Open Source Campaigning
Status Report 2008: USA
From a conference report by Roman Tol, summarizing Micah Sifry:
"Since the 2004 United States elections, the internet has become much more participatory and interactive with the popularization of Web 2.0. This participation, the idea goes, lends new currency to the notion that these technologies can be employed to allow citizens to ‘reprogram’ politics. One of the earliest examples is the way that the Macaca video spread virally through the internet on YouTube and contributed to the electoral defeat of Senator George Allen of Virginia during the 2006 U.S. midterm elections. The old ethics of politics allowed candidates to get away with making ad lib comments if journalists did not pick up on them, but services such as YouTube have changed that, and now politicians must be more careful not to say things that will come back to haunt them.
Various Internet prophecies involve a new wave of fashionable democracy as fundraisers meet on MySpace, YouTubers crank out attack ads, bloggers do opponent research, and cell-phone-activated flash mobs hold mini conventions in Second Life. Open source political campaigns, Open source politics, or Politics 2.0 are about the idea that social networking and e-participation technologies will revolutionize our ability to follow, support, and influence political campaigns.
In The Nation (2004) Micah Sifry wrote open source politics means “opening up participation in planning and implementation to the community, letting competing actors evaluate the value of your plans and actions, being able to shift resources away from bad plans and bad planners and toward better ones, and expecting more of participants in return. It would mean moving away from egocentric organizations and toward network-centric organizing.” Since Micah’s article, the term has appeared on numerous blogs and print articles. Micah was invited to talk about open source politics and how it relates to this years US presidential election.
Micah’s perspective on politics and the revolutionizing authority assigned to the network, provided for some fascinating insights. According to Micah political communications must move from being egocentric to network centric; less about individuals and more about loosely connected networks of supporters that unite and self-organize around specific issues, allowing voters to become co-creators of the political campaign and outcome. Micah’s presentation was named ‘the revolution will be networked’ and concerned voter-generated content, donations, and a potential retreat from sound bites (or the even shorter sound ‘barks’).
Because of the interactive quality of modern campaign sites (comments, polls, upload options), users currently are co-creators of campaigns. This network of users, Micah argues, makes modern campaigns not solely about getting donations or votes; issues can be discussed in depth. Obama’s top 10 YouTube clips are on average 13 minutes long (with approximately 900 videos posted). These videos get millions of hits, which is unique because YouTube only registers a hit when the video is watched completely. The Race Video has had over four million views, demonstrating that there are a lot of people interested in in-depth content that without the Internet cannot be obtained.
The Internet opens up meaningful spaces and changes traditional processes. For instance funding is done in new ways; Ron Paul opened up his funds by putting all his campaign donations online. The database of donations was entirely searchable. Supporters started expanding the site with useful tools, for instance, graphs that displayed funding from specific places, organizations or persons – they then set-up the website ronpaulgraphs.com; the result can be considered a form of open source donors in real-time. With micro-economics emerging on the web, big money doesn’t go away – but now there is a counter force. The mobilizing force of the internet allows for a long tail of donations, potentially assigning power to the people. Those who are only able to donate a small amount and thus generally have little or no authority, can mobilize via network technologies and have a say at what direction a candidate’s party should take, as an alternative to the established domination of the corporation.
The voter generated content, Micah emphasizes, is not solely about raising funds; the contributions extend to full scale voluntary operations. Great examples are “Vote Different” video from Obama supporters and the new “VoterVoter” site, where citizens can develop their own ad and pay to have it placed on TV. Micah believes there is a shift in centrality; the focus is on the user. This shift is evident in the importance of MySociety.org and its toolset for citizens to monitor and exert pressure on government. Obama seems to understand the network power better than the other candidates before him and still in the race; his campaign site is all about providing a channel or a portal to other users and sites, not necessarily trying to control them. The heart is the user.
To get to a position of open source politics we need to give supporters authority. To what extent is this achievable and smart? Ron Paul supporters were given full authority to shape his campaign, but then they raised money to spend on a branded blimp – as it turned out not the most efficient course. A more interesting question is what happens to the network and peer production after the candidate is placed in office? And where will the balance of power lie? Once you have given supporters/voters a sense of power, they probably won’t let it go so easily. The speeding up of politics: this quickening of coordinated citizen demands and responses, fostered by tools like MySociety or Central Desktop, will this lead to more open decision making? What about collaborative government?" (http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/weblog/2008/05/13/politics-web-20-international-conference/)