforts around the country, particularly those using Twitter.  In fact, I have talked with several people who are interested in creating SMP chapters in several cities.  Of course, this effort isn’t entirely unique.  I know that others in the progressive “Twittersphere” have been trying to organize progressives.  Most visibly, Jon Pincus has been successful in providing progressives on Twitter with a common space to share information under the #p2 hashtag.  There may be other efforts to organize progressives on Twitter that I am not aware of.  But what I would like to see with SMP is a way to take the online conversations and connections offline so that we start building relationships in local areas among people who use social media and consider themselves progressive.  These offline gatherings can also serve the purpose of educating progressives on new technology and create opportunities for collaboration with the tech community.  By focusing on offline gatherings and emphasizing the importance of local activism, I think that SMP can develop strategies for taking online organizing to a new level.  But this is just the start.  There’s a lot to learn and a lot to do yet.

In a later post, I’m going to go into more detail about how Twitter can be used for online organizing, and how SMP will be employing these techniques.  There is a lot of potential in combining social media with progressive organizing.  I’m excited about where this will lead.

The White House's Twitter Page

The White House new media team has much more important tweeters to follow than you or I, including @DHSJournal, @hhs_gov, @CDCflu, and @dipnote (the State Department), among many other federal agencies and departments.  We’re not going to be on the Following list any time soon.  But actually, now that the White House has joined Twitter, it may well be that the White House will be following some of our tweets.

First, let me make a brief digression.  As Twitter users know, one of the most powerful tools on Twitter is search.twitter.com.  This search engine allows people to search for every possible term that users type when they post their 140-characters-or-less “tweets”.  This opens up Twitter to many different purposes than mere responses to the question, “what are you doing?”  For instance, if you’re a beer enthusiast and want to know what people are saying about beer on Twitter, just type “beer” in the search engine, and you will see every tweet that includes the word “beer”.  You can then start a conversation with people who are tweeting about beer.  But what if you are a beer company?  Say you are Sam Adams (I chose a local Boston brand for the sake of convenience–it’s also a decent beer).  That’s where things get very interesting.  Believe me, this will connect to the Obama administration’s use of Twitter.

Since I joined Twitter in December of 2008, I have went to many meetups of Twitter users, called “tweetups”.  Most of these events are full of marketing professionals who are using Twitter to help companies promote their products or services.  One of the strongest reasons that companies want to use social media, and especially Twitter, is to find out what customers are thinking about their product or service in real time.  They can gain immediate feedback from customers who may be trying a new product line, for instance.  (This post describes the differences between marketing with social media and traditional marketing).  So, going back to the beer example, if I search for Sam Adams, I find this tweet by @steventurous: “I don’t care if it’s kind of weird and polarizing: I love Sam Adams Cherry Wheat”.  If the Sam Adams marketers are curious about consumers’ feelings about the Cherry Wheat, they can refine their search to Sam Adams Cherry Wheat.  It seems like this beer is a hit with people–in my cursory search, I tried to find a negative review but couldn’t.  So we now have immediate qualitative data about consumer preferences in addition to the quantitative data that companies receive from their sales numbers and other numerical indicators.  (Continued below.)

Mmmm...beer!

So by now it may be a little clearer how all of this connects to the White House’s use of Twitter.  Obviously, the White House wants to use Twitter to get its message out.  But my question is whether the political department of the White House will want to look at voters’ reactions to the President and his policies in real time using Twitter search.  For example, maybe the White House wants to find out what people are saying about Obama’s response to the swine flu outbreak.  Well, they just type in “Obama swine flu” and find their tweets, like this one: @scotia626 “swine flu over-reaction is a failure of obama’s leadership team”.  It seems that many of the criticisms of Obama’s handling of the outbreak on Twitter is that Obama is overreacting, not that he hasn’t taken stronger measures, such as closing the border.  The administration can get more specific, and find out citizens’ reaction to the administration’s view that, if schools close, they should close for 14 days.  Here is one unhappy reaction and a misunderstanding (profanity edited): “This is soooo [messed] up, Obama wants schools to close up to 14 days for swine flu — this is graduation and prom time.”  This kind of reaction may send a red flag to the White House that they need to clarify their message: they are not asking all schools to shut down, but only those with cases of swine flu.

Using Twitter Search obviously doesn’t provide the White House with a large sample of Americans’ reaction, and I don’t want to overstate my point here.  Reading tweets on search is often like reading the comments of a blog post, and there is the usual mix of insight and madness in both.  My point is simply that Twitter Search provides a very fast and efficient way for the White House to gauge Americans’ reaction to the President’s decisions.  Polls provide quantitative data, but Twitter provides immediate qualitative data about Americans’ political views.  Knowing that the President has a team of talented and tech savvy new media people working for him, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are using this powerful tool as well. The White House may be following our tweets after all.

Cartoon by xkcd.com

Evgeny Morozov has an opinion piece out today called, “Swine Flu: Twitter’s Power To Misinform“.  Morozov argues that because of some overly zealous Twitter users spreading false information, the medium itself is unreliable and not a useful tool for quickly gathering information in a crisis.  Specifically, Twitter’s 140 character limit is the primary problem because it allows users to relay information (and sometimes misinformation) without providing context.  Moreover, government agencies have not been quick enough to adopt social media, so Twitter users are having to rely on those driven by panic or those in search of more followers.  Morozov writes:

In situations like this, there is some pathological about people wanting to post yet another status update containing the coveted most-searched words – only for the sake of gaining more people to follow them. And yet the bottom line is that tracking the frequency of Twitter mentions of swine flu as a means of predicting anything thus becomes useless (however, there are plenty of other non-Twitter ways to track the epidemic and Mashable does a good job of summing them all up).

That aside, the “swine flu” Twitter-scare has once again proved the importance of context — and how badly most Twitter conversations are hurt by the lack of it. The problem with Twitter is that there is very little context you can fit into 140 characters, even less so if all you are doing is watching a stream of messages that mention “swine flu.” Now, the lack of context is probably not a problem in 99 percent of discussions happening on Twitter — or, at least, it’s not a problem with devastating global consequences.

However, in the context of a global pandemic — where media networks are doing their best to spice up an already serious threat — having millions of people wrap up all their fears into 140 characters and blurt them out in the public might have some dangerous consequences, networked panic being one of them.

But this analysis is wrong on several levels.  Morozov seems to recognize that there’s a hole in his argument when he points out that 99 percent of discussions will not be infected (couldn’t resist) with misinformation.  The fact is, the misinformation out there is far outweighed by the good information that is relayed through Twitter.

First of all, most users of Twitter include links to the source of their information, or they suggest that other users read an article or a website that is being linked to.  These links often provide the context that 140 characters do not allow.  For instance, I wouldn’t have learned about a very useful compilation of websites to go to about the swine flu outbreak if I hadn’t seen @Mashable post a link on Twitter to How To: Track Swine Flu Online.

Furthermore, while the Department of Homeland Security (@homelandsecurit) and the Department of Health and Human Services (@hhs_gov) have not done a good job updating their Twitter accounts about swine flu, the Center for Disease Control’s Twitter account @CDCemergency has been an excellent resource for reliable information and it is updated frequently.  Since its first tweet on April 22nd, there have been 56 updates, with 19 updates on April 26 alone.  If Morozov’s piece is instructive, its lesson is that we need more government agencies posting more frequently on Twitter.  But if so, that point would go in favor of the argument that Twitter is a useful tool for spreading accurate information quickly.

There is a lot of hype around new social media platforms, and especially Twitter, so stories that try to knock it down a few pegs are to be expected.  But just because some Twitterers don’t do their homework before posting doesn’t mean that the rest of us aren’t getting reliable information.  And why worry so much about the 1 percent that don’t know how to distinguish fact from fiction?  If it wasn’t Twitter, these people would be checking out conspiracy theory websites anyway.  It’s best to encourage government agencies like HHS and DHS to use Twitter better rather than panic about the panic on Twitter.

I’ve taken about a week-long break from Twitter.  It’s a fun and useful social media tool, but it’s also addictive and it can be a huge time waster.  As with anything, it’s best used in moderation.  Instead of tweeting, I’ve been thinking about how social media can be used more effectively in politics.  This is a big issue, and I’ve already tried to take a stab at it in one post about using Twitter to increase bipartisan discussions and debate.

One use of Twitter that I think might be very powerful one day is to create links of contact between public officials and their constituents.  Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) @clairecmc is one of the public officials who uses Twitter better than most.  What is most common to see among Senators or Representatives is staffers basically tweeting the official’s agenda for the day.  But Sen. McCaskill tweets herself and often relays useful information to the public.  Here are a few of her recent tweets:

clairecmc: Just off phone with Gen Shinseki. Most don’t realize that large part of increase in discretionary spending in Pres budget is for veterans.11:28 AM Mar 27th from web

clairecmc: Once again, a large part of the INCREASE in DISCRETIONARY spending in the President’s budget is finally about keeping our word to veterans.12:44 PM Mar 27th from web

clairecmc: And keep in mind that in FY06 a Republican President signed off on 27 Billion in earmarks from the Republican Congress.

I didn’t know these facts.  So if Sen. McCaskill has constituents in Missouri who follow her on Twitter but disagree the level of spending in the budget, they will at least be able to hear her side of the story very easily.  Sen. McCaskill also claims to read all the replies to her tweets, which provides her with useful feedback from her constituents.  Right now she has nearly 19,000 followers, which may be one of the highest numbers of any public official besides @BarackObama.

An online grassroots effort called Tweet Congress is trying to collect signatures to encourage more Senators and Representatives to join Twitter.  You can go to this site, look up your local Rep or Senator, and petition him or her to join Twitter and start communicating with the public using this platform.  Of course, it all depends on how they use Twitter.  Just signing up is not progress in itself.  But overall, this looks like a good project to increase the social media savvy of our government.

Saturday was Pledge Project Canvass day, and we had our own event in our neighborhood of Boston.  It was small, but the people who showed up made it worth the anxiety that I was feeling about this first OFA action.  Would anyone show up?  Would people have a good experience?  Would this achieve anything?  And most troubling: was I becoming a card-carrying member of the Obama-bot cult???  Note to Michelle Malkin: it sure beats the cult-of-Santelli.

I’m sure we could have had a larger showing if I’d had more than three days to organize this event and if I was a better organizer.  But, considering the time constraints, overall I am satisfied with the result.  I do have a few complaints, though, which I’ll get to shortly.  But first, I’ll discuss what worked.

This event was different from a lot of the canvasses around the country, I think, because I framed it as a combination of a social media gathering (in this case, a “Tweetup”) combined with activism.  We met at a local ice cream/coffee shop called JP Licks, had some ice cream, and spent the first hour discussing how new technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, Ning, etc., can be used for political organizing.  Although the turnout was small, the people who showed up came from a variety of backgrounds and were eager to get involved.  A candidate for the Boston City Council named Tomas Gonzalez joined us along with his daughter and one of his campaign volunteers.  A veteran of the Obama campaign’s primary/caucus in Texas who had recently moved to the neighborhood was there.  Joseph Porcelli, a local organizer and founder of Neighbors for Neighbors, was also there to cover the event for his organization and offer his social media expertise.  (Shout out to Joseph for the video above.)  We decided that it would be a good idea to have a larger politics-meets-Twitter event in April or May in which we might invite local candidates and create a network of Boston politicos on Twitter.

After the Tweetup, several more volunteers joined us and we went out into the main commercial drag of my neighborhood to gather pledges (minus Joseph, who couldn’t join us).  Our main goal was to talk with people about the budget, let them know what Organizing for America was doing, and obtain pledges.  There were five of us in total.  A few volunteers were extremely successful in gathering pledges, but for most of us, it was tough going.  We devised a concise pitch to try to get the attention of passers-by so they would stop and chat with us.  But even in a liberal’s paradise like Jamaica Plain, few people wanted to talk to us.  In my experience, a lot of people who supported Obama didn’t want to stop for just two minutes to fill out a form.  One man passed me by and said, “Obama will pass the budget without me.  Good luck!”  Another woman who I tried to talk with walked by and I noticed a “Health Care, Not War” pin on her jacket.  When I asked her if she would support the President’s budget, she looked at me coldly and let me know that Obama was disappointing her with his appointments and by not supporting a single-payer system.  Well, that’s the way it goes, I thought.  Most volunteers had to leave early, so we only canvassed for about an hour and ended up collecting 54 pledges.

So, that’s not a bad day.  If it’s true that there were over 1,000 canvasses held around the country, it’s possible that there were around 50,000 pledges collected this weekend.  Considering that a lot of the OFA state organizers are not in place yet (not here in MA it seems), that would be an impressive achievement considering this was OFA’s first action.  Also, I had several conversations that made me think that just being out there talking with people about the budget was having a positive effect.  At least three people thanked me and one person told me to “keep it up.”  The best encounters I had were with people between the ages of 18-25.  They were most willing to sign the pledge.  One younger guy I met talked with me at length about his disappointment with Notre Dame for rescinding their invitation to Obama over his stem cell decision.

Despite the generally positive experience I had with this canvass, there were some problems.  First, the volunteers who hosted this event weren’t given much time to plan, advertise, and recruit other volunteers.  We were given a little over a week’s notice about this canvass, but the mass e-mail that OFA sent to its 12 million person list did not go out until last Monday.  Second, although the budget is a very important part of the President’s agenda, it is very hard to get volunteers motivated about it.  The one consistent criticism I heard from my volunteers was that it just wasn’t that engaging to ask people to support a federal budget proposal  [Insert expression of shock here].  Third, the goal of the plege project was never entirely clear.  I’m still not exactly sure what OFA is going to do with these pledges.  Sure, the media will talk about the numbers, which should give the President a small boost with the public.  And, of course, OFA is collecting information about people who support the budget and who may be interested in volunteering in the future.  But there needs to be a much more concrete focus for this kind of action.  It is hard–really hard–to take several hours from one’s weekend and talk to strangers about a budget.  I am extremely impressed by the volunteers who showed up at my event, but I know it wasn’t easy for them.  This kind of civic engagement and desire to enact change is encouraging.  Still, unless the projects that OFA offers people are made more engaging, it may be difficult to sustain interest among a large portion of the grassroots.

Finally, one of the volunteers told me that she felt a bit uncomfortable with the entire idea of a grassroots organization in support of the President.  It might be better, she said, to stick to volunteering for organizations that are working with the poor or with people who need direct assistance.  People need to be able to oppose the President as well, she noted.  This is actually a very serious objection to the idea of OFA and it needs to be addressed more fully.  I don’t think it’s right, in the end, because there’s no difference in principle between volunteering for a cause or to directly help people in need versus volunteering for a public official who is committed to the same goals.  The fact that Barack Obama is the President shouldn’t make a difference.  If the goal is universal health care, a greener energy policy, more jobs, better jobs, and increased opportunity for all American children, then any kind of activism that helps achieve these goals is worthwhile.  That also doesn’t mean his supporters should not oppose him when he does the wrong thing.  Otherwise, we’d truly become cultish Obama-bots.  Fortunately, there has always been much more inra-party dissent among progressives than those of Malkin’s ilk, so we need not worry much about sheep-like followers here.  The woman I spoke to with the pin is a good example.

The Pledge Project Canvass was a decent start, but it revealed some major problems that need to be examined.  The lasting impression for me is just how novel this kind of organizing is.  It wasn’t intentional, but it was appropriate to have an event on new media when we were getting ready to participate in a kind of politics that hasn’t existed in America before.  Whether this new politics is sustainable will depend on whether OFA can make it exciting, interesting, and connect it to real outcomes.  The battle for health care reform may be just the right fit for the new politics.

UPDATE: Major media outlets, including the Washington Post and CNN, are reporting the results of the Pledge Project Canvass today (Sunday).  It turns out there were over 1,000 canvasses Saturday: more than 1,200 canvasses, actually.

There is a widely held view that the Obama campaign used social media in a revolutionary way to raise money and build their organization.  I support this view.  More generally, I believe that social media like blogs, Facebook, and Twitter have the potential to increase our capacity for self-government.  Used effectively, social media and the internet can enable citizens to receive information faster, with less hierarchy, and organize for action more quickly and efficiently.  But we have a ways to go.  Political blogs have been criticized many times as being echo chambers where like-minded individuals congregate to take pleasure in having their world-view validated by others.  There is some truth to this charge, although there’s nothing wrong with people who have similar views coming together to discuss issues and talk about how their political goals can be achieved.  This kind of activity has been occurring in America since revolutionaries met at the Old South Meeting House to plan the Boston Tea Party.  Please note: I am not comparing bloggers to the Sons of Liberty!  But what happens when people have their biases reinforced over and over again by people with almost exactly the same views?  What happens when liberals rarely interact with conservatives, and vice versa?  Well, sometimes, this happens:

Obama has already failed. His first two months are the WORST in HISTORY for a new president. His policies are concrete CYANIDE. The market has increased the rapidity of FAIL in the last two weeks and if there was any remaining SANITY in this country, we would storm the White House and the Moron Congress and physically remove them, tar and feather them, and run them back to their idiot electors in their home districts.

That was courtesy of a really venomous yet entertaining blog I found the other day via Twitter, mean ol’ meany.  Clearly, there’s a lot of anger here (all those words in CAPS), and yet I’m still LOLing from the posts on this site.  I even got into an argument with @meanolmeany before writing this post.  I admit it was a lot of fun.  But my point is: it could be that the blogosphere has encouraged this kind of rage and hatred.  At least, that’s a hypothesis that much smarter people than me have raised many times before.  Liberals are not innocent, of course.  Aren’t a lot of political blogs–Daily Kos, for example–just the same kind of thing as mean ol’s?  Indeed, if I’m honest with myself, doesn’t my own blog come close to propaganda for Barack Obama at times, try as I might to fight it?  These are the questions that keep me up at night…No, not really.

Recently, Marc Ambinder wrote about this problem and offered some suggestions (also see Glenn Greenwald’s follow-up):

Here’s a simple way to increase intellectual cross-pollination on the web: honest bloggers of the left and the right should try to interview at least one author/historian/politician from the other side of the aisle at least one a month.  So — Media Matters shouldn’t just criticize Bernard Goldberg; they should interview him. Glenn Greenwald should, I don’t know, see if Jack Goldsmith from Harvard would chat with him online. Bill Kristol should interview Jane Mayer.  Pajamas Media needs to interview Democrats and Democratic experts, and not just each other, or Joe the Plumber, or Sen. Jim DeMint. Righties interviewing righties has gotten so boring and repetitive; lefties fawning over lefties is lazy. Who’s going to be brave enough to reach out to an ideological or intellectual opponent, promote their new book, or interview them?

I have another suggestion: liberal political bloggers need to join Twitter and start talking to all the Meanys out there.  Conservatives can do the same.  I know there’s a lot of confusion out there about Twitter, but I believe it’s one of the most powerful tools for political discussion and organizing that has been developed on the internet so far. In the short time I’ve used it, I’ve found Twitter to be a much better platform for engaging opponents of one’s views than the blogosphere.  Here’s why.

First, with blogs, it’s all too easy to just focus on the blogs that agree with our worldview.  It takes a lot of time to read posts on blogs, and let’s face it, most of us are just too busy to read the opposition’s blogs in the same way we read blogs that share our point of view.  Or, we just don’t want to hear what those idiots on the other side are ranting about.  The micro-blogging nature of Twitter allows you to see little bits of idiocy restricted to 140 characters so you can react immediately in your own 140 characters, instantly skewering that conservatard’s/libertard’s dumbass tweet.  Hey, I’m not arguing that Twitter is going to make our political discourse any more civil.

Another advantage is that Twitter is a mix between an enormous chatroom and tens of thousands of “microblogs,” so that by using hashtags such as #topprog or #tcot, it’s very easy to find groups of liberals and conservatives chatting with each other.  It’s easy to start conversations with people in these groups.  If you like what they are tweeting, you can follow them and basically have an RSS feed deliver you their “microposts” in real time. This makes it very easy to find people who are interesting that you can immediately chat with. Or, you can find wingnuts that need to be taken to task for spreading lies.  For instance, a lot of crazy right-wingers on Twitter are spreading the “Obama is not a natural born citizen” lie.  It may not do much good, but confronting these people on Twitter does at least force them to defend themselves in real time and may cause a little bit of shame.  With a blog, anonymous commenters or bloggers can write something false or stupid and just walk away from the computer and hide.  Twitter makes that a little bit harder to do.

Third, Twitter has an advantage over Facebook and blogs in that you can connect with a truly vast group of people that you’d never come into contact with in any other way.  I’ve interacted with strangers from Alaska to Hawaii to England to Australia, liberals and conservatives alike.  This enormous social network creates many possibilities for political discussion and interaction.  It’s possible to meet entertaining yet loony cranks like @meanolmeany or more reasonable conservatives who are not going to spew hatred towards the president.  The possibilities for meeting lots of strangers who think differently are much greater on Twitter and may allow for more reasoned debates between political opponents.

Finally, while Twitter is full of geeks (myself included), many of them seem to be social enough to meet up frequently at “tweetups.” That makes Twitter a mix between Facebook, blogs, chatrooms, and Meetup.com.  I’ve been to two non-political tweetups so far this year, and I’ve decided to organize my own political tweetup in Boston soon. This makes real organizing possible in a way that is much more efficient than blogs. You get to know the people who you want to invite using Twitter, and then it’s that much easier to get them to show up for events or actions. There are substantial advantages in this regard for political candidates to use Twitter to recruit volunteers and supporters. This is much more sophisticated and dynamic than a slowly changing blog or, even more static, a website.

So those are just some of the ways that Twitter can be a very effective means of breaking political boundries.  Let’s have a cross-pollination of ideas via Twitter so that we’re not just talking with our fellow partisans.  It could be that, by talking to people we disagree with, we will sharpen our own ideas by having to defend them in a public forum to a hostile audience.  That will contribute to an ideal of deliberative democracy that there seems to be a strong desire for in the country at this time. On the other hand, it is also possible that engaging people who we think are wrong and/or stupid could lead to an all out postmodern civil war (twival war?) in the blogosphere and Twitterverse. But, that sounds like a good time, doesn’t it?

You can follow the tweeting of President Obama’s “not-State of the Union” on Twitter at #nSOTU. Right now I’m live-tweeting from my Twitter page.

The pundits are acting like the fate of the economy rests on Obama’s tone. I fear they may be right. This needs to be a good speech. But while I’m watching the fate of the economy being decided, I’ll be drinking a few beers and tweeting along with others, including @anamariecox, who I must confess is much more entertaining.

Oh, and after the president’s speech, I’ll also be tweeting Gov. Bobby Jindal’s response. Is this guy really the GOP’s Obama? We shall see…
UPDATE: Prez was very solid tonight. Historian Michael Beschloss called it a “landmark” speech. Economy will not be hurt as a result of the speech. Gov. Bobby Jindal was…GAH, in the words of @anamariecox.

If you missed Obama’s first town hall as President and would like a very compressed account of what happened, I covered it on Twitter earlier today.  You can check it out at my Twitter page. And better yet, if you follow me on Twitter than you can keep up with all my tweets and I can follow yours as well. I will be doing a decent amount of live-tweeting events on Twitter since it allows for a faster way to post. Of course, you can see my most recent updates on this blog if you scroll down on the sidebar.