Clemens Lerche

Winterschlaf: Internet-Wahlkampf in Hessen

Ah, da ist er also: Der erste Wahlkampf in der "Post-Obama"-Ära der deutschen Wahlkampfgeschichte: der hessische Landtagswahlkampf 2009. Der Tweet von Dr. Bieber hat mich angeregt, seine Frage mir selber zustellen: Was ist das zweinullige an www.webcamp09.de?

politikkongress und award: Stillstand hat ein zu Hause

Ein Branchenkongress ist eine gute Sache - eigentlich. Ich spreche über den "politikkongress" und den "politikaward". So ein Kongress ist auch Barometer über den Zustand einer Branche bzw eine Aussage über den Veranstalter. Und daran stört mich so einiges. Deshalb bin ich der Veranstaltung auch bewußt ferngeblieben.

Es fängt an mit dem Internetauftritt des Kongresses/Awards:
Der Award wurde am 4.12. verliehen. Heute (5.12.) um 13 Uhr ist die Seite nicht aktuell, noch lese ich von den Gewinnern vom Vorjahr. Dank twitter habe ich dann gelesen, dass den "Innovationspreis" die Online-Petition des Deutschen Bundestages gewonnen hat. Ein schlechter Scherz. Das System ist in der Tat "ein Krüppelsystem", wie Netzpolitik schreibt. Dort auch mehr Argumente zur Kritik. Das die SPD-Fraktion sich darüber freut, verstehe ich, ist aber sinnbildlich für die Internetnutzung in der deutschen Politik: Fern von Innovation und Umsetzung auf (internationalem) Niveau. Wenn ich bedenke, worüber in den USA gerade diskutiert wird - Stichwort "open government" bzw. "White House 2.0" (vgl meine Blogeinträge dazu) - hinkt Deutschland Lichtjahre hinterher.

Next step towards "open government"

Good news: First: Change.gov has changed a strict copyright policy for among the liberalist of Creative Commons licenses.

"In an effort to create a vibrant and open public conversation about the Obama-Biden Transition Project, all website content now falls under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License:.." Source change.gov

Second: A petition started to support "open government" and offers three “open transition principles”:

• No Legal Barrier to Sharing
• No Technological Barrier to Sharing
• Free Competition

It is signed for example by Lawrence Lessig, Tim O'Reilly, Clay Shirky...In a video Lawrence Lessig explains the aims of the petition.

Compared to the outcome of the IT-summit of the German government this is miles ahead.

Hopefully "Open government" is the new "eGovernment"!

Notice for my german readers: netzpolitik hat das natürlich längst gebloggt. Im commons blog weitere interessante details.

E-Bama: Too much information?

President-elect Obama's one-way use of YouTube to broadcast his weekly radio address already has 722,000 views. That`s a lot. Good critiques here.

Barack Obama promised to run the most transparent administration in history.

"How much transparency do we really want from Obama?" is the title of a slate.com article.

It lists seven ways the Obama administration can promote transparency - AND some potential drawbacks. The conclusion:

"The key to increasing transparency, therefore, is to allow people to interpret what they're seeing. That means not just more documents but better databases, more navigable interfaces, and more visual aids to help people analyze information. If you've got that, there's no such thing as over-sharing."

Since I am not able to keep pace with the journalists and professional pundits who have already written much of what I might have had to say, I recommend reading techPresident for up-to-date-information about E-Bama.

Vorsicht: E-bama Hype

Mein klarer Widerspruch zum Artikel E-Bama, aber auch Danke für die Anregung.
1) Ich finde das gewähltes Beispiel der Autorin für neue politische Online-Kommunikation

"Die Ära der politischen Online-Kommunikation, in der ein x-beliebiger Bürger eine E-Mail an Obama schicken kann, bricht gerade an."

ist ein denkbar schlechtes Beispiel, weil es weder neu ist noch den Kern des Erfolges der Obama Wahlkampfkampagne widerspiegelt noch richtig andeutet, was die Herausforderung des Wechsels von der eCampaign 2.0 zur Presidetial Politics/White House 2.0 ist.

Ad Spendings during presidential campaign

We all know that "money makes the world go ´round" (compare my blog entry "money wins elections"). But how did Obama and McCain spend it?
Short answer: Mostly for media, TV rules, Google is the winner.

Obama spent 38,3% for Media, 160 million for broadcast, 13,8 m print and 11,8 m for internet media - according to the Center of Resonsive Politics (CRP).

McCain spend 24,7% for Media, 63 million for broadcast, just 4,000 to print (?), 3 m on internet media.

Money wins elections

"Money wins elections" - well, we all know that. That`s why I ask myself how much was spend during the presidential campaign 2008, especially in this economically difficult times. And I hardly read anything about it. That made me even more curious.

What difference does it make

There is so much buzz going on right now about the US ´08 presidential election campaign - especially Obama´s - that it is tough work staying up to date or just collecting all the interesting stuff published out there in the "internets".

One the one hand lots of articles are looking backwards analysing the winning strategy of the Obama campaign - less McCain`s campaign so far. Here you find my first insights on the presidential campaign.

White House 2.0

If one of the key findings of the US 2008 campaigns is the boost of bottom-up participation, the question is if it is going to continue and what kind of impact it will have. Are we going to see a crowdsourcing approach to citizen government relations? From Campaign 2.0 to White House 2.0? New hope for eParticipation?

"The way we interact with Government is about to change, and the shape of that change is up to us. The Internet is not just a way to raise money or mobilize supporters. It's a way to shrink the distance between people and politicians." David Colarusso quoted from techPresident

"Just as the Internet has revolutionized commerce and campaigns, it will revolutionize the way elected officials and citizens interact, creating new channels of communication". Ray Campbell, eCitizen's president quoted from techPresident

Two projects "with complimentary efforts that seek to crowd-source the process of putting pressing questions before the President-elect and identifying the top priorities of the public" just started:

whitehouse2.org
Bigdialog.org

A broader perspective on citizen government relations gets mentioned by Daniel Engber in his highly recommended article "Dear Mr President". A short summarize of his wish-list for the next president:

- use the "swarm intelligence" or "wisdom of the crowd"
- open up the data -> "shift of public documents into a searchable and structured database" (XML...)

I strongly endorse these projects and suggestions and I am fascinated by the spirit and energy, but I experienced (including my involvement in consulting the government) that government progress in Germany has been slow - same in UK as Tom Steinberg recently admitted - but thanks for being optimistic and refueling me with hope.

Update: Recommended reading: Rebooting America
Update 5.11.2008:
Since I am not the only one who is thrilled by the sucess of Obama`s campaign, over at techPresident they published two more interessting articles (1, 2) about the possible transition towards Presidential Politics 2.0.
My dear german readers, over at heise one of the leading german ePolitics experts Dr Bieber published another highly recommended article about this topic.
Last but not least worth reading is this "off the record" blog entry.
Update 6.11.2008: The new Obama transition site Change.gov is being built by Blue State Digital. Not quite ready though, but amazing how fast and well prepared they act.

election08, obama, mccain, whitehouse2.0 , collaboration

First insights on US election 2008

Summary on what I read about trends in US politics or eCampaigning 2.0 - lessons learned from the US election 2008 so far - definitly more to come - feel free to ad yours in the comments!
It is less about favoring one candidate over the other, but more on the possible impacts of online political participation on wider political processes:

high involvement: here comes everybody

"We are collectively witnessing, and simultaneously creating, a networked public sphere that continuously scours the world for interesting information and collectively bubbles the most important stuff to greater view." techPresident

end of TV age?

"The Internet has enabled the public to get to know candidates in a much fuller and more intimate way than in the old days (i.e. four years ago), when voters got to know them largely through 30-second campaign ads and quick sound bites chosen by TV news producers." Huffington Post

In driving election-year dynamics, television still reigns supreme LATimes

small donor strategy vs big money and vs public funding

"Senator Barack Obama’s announcement on Sunday of his record-shattering $150 million fund-raising total for September underscored just how much his campaign has upended standards for raising money in presidential campaigns." NYtimes

"By and far the largest impact the Internet has had on the 2008 election is the ability to fundraise,..." politicsonline

microblogging/twitter

Twitter may eventually have a bigger effect on the political landscape than blogging. The possibilities are limitless, and the creative applications are just starting to be realized. The second presidential debate may have been a town-hall format, but the real town hall was on Twitter’s Election 2008 page. Mark McKinnon

new strategy

"The Internet has enabled the two campaigns to combine a top-down and bottom-up form of organization unlike any ever seen in the history of American politics, said Micah Sifry, co-founder of TechPresident.com..." via SFgate

social networking on the rise if...

The 21st century networks are less hierarchical, with ideas and energy traveling up, down and sideways among the campaign, activists, bloggers, friends and family members. via SFgate

better mobilization

"What you find overwhelmingly is the more personal, the more effective," Green said. "The thing that tends almost invariably to work is a kind of authentic interaction between people." Quote from SFgate

rising usage

A June report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that a record 46 percent of Americans had used the Internet, e-mail or cell phones to get news about the campaign or share their views with and mobilize others. via SFgate

problem: bubble/echo chamber effect

"Because you have so much detailed information on voters now, you can target what you say to communities of interest without getting people together to talk," he said. "Folks fear that we are losing a larger conversation, that we're not being deliberative." Daniel Kreiss quote by SFgate

Moreover, Julie Barko Germany, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet at George Washington University, said that it is very difficult to draw correlations between the number of Facebook friends or YouTube views with election results. NYtimes

instent fact checking/smear less successful

"The Internet may make it easier to disseminate character smears, but it also makes it much less likely that these smears will stick." Huffington Post

What you think? Comments highly appreciated!

election08, obama, mccain