July 30, 2004
Participatory Politics and the Democratic Convention
In an email conversation earlier this week with Jeff Jarvis, I mentioned that I was talking to the Democratic National Convention Committee back in early May about building an online community for this week's Convention. Jeff's recent post echoed a lot of my thoughts back in May (see emails below) about how the Democratic Party needs to start moving away from the "broadcast politics" of the past 40 years and more towards something called "participatory politics."
In broadcast politics, the American people are mostly informed through television and print media. The message is defined and then propagated through television and advertising campaigns. The American people have little say about what this message is and very few opportunities to actually contribute their thoughts and opinions. With participatory politics, the channels of communication are opened up between the groups of people attending the Convention (delegates, politicians, journalists, bloggers, etc.) and the American public. Instead of being talked to, they are being talked with. The inherent nature of this is participatory and provides a sense of belonging and ownership, two of the common traits identified within communities of all kinds (including online communities).
In Dan Gillmor's new book We The Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People For the People he quotes a comment I left on his blog back in April:
If your goal is debate and discussion, a network of blogs is a more powerful medium than a single blog with lots of readers, When your goal is message or top-down communication, then a few blogs with a lot of readers is more powerful.
This is something I learned building and running the Clark Community Network for the Wesley Clark presidential campaign. We found that having 10,000 user blogs was far more influential than having a single campaign blog with a few editors and a lot of readers. We learned that the blog network grew by word-of-mouth because our supporters were telling their friends and family about their Clark blogs. As more people logged on and saw that they too could have a blog and voice their opinions and support about Wesley Clark, the idea grew and we started to use it to propagate our campaign messages. These 11,000+ members of the Clark Community Network were our spokespeople. They were the ones speaking on our behalf in their living rooms and kitchens of America where traditional campaigning could not reach.
Now that the Democratic Convention is over, I want to share portions of the emails I sent to the DNCC, outlining what I thought was the best approach to integrating new media and blogging into the Convention media process.
The general public is pretty clueless about the Convention, yet thousands of activists nationwide want to participate if they are allowed to. By opening up the communication between those attending the Convention and the general public, it enhances the idea of inclusion, participatory democracy and openness -- best represented by the Democratic Party.
All politics is ultimately local. Delegates are at the Convention representing their constituencies, their interest groups, their politicians and the American people of the Democratic Party. Providing a categorized online communication architecture that outlines this for the American public so they can participate in the conversations they care about the most with the delegates, their politicians and other concerned Americans is a crucial step. The Bush-Cheney campaign and the RNC is all about command and control, with their army of trained underlings. The Democratic Party (and, ultimately the Kerry campaign) should be about channeling the diversity of their supporters in ways that benefit the Party. The core concept here is bi-directional communication -- communication that goes in both directions, from the top down but also from the bottom up.
The above paragraphs are from an email I sent to Mike Liddell, who was the person responsible for opening up the Convention to bloggers - as widely reported in the mainstream media. A smart decision, but one that I feel was not utilized to its fullest potential.
A second email with a rough project plan was sent later in the day, outlining how such a community network could be built. Had they followed my advice, the Convention this week would have many more thousands of people actively participating in politics. Instead, they decided to give three dozen bloggers press credentials and sent them into the convention hall to fend for themselves.
Critiquing the Bloggers
I have some strong opinions about the jobs these bloggers did reporting the Convention, but I really wish they had put more effort into interacting with the people who were not at the Convention. It would have been very simple for these bloggers to have taken a bunch of questions beforehand on their sites and then scoured convention hall for the people who could answer them. Why few did this is beyond me. Maybe it's because a lot of these bloggers have never been trained as journalists and instead they relied on their intuition, which was to write what they know about -- and unfortunately what they know the most about is themselves. Personal perspectives are relevant and important, but only if they're not boring and free of narcissistic tendencies.
A second criticism of the blog reporting coming from the Convention is that it was not organized in any kind of fashion that made sense for the readers coming to their blogs. The average reader is not going to browse through a lot of blog crap until the true gem appears. Lastly, the Convention Committee failed to set expectations for the kind fo reports coming from bloggers. It would have been very beneficial had there been some kind of "blog director" overseeing the reports coming from bloggers, giving them quotas to fulfill, directing story ideas, and helping them locate the people in the convention hall for them to interview.
But enough about the DNC's convention. It's over and no matter how many people criticize it, it will not change history. All we can do is look at how the bloggers were handled (and how they handled being part of the media) and try to learn from it. The RNC would be wise to take notes, as their convention in NYC is only a month away.
The Convention Committee broke new ground by letting bloggers into the convention hall and I applaud them for that. It was a good idea and I hope that others follow their lead. In 2008, I am confident that the kind of blog network I wanted to build earlier this summer will be commonplace and all of my concerns above will be moot. Only time will tell.
Posted by Cameron Barrett at July 30, 2004 08:52 PMoh here, here. I totally agree. It's a damn shame that OSCON was the same week as the DNCC because it would have been nice to see a lot more blogging tech types with the semantic web in their heart. We ALMOST had #dems2004 going on FreeNode & got a chump bot going but nothing took off. Plus wireless at the Fleet was REALLY crappy. I think at the next convention we should all plan early and work on getting wireless throughout the entire hall, choose something that WONT interfere with RF, get Bluetooth, SMS-friendly stuff, & do all sorts of YASN stuff you see at OSCON and other O'Reilly shows. I think its a perfect match.
Posted by: B.K. DeLong at July 30, 2004 10:03 PM
Cam, really glad to see you back posting. I'm really hungry for some more pieces like this one that cover the politech you've been dealing with in the last year... (if "politech" becomes a term, I'd appreciate credit [free use w/ attribution!], if it already is, strike this;-) More essays!
Two things: If there was a "blog director" giving quotas for the bloggers, wouldn't people scream the DNC was telling the bloggers what to write? Are bloggers independent in your scenario, or arms of the party? As for bloggers being next to useless... I'd cut them some slack for their first trip, they're still making things up as they go along, finding their place. They had short notice, too.
Two: If we're employing your scenario of DNC-affiliated bloggers bringing the convention to the people, then you also should have indy bloggers as well, to have some balance, perspective, some objectiveness*.
And can we find another word beside "blogger?" God I'm sick of that. At least I can call my site something else, but the writers need a new name!
(*as best can be)
Posted by: ~bc at July 31, 2004 12:15 AM
A community approach or a more directed approach would have been a great idea but I wouldn't try to turn bloggers into assignment-desk driven writers or force blogging into a conferencing model. Actually, a number of bloggers did poll their readers in advance about what they wanted to hear about.
I expect more infrastructure to help with the sifting to emerge as this continues, but as for myself, I blog as a way of writing down what I am experiencing and I blog on topics that are specific to the blog I'm posting to. My readers know what to expect (or they don't keep coming back) and most of those who contacted me during the week felt that they were getting a fly-on-the-wall view of the proceedings.
Posted by: xian at July 31, 2004 01:09 PM
Cam,
I appreciate your feedback and thoughts, but I think that you overlook that many bloggers (myself included) did ask our readers what they wanted to know, but (speaking at least for myself), received very little specific feedback. I did get some questions and was able to pose one to Governor Rendell (PA) and one to Jaime Rubin. One of those answers is up on my blog now, the other I'm integrating with a post I haven't been able to make yet.
Most others wanted to know what it was like to be there. I got some of that across, as best as I know how. Others undoubtedly did better, and did better with interviews (Nat of Pacific Views comes to mind), than me.
I don't completely agree with your idea of a "blog director." That turns bloggers into play-actors of journalists (which happened to a degree at the convention), and that's not who we are. We're strongly indvidualist. Some bloggers are journalists, but a great many of those credentialed aren't. We have blogs to share our thoughts and opinions, much as we'd have a conversation with a friend.
A better approach might have been to embed us in delegations. I think the delegate bloggers had some of the best coverage of the week, at least in terms of "what is it like?" Instead of being able to just react to what was going on -- typical for most bloggers such as me -- we were out looking for stories. Some fared better than others. I don't claim I did well, and I believe that a blogger with more training in journalism would have made better use of my situation. We also might have self-organized better. Still, I'm not apologetic about what happened -- if people wanted the personality and intimacy of blogs this week, I think they largely got that. The realization now, among many is that it might not be the most appropriate for the event. There's also an expectation the media build up around bloggers -- and some bloggers contributed to that -- of us being opinionated, informal, snarky journalists that was smashed, but I think the majority of bloggers never claimed to be journalists and did not embrace those expectations, excepting those that are and did perform as such during the convention.
A lot of this will end up in a retrospective post I've been working on and waiting on until the rest of my convention posts are done, so apologies for half-formed thoughts.
Best,
Sean
Posted by: Sean at July 31, 2004 01:34 PM
I think it's still too early to try to judge the results of this experiment. And I think some of your premises and expectations don't necessarily reflect what this was about.
I don't understand the expectation that bloggers were supposed to be "covering" the convention. I don't think bloggers "cover" things, I think they blog.
I think bloggers are a special kind of information filter. At the convention I realized something that bloggers serve a much more important role in the political process than I had thought before the convention. I'm going to write about this, but not until it's ready to come out. No great hurry.
Posted by: Dave Johnson at July 31, 2004 02:31 PM
Hi, Cam. I concur and am really sorry the convention didn't buy in to the full vision.
From my response to Dave Winer's critique:
http://blog.conventionbloggers.com/discuss/msgReader$224?mode=topic
People write different things, and in a large enough community....
Observation, interview/interogation, advocacy/evangelism, fictional interpretation, fisking, fact checking, analysis, slice of life narrative, etc.
Ignoring complete fiction blogs ("As the first delegate from Mars..."), we wind up with collage journalism, a kaleidescope of posts that serve as the blind men, aggregators helping us see the whole elephant (donkey?).
There's also something to be said for preparation. Political reporters learn their beat in depth long before the convention. Many know the names and positions of every congressman by heart, know the lobbies and the people behind them. They also have skills specific to political reporting: tracking money, statusing legislation, digging deep into polling data and field organizations, defeating/coopting the gatekeepers. How many bloggers showed up with that level of skill, having done that level of homework? Since our lives are our beats, comparatively few.
One type of prep that several bloggers did was thinking about what they wanted to cover in advance. I saw a number of posts of "30 seconds after he left I thought of the question I really shoulda asked".
I want more issue coverage and issue advocacy. One strategy: pick a single issue and canvass the delegates and dignitaries for four days. How is this issue relevant to you? How does the platform reflect your concerns on that issue? Which speakers or programs spoke to this? Do you believe that this is a bridge or wedge issue? 40-100 data points, fodder for analysis and further investigation. Imagine what Jim Moore might have learned about Sudan awareness (genocide), or what I might have done on reasonable gun control (more people die of gunfire in Oakland than in England).
There was also the technical/facilities learning curve. How many bloggers were just learning their gadgets or arranging for connectivity? That's time and energy we won't spend next time, making for a faster launch.
We shouldn't feel too bad: of the 15000 reporters, how many were just OK vs. the best of their of their profession? Despite predominantly mediocre reportage (how many newspaper articles or evening news reports actually broke news or looked hard at the platform or policy?), on sheer numbers alone we shouldn't expect to outreport all those J-schoolers.
Posted by: Phil Wolff at July 31, 2004 05:00 PM
Hey, Cameron. You might go visit your brain child. The rest of you might take also take look at the Clark Community Network, the blog that Cameron started. It's at www.forclark.com. If you don't see a "Comments" line to click on, Click on "Front Page" at the left side of the second line and you will see the General Discussion location with the Comments.
You would be surprised to see a pretty loyal following that by some guesses numbers from 100-300 or more who still blog regularly on the "General Discussion". Mind you this is a full 6 months after General Clark left the primary scene. You should be amazed that without any direction, and very little maintenance--some thankfully provided by Josh Lerner-- these loyal supporters continue to discuss Clark's issues, share information and links, and persuade in the face of disagreements even in the face of unexpected current events.
This is in spite of the fact that the rest of the website is for all practical purposes dead. The "General blog" thread turns over after 300 or so posts, continuously and the individual blogs for all participants are still active--many still in use. We blog on for Clark.
Posted by: dennyzen at July 31, 2004 11:11 PM
A lot of my readers seemed to just want to know what it was like to be there. Once it became clear that library issues like the USA PATRIOT Act were not going to be showing up in speeches, it became trying to get the librarian angle in other ways: talking about security and privacy, talking about money and technology, talking about the spectacle, etc.
The DNC Blogging thing was one initial good idea with very little coordinated support from the inside. Things like WiFi, adequate seating/plugs/cords/speeches were provided haphazardly, if at all. People would come up and ask what we needed and then vanish, never to appear again. People would show up on day 3 to come fix things and be annoyed that we hadn't talked to them sooner, asking "who did you talk to?" and not knowing any of the 5-6 names we would give them. Some indicators that this was going to be this way were in place at the outset:
* there was no list of credentialled bloggers provided that was anything other than self-reported
* I assumed, somewhat naievely that the Blogger Breakfast was for orientation to the DNC system and operations. If you come from a media outlet, your people have been doing this for years and know how it works. We rarely had that know-how. Instead it was a huge meet-n-greet where bloggers were outnumbered by press
* there was an unclear division as to who was blogging "for" the Democrats in some offical capacity, and who was an independent blogger. This got murkier, not clearer as the week went on.
* there were two or three different feeds with slightly different lists of bloggers that were available for people to read. Unlike many of the politically-oriented blogs, my readers seemed to be reading my feed, not see my posts on a conference feed.
My readers seemed to be happy with the coverage I provided and I'm just happy to be home and not in Boston anymore. The two lines I heard over and over at the convention were "this is a made for TV event" and "I'm not with any organized party, I'm a Democrat" I guess I felt lucky to be there at all. I'd love to say that I bet they'll have their act together by 2008, but at the end of it all, the Convention is a very low-tech event that has been pumped up to play in print and also in TV. It's not really meant to be attended otherwise; Bloggers were in a spectator role to an event where all the spectating basically happens on television, it's no wonder the whole thing was strange and surreal.
Posted by: jessamyn at August 1, 2004 10:40 AM
Cam,
Fantastic post. While reading your second email, I saw you mentioned Slash and Scoop. I have stumbled upon a product called PLONE http://plone.org/. I have not used it but would love to know if anybody out there has.
I completely agree with you that giving people their own blogs is the way to go. Which platform is the best, that's the question --especially if you want to do so with people that do not necessarily know much about blogs.
The problem I have with TypePad is that you have no access to the server.
Then there is TextDrive, an offshoot of TextPattern. Open source. The only problem is that it has no multiple blog interface like MT/TP, Scoop or Slash.
Which brings me back to one of my recent posts on RFB --the technology of blogs-as-social-networking-tools is still in its infancy.
It's like all the elements for what is possible are out there, atomized. Nothing has come together yet and 'congealed' into the killer app standard.
Posted by: liza sabater at August 2, 2004 01:26 AM
