Transformative Leadership: N Chandrababu Naidu and TDP's Vision for Innovatio...
Social media and political change - Rachel Gibson
1. Social Media and the Rise of ‘Citizen-
Initiated’ Campaigning
eCampaigning Forum
St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford March
21-22, 2012
Professor Rachel Gibson,
Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester
http://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/socialchange/
2. Political Campaigns Pre-Web: Phase I
Early 20th century through to 2nd World War:
• Direct
• Localised
• Face-to-face/‘live’ quality
6. Phase 2: WW2 through to 1980s
Seeds of change:1930s FDR’s Fireside Chats
Indirect / mediated
National
Defining Moment JFK vs Nixon 1960 1st
Televised Presidential Debate
Personality rather than party-based
Negative ‘Daisy Girl’ Ad LBJ
Parties lost their supremacy
7. Phase 3: 1980s - present
New Style of Campaigning Identified
• ‘Americanised’ ‘Modernized’ ‘PostModern’ ‘Post-
fordist’ ‘Stage III’ ‘Professionalised’ ‘Political
Marketing’ (Denver & Hands; Farrell & Webb; Norris; Plasse;
Wring; Lees-Marshment)
Key Traits
• New tools – computerized databases, direct mail, telemarketing,
focus groups, targeted polling and tv advertising, internet.
• Relationship to voters – consumers to be persuaded.
• Campaign style – personalized around leaders, permanent,
individualized, marketed/targeted, professionalised and scientific.
• Organization – central HQ plus outside consultants. Little role for the
grassroots
8. Where does the web fit in?
Hypothesis 1: Increases trends for micro-targeting,
need for consultants & professionals, centralizes
power within technocratic elite. Increases top-
down approach with templates for local campaigns.
Campaigns become more ‘virtual’ and synthetic.
Hypothesis 2: Increases opportunities for citizen
involvement in campaigns, devolves power in
parties and makes them more networked (like issue/
protest organizations), increases
contacting/mobilization of voters, reconnects
parties with their local civic roots.
12. Then came Web 2.0 or ‘social media’...
2004 U.S. Presidential Race and rise (and fall) of
Howard Dean
• Blog for America, Meetups, Baseball Bat fundraiser, DDF
2008 Victory of Barack Obama – his ‘MyBO’ site
marked a key shift in established parties/campaigns
use of digital technology
● Gave rise to ‘citizen-initiated campaigning’ - where
ordinary citizens (not members/official staff) use digital
tools to undertake key campaign tasks and so ‘co-produce
or manage’ the election effort, at least at the local level.
● 15 m members by June 2008
● Does allow for central coordination and monitoring but
extensive tactical autonomy for volunteers
● Testimonies of those involved indicate its ‘transformative’
potential. Creation of ‘social capital’ (Putnam, 2000)
13.
14.
15. ‘Obama’s unprecedented online success guarantees
that there’s not a single campaign in 2012,
Democrat or Republican, that won’t place the Web
at the core of its operation. The floodgates are
open. This doesn’t mean just hiring Web
developers, bloggers, videographers – the works.
It also means using the Internet to invite people
into the process, giving them something to work
for, offering them a stake in victory or defeat.
…this new dynamic will transform the way campaigns
are run – and, beyond that, the way the winning
candidate governs. Fundamentally, all of this is
redefining our relationship with our politics.
‘Politics is No Longer Local. Its Viral’ Jose
Antonio Vargas, The Washington Post December 28
2008: B01
16. Everyone who goes out canvassing comes back with at least one story
of someone they impacted. The team leaders are trained to give
people time to tell those stories, and so everyone gets a sense of
progress and they learn from each other how to be more effective
next time. That’s a totally different picture than what I saw in scores
of Kerry offices in 2004: crowds of canvassers receiving minimal
instruction before being sent to an unfamiliar neighborhood and
rarely getting the chance to debrief with others….
At the end of my own neighborhood team meeting in Westport, Kansas
City, my team leader Jennifer Robinson, totally unprompted, told me:
“I’m a different person than I was six weeks ago… now I’m really
asking how can I be most effective in my community? I’ve realized
that these things I’ve been doing as a volunteer organizer – well I’m
really good at them, I have a passion for this. I want to continue to
find ways to actively make this place, my community, a better place.
…I’m asking now: Can I look for permanent work as an organizer in
service of my community? …before the campaign it never occurred
to me that I could even ask that question….”
Zack Exley ‘The New Organizers’
The Huffington Post October 8th 2008
17. Evidence from Project CODE – Comparing
Online Democracy and Elections
www.projectcode.net
(1) Development of the Citizen Initiated Campaign Index (CIC)
Scale that measures extent of citizen involvement in 5 core tasks using internet
technology:
3. Community building/Social networking
4. Resource generation
5. Get out the vote – voter mobilization
6. Message development
7. Message dissemination
Cases for analysis: UK GE 2010 ; Australia 2010; US Pres 2012 France Pres 2012
18.
19.
20. Measuring 5 Functions of Web Action
Community Building
Setup profile
Sites
External Message create
Photo Mobilization Policy email
Biography GOTV offline
fwd/customize
Why joined Access phonebank
Sign up for f2f Poster/leaflet
Setup/join Groups
canvassing reate/customize
Setup Blog
Sign up to discuss Manifesto input/feedback
Setup Wiki
with f&f
Email/msg system Leaflets download Message distribute
Externally promote Externally promote Web banners/ads d-load
profile event
Posters/leaflets d-load
Subtotal (additive GOTV online
Send email Email/share policy docs
0-9)
Post to FaceBook RSS feed to website
Post to Twitter Share blog posts ext.
Internal
GOTV i-phone app Link to SNS profile
Mobilization Elite Mobilization Link to Twitter account
Personal Email forward to Import email contacts
fundraising MP/newspp
Subtotal (additive 0-11)
Promote membership Start e-petition
Sign up as local Subtotal (additive
organiser 0-11)
Sign up as
candidate
Organize / add
event
Vote leaders to
attend events
Subtotal (additive
0-6)
21. Figure 1: Citizen -initiated Campaigning Emphasis by Party
BNP
SNP
Community
Membnet Intra
-mob
GOTV
Msg production
My Cons
LDA
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
22. Conclusions so far...
• Political institutions matter:
CIC performance – US (Hi) UK (Med) AUS
(Low)
• Party outloook size and resources matter –
major parties, mainstream left and resource
‘poor’
• No evidence so far that increases overall
amount of voter contact.
● BES statistics show stable level of contact 2005 to 2010
● Across parties 2010 rates of online contact low but
Conservatives highest (2.1%) followed by Labour and
LibDems
23. Expectations were high:
Howard Rheingold (1993) ‘The Virtual Community’
…the future of the Net is connected to the future of community, democracy,
education, science and intellectual life… The political significance of CMC lies
in its capacity to challenge the existing political hieararchy’s monopoly on
powerful commercial media, and perhaps thus revitalise citizen-based
democracy.
Nicholas Negroponte (1995) ‘Being Digital’
…As we interconnect ourselves, many of the values of a nation state will give way
to those of both larger and smaller electronic communities. [there is] …A
decentralized mindset growing in our society, driven by young citizenry in the
digital world. The traditional centralist view of life will become a thing of the
past.
Esther Dyson (1998) ‘Release 2.1: a design for living in the digital age’
…For me the great hope of the Net is that more and more people will be led to
get involved with it, and that using it will change their overall experience of
life. …The Internet is a powerful lever for people to use to accomplish their
own goals in collaboration with other people. Its more than a source of
information, it’s a way for people to organise themselves. It gives them power
for themselves. Rather than over others.
Editor's Notes
To add: Slide 24 – note on contact from BES 2005. Screenshots for Aus Labour and Liberals Figures on Aus CIC Labour and Liberals AES contact 2004 – 2007 – 2010 Cross party Figures on US contact 2008 compared to 2004 and 2000 ANES 2004 The survey contained the two questions typical of surveys after 1994: Qu 1: As you know, the political parties try to talk to as many people as they can to get them to vote for their candidate. Did anyone from one of the political parties call you up or come around and talk to you about the campaign this year? 1. Yes 5. No Qu 2: If yes, which party was that?1. Democrats 5. Republicans 6. Both 7. Other Results from the 2004 ANES showed that overall 43.9% reported that they were contacted by one of the parties in that year’s campaign, 56.1% said no. By party this broke down into Rep 55.6%; Dem 48.1%; Ind 43.6%; other (v small N) 55.0 %; No pref 31.1% ANES 2008 The weighted data from the 2008 ANES showed that overall the amount of people contacted remained stable at 43.4% reporting that a candidate or party contacted them during this year’s campaign. The breakdown by party revealed the Democrats as most active (40.7%) although the Republicans contact appeared to slip quite sharply (21.9%.) Those receiving contact from both parties stood at 36%. Other (1.1%) Party id? The appendix tables are good to have but see specific email for query on consistency with reported figures here.
I exaggerate the dullness perhaps. Mastery of tech innovations takes some time. Those skilful at using TV and arrival of media handlers for politicians arguably 2 decades after TV first went ‘mass’ – didn’t happen overnight. So why expect internet to be any different? And partic why look to parties and established govt bodies to be leading the charge on innovation. Have much to lose if it goes wrong – particularly in these days of negative campaigning and opposition research. Certainly not all of politics was awash with such inertia and caution – all know the stories about Jessie Ventura, Zapatistas in Mexico, and of course dizzying success of President Roh in S Korea in using internet & Web, and also the adeptness and enthusiasm of far right parties the medium. But can argue that for most established actors were cautious and slow on the uptake. Can argue that perhaps they were right to wait…
Dean campaign ‘started from nowhere, raised record sums of money, involved record numbers of people, and made its candidate a frontrunner in the polls…’ More than 600k ‘joined the campaign’, and ‘untold percentage of them were out in the world, stumping hard for the candidate, producing materials, holding meetings and rallies – with less direct guidance from the top than perhaps any campaign in the country’s history. More than one volunteer told me the campaign was less a bandwagon than a runaway train. ’ July 23 2003 BlogForAmerica launched ‘Bringing out the Bat’ idea in a post – challenge to raise more $ than VP Cheney at 2k plate dinner foll week in S Carolina. Load up on site on same day and then see if could raise same amount in one day via the people. By sat $82,260.28 and 1 hr before Monday passed 250k – final tally gone over $508,540.31 contributed by 9,601 – avg of $52.97. The propelling of the effort came from the blog posts. When Kerry won nomination, ‘the mainstream press predictably compared the Dean campaign to the dot-com bubble.’ Quotes Trippi Feb 11 2004 Keynote address to Digital Democracy Teach-In – opened the O’Reilly Emerging Technolgy Conference which resulted from 2003 Open Source Convention. Trippi noted the Dean campaign was far from the ‘dot.com crash’ it was the ‘dot.com miracle’. Starts on Jan31 2006 with 7 staff, $157k, 432 known supporters nationally. Moved to $45m. Marked end of an era of campaigns run and covered exclusively by professionals, as Kennedy Nixon debate had done. Set up era of one-way comm. tool where money dominated process and voters removed. All about big donations and buying air time.
Stats from 2005 not directly comparable but show for telephone
