techPresident - The FISA Protest and myBO: Can We Talk? Can They Listen? - Comments

There is a way

crash83080 — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 13:19:19 -0400

There actually is a way to set up a whole new network quite easily. We in New Jersey have already done it, www.jerseyshore4obama.org, and it's very easy for anyone to set up and run. Check out Ning.com to see what I am talking about.

Stunning

Freedomfighter — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:53:17 -0400

There are many limitations to the myBO groups. Even searching them is difficult. However, I think you have pranced over the blatantly obvious.........the fishbowl effect. The anti-FISA Obama people are like fish which can see the world but are panicking over discovering they are all wet and can go no where because they are in a bowl. What would be interesting if the anti-FISA people actually teamed up with a civil liberties group and put out a video attacking Obama's flip-flop. However, the civil liberties groups, like the one at the link below, are stuck in protesting Bush as if Bush was running for office as he did in 2004. Things will become very interesting if such groups of people start actually interacting and get off the myBO site. Will Facebook or some other social network make it possible? Stay tuned.

http://www.constitutioncampaign.org/toolkit/declaration.php

Poll Driven versus Social Network Driven

owen93 — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:48:39 -0400

"Who gets the candidates ear" indeed.
Do we really want a President who runs their administration and therefore the country by "sharing power" with those who have a broadband connection and know how to use it ?
Poll driven candidates who blow hot and cold on policies based upon public opinion as derived from professional polling are usually treated with disdain. Is there a substantive difference between the Poll Driven Pol and the NetRoots driven Pol?
As has been pointed out the membership/registration policies of MYBO and the tools available there are apparently flawed and sparse. The social network movement is still very much in free for all mode and frankly needs to have some common sense structure applied to it. We zone our physical space, we do not allow anyone to shout anything they want anywhere they want. We allow judicial and legislative bodies to regulate the physical parameters of protest. Online Social Networks have no physical parameters though, and so we have not yet developed the tactics and tools to simulate common sense regulation of dissent.

We also have not had time yet to see what "Fresh Hell" can be raised by the trolls and flacks who get paid to be blogosphere agent provocateurs, but rest assured they are on their way. Ask yourself If you have any doubt that a handfull of such professional trouble makers can easily derail conversation into cat and dog fights and lead otherwise rational people to utter ridiculous pronouncements which amount to extensions of the attacks by the initial Guerrilla Ontology Warriors. I predict that once this becomes overwhelmingly obvious any resistance you might have had to common sense regulation will turn to demands that something be done about the situation.

LUX ./. owen

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Who shall follow the Thread beyond the Labyrinth of Words?

Solution

crash83080 — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:08:31 -0400

The groups I belonged to on myBO got crazy with the listserv emails and it got quite annoying. So, I created a social network for our group to coordinate and organize on. It provides a hell of a lot more flexibilty than the myBO site and allows for interaction and collaboration among the members. Anyone can make one too. My groups website is www.jerseyshore4obama.org.

17,590 and Counting

Alan Rosenblatt — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:51:49 -0400

Well, it has been 8 hours since Micah's post and the FISA No Immunity group is closing in on 18,000.

Alan Rosenblatt
AKA DrDigiPol (drdigipol.com)

Opt out of email

cfinnie — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:18:08 -0400

I got the same flood of email when I first signed up. So I went back and found a box that allowed me to opt out of email--which I quickly did! You could also choose a digest delivery, the way I handle the email overwhelm from my political listservs.

Since Obama has said he wants to use the Internet to make government more transparent and interactive, maybe you should send him you post on what they're doing with government 2.0 in the U.K.

Worthy

TroyMorris — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:07:26 -0400

I think it's worth noting that the creator of the group on myBO (which the 13 year-old in me wants to giggle at) also created a wiki.

I think there's something about that technology that works for politics. After all, content does live forever on the internet. It's a big improvement over traditional social networks because they can and do die after people begin their inevitable exodus.

Disclaimer: I work in the wiki world.

The FISA Protest and myBO: Can We Talk? Can They Listen?

Micah L. Sifry — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:57:32 -0400

The online mini-rising to protest Barack Obama's support for the Congressional compromise to renew the FISA legislation has been getting a lot of attention, with much being made (by us and plenty of others, including Ari Melber in the Nation, The New York Times, et al) that activists are using Obama's own social networking platform, my.BarackObama.com, to organize and channel their efforts to get him to alter his stand. Indeed, as of today the Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right group has swelled to more than 14,000 members, which makes it the single largest self-organized group on the whole platform, which reportedly has close to a million registered members.

This is certainly a good example of what thinkers like Clay Shirky and Mark Pesce have been talking about, when it comes to "ridiculously easy group formation" (qua Shirky) and how "Hyperconnectivity begets hypermimesis begets hyperempowerment" (qua Pesce). But right now the main reason this development is important is NOT because the group itself is that powerful; it's because attention-amplifiers in the blogosphere and the MSM are covering the story and thus threatening some of Obama's hard-won image as a change agent, which could conceivably weaken his vaunted fundraising and organizing machine. So while the Obama campaign is keeping a poker face about the importance of some of its members using the master's tools to challenge his position, it is no doubt paying attention, too.

The fact is, we're all entering completely new territory here. There have always been efforts to influence political candidates to take or change positions during a campaign (or afterward), but we've never before had a national campaign create an open platform for mobilizing supporters AND THEN seen a salient chunk of those supporters openly use that platform to challenge the candidate on a policy position. Indeed, while the net is inherently a two-way, many-to-many medium, no politician has yet used it to listen to his supporters as a group. Yes, the Obama campaign has asked its supporters to share their stories about their health care woes, and some of those anecdotes have made it into the campaign's blog or policy papers. But we have no norms for a collective, public discussion--even though we now have the capacity for one.