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January 28, 2004
Reason on Dean and Social Software
Posted by Clay Shirky
Interesting post over at Reason on the
various flavors of post-Iowa and NH Dean campaign analysisAnd this, perhaps, is the problem—from the perspective of politicians, anyway—with campaigning by smart mob. Politics is a top down business. The old metaphor of the "political machine" is in this sense quite apt: It evokes a vast clockwork mechanism, perhaps composed of many cogs and gears, but governed in the end by a few hands at the levers of control.
The organism—reigning metaphor for online social networks—lacks such convenient levers. Dean's network comprises not just his own site, rife with comments, but sites like DeanSpace, which were autonomous, not run by the campaign. In politics, that's a bug, not a feature.
Comments (5)
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1. Roland Tanglao on January 28, 2004 7:31 PM writes...
the top down traditional political system will soon be a bug, not a feature
if not in 2004, then in 2008
i think people are smarter than we think
and they won't be fooled by 'messaged' TV ads in 2008
hopefully 2008 will come early (like in November) :-) !
Permalink to Comment2. Clay Shirky on January 28, 2004 8:54 PM writes...
_the top down traditional political system will soon be a bug, not a feature_
_if not in 2004, then in 2008_
You could write a program that would spit out that same first sentence, look up the current election year, and then output
"if not in N, then in N+4"
for every election year since 1992, when MIT furnished free mailing lists to all the campaigns.
And you know what? We were wrong about that idea in 1992, 1996, and 2000.
Permalink to Comment3. Roland Tanglao on January 28, 2004 9:42 PM writes...
yeah, clay, my cynical side says you're right
Permalink to Commentbut i still (perhaps naively) think it's going to happen
4. John Krystynak on January 29, 2004 12:19 AM writes...
If technology-based social networking is partly a cause for Dean's collapse, then perhaps looking at technology adoption models is helpful.
Dean didn't "cross the chasm" (Moore). His campaign is in the "trough of disillusionment" in the technology hype cycle (Gartner).
I think these models are worth considering to help explain how SNS might be affecting political activity, but I also think a lot of the discussion is arguing over the wrong cause.
The obvious cause that gets overlooked is that Howard Dean himself lacks appeal for the mainstream democratic primary voter... (Syllogisms have their uses)
Permalink to Comment5. Bob Jacobson on January 29, 2004 10:02 AM writes...
The fault lies not in social-networking software (SNS) per se, but in reliance on it to the near exclusion of every other model of information sharing. If grassroots organizers were able to use something other than the hackneyed eGroups model (developed in 1996), now ridiculously commercialized by Yahoo!, perhaps they can find a way to more closely approach, energize, and better use the ground forces.
This may happen yet, although events in Iowa and NH, and now the change in campaign leadership, were breaks in Gov. Dean's momentum. The campaign's not over and many of us are working overtime on campaign power tools.
On the other hand, despite the appeal of the Blog, there was never really much direct communication between the Dean HQ and the grassroots. The Blog became a TV broadcaster with a modicum of useful feedback (that no one knew if it was read or not). Apart from the eGroups, at the ground level, there was little in the way of IT to facilitate inter-member communication other than physical meetings, always a tough go for working people with families.
What's really under attack here isn't the SNS per se, which had a point -- casting a broad net, an ever-expanding bubble of excitement -- but the revolutionary rhetoric that accompanied it, hiding the need for better more conventional campaign IT tools. Now it's a race against time.
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