print | email

Study Group led by Nicco Mele
aim: workingnicco

Study Group: Mondays 4 to 5:30 pm
Office Hours: Mondays 1pm to 4pm; Tuesdays 2pm to 5pm

From Ron Paul’s success on social networks to Barack Obama’s astonishing online fundraising numbers, the Internet and related technologies are fundamentally re‐ writing the tactics of political campaigns. The 2008 election season offers a front row seat to a new kind of campaigning and raises a number of critical questions. This study group will look at traditional campaign tactics – and then examine the way technology is revolutionizing political campaigns. We will make a careful study of the 2008 campaigns and their internet strategies to try to understand some of the most important questions about how new technologies affect politics. 

Calendar

Sept. 29: The Changing Political Landscape
Our first class will be an overview of the role of technology in this election. To win a political campaign, only two things matter: how much money do you have and how many people can you mobilize to vote for you? The internet is relatively well understood as a fundraising vehicle – but it is not well understood as voter persuasion medium. The internet is almost too "low touch" to mobilize and persuade. Broadcast online and it's easily ignored (think spam), but online "word of mouth" is hard to measure and even harder to create. We will begin by examining the history of technology in political campaigns and spend some time looking at what this year’s campaigns are doing online. Nicco Mele is the  founder and president of EchoDitto (EchoDitto.com), a leading internet  strategy consulting company with offices in Washington DC, New York,  and Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Mele has broad  experience working with emerging technologies and is a considered a  pioneer in the social media and Web 2.0 field.  As the Internet  Operations Director of Gov. Dean’s presidential primary campaign in  2003, Mele managed all technical, functional and design aspects of  Gov. Dean’s national web presence.  Mele is a co-founder of GeniusRocket.com, a crowd sourced creative ad  agency, and he is also a co-founder of ProxyDemocracy.com, an online  resource for proxy voting and shareholder resolutions.  In December of  2003, Mele was named one of America ’s “best and brightest” by  Esquire magazine. Mele teaches in the Johns Hopkins University  graduate communications program and has presented for Harvard  University’s Berkman Center.  Mele sits on the board of Democracy 21 (Democracy21.org), a non-partisan campaign finance reform group  founded by Fred Wertheimer, and the Lower East Side Girls Club  (GirlsClub.org). 

Oct. 6: Facebook & MyBO: The role of Social Networks in Campaigns
Guest: Adam Conner (Facebook) On Monday, Oct. 6, we’ll be joined by special guest Adam Conner, from Facebook’s DC office.  We’ll be talking about Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody“, Metcalfe’s law and Reed’s law, and the role of social networks (and social capital) in political campaigns.  The Facebook group “1 million strong for Barack Obama” set a narrative for Obama’s internet strength early on in the campaign cycle.  At the same time, the Obama campaign’s ”My Barack Obama” web-based tool-set for organizing and fundraising is the single most sophisticated social network technology ever employed by a political campaign. Facebook also provided a crucial early platform for Ron Paul’s presidential primary campaign.  With Adam, we’ll be exploring the ROI on social networks for political campaigns and trying to imagine what social networking in the next campaign cycle might look like: Facebook 2012? Adam Conner started the Washington DC office for Facebook and is currently working on Privacy and Global Public Policy at Facebook.  His focus is on privacy and regulatory issues, political outreach and partnerships. Prior to Facebook, Adam was the Director of Online Communications for Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, Chairwoman of the Rules Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. He previously served as the Deputy Director of Online Communications for Forward Together, the presidential exploratory committee for former Virginia Governor Mark Warner.

Oct. 13 – No class

Oct. 20 – Political Organizing & Technology
Guest: Gina Glantz (SEIU)
Join us on Monday to talk with Gina Glantz, Senior Advisor to SEIU and  political maven, about political organizing, the presidential race,  and technology.  The Obama campaign has re-vitalized traditional  organizing with their emphasis on the caucus states during the primary  and their general election “neighborhood team” structure.  By  combining traditional grassroots organizing with powerful web-based  tool-sets, the Obama campaign is ushering in an organizing  renaissance.  This Monday from 4 to 5:30 we want you to join Gina  Glantz to talk about how technology became part of organizing and what the future holds. Gina Glantz is currently Senior Advisor to President Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the largest and fastest growing trade union. Prior to joining SEIU, Ms. Glantz served as National Campaign Manager for Bill Bradley for President.   In 1985, she co-founded the consulting firm of Martin & Glantz, with offices in California and Washington, D.C.  Martin and Glantz, now known as Fowler Hoffman, is a national consulting firm specializing in grassroots organizing and communications strategies to affect public, opinion leader and policy-maker attitudes and actions.  Clients included:  The Ford Foundation, The California Wellness Foundation, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, ACLU, American Express.  Ms. Glantz worked as a campaign manager, field director, and political consultant at the Congressional, state and Presidential level during the 11 years prior to the creation of Martin & Glantz.  She served as a traveling political aide to Governor Howard Dean during the latter part of the 2004 Presidential primaries and National Field Director of the Mondale-Ferraro Committee in 1984.  From 1979 through 1982, Ms. Glantz served as the Chief of Staff for County Executive Peter Shapiro of Essex County, New Jersey.  From 1974 through 1976, she served as District Administrator to Congressman Andrew Maguire (D-NJ), and earlier in her career was an advertising account executive in New York City. Ms. Glantz is Vice Chair of Planned Parenthood Action Fund and is Treasurer of Qvisory, Inc, a newly formed on line organizations for young workers. She also serves on the board of the American Council of Young Political Leaders (ACYPL) and the Bay Area Economic Forum.  Ms. Glantz, a former member of the board of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), currently serves on its National Leadership Advisory Council. Ms. Glantz graduated from the University of California at Berkeley (1965) and was a participant in the Harvard University JFK School Senior Executives in State and Local Government Program (1981).

Oct. 27 – Journalism & New Media in Politics
Guest: Jane Hamsher (FireDogLake)
We’ll be joined by Jane Hamsher, the founder of Firedoglake, one of the most important progressive blogs, to talk about the relationship between the traditional news media, the emerging new media, and the political campaigns. Does blogging drive mainstream media or does mainstream media drive blogging?  The truth is more complicated and intricate.  We will also ask Jane about the state of the presidential race, the effectiveness of blogging for state and local political campaigns, and the future of journalism. Jane Hamsher is the founder of firedoglake.com. Her work has also appeared on the Huffington Post, Alternet and The American Prospect. She has appeared on CNN, MSNBC and PBS and is the author of the best selling book Killer Instinct. She has produced such films Natural Born Killers and Permanent Midnight and currently lives in Washington, D.C. Firedoglake (http://www.firedoglake.com), one of the leading progressive blogs, is best known for its groundbreaking coverage of the ValeriePlame case and liveblogging of the Scooter Libby trial. FDL features energetic reporting on the leading issues of the day and features weekly Book Salons with such authors as Keith Olberman, Bob Woodward, John Dean, Naomi Klein and Paul Krugman. As the home of the Blue America PAC, FDL readers helped raise  over a million dollars for progressive candidates and issues.

Nov. 3 – New Media & the Conservative Movement
Guest: Mike Krempasky (RedState)
On the eve of the election, we’ll be talking to Mike Krempasky about the conservative movement, the “Next Right”, and how the movement uses technology.  Does online political activity only work for activists? In other words, are you only preaching to the choir? What’s the sweet spot when things begin to reach out beyond the base and bring new people into the process? Another way of asking this question is: are we dealing with the same activist pool spread across all online endeavors? Mike Krempasky is the Executive Vice President of Digital Public Affairs out of Edelman's Washington, DC office. Mike Krempasky joined Edelman in 2005, focusing on internet strategy and communications, marketing, and advocacy for Edelman clients. He oversees all digital strategy in public affairs, public policy, corporate reputation and crisis communications. Mike combines an expertise in blog communications and direct marketing with a background in grassroots political organizing. Before coming to Edelman, Mike was the political director of American Target Advertising, a full-service creative direct response marketing agency where he helped companies and organizations develop and use technology to enhance traditional fundraising and advocacy programs. Mike is the co-founder of RedState.com, one of the the most-read conservative blogs inside the Beltway. He has been a blogger since 2001. In that capacity, he has testified before the Federal Election Commission  on the regulation of political speech on the Internet and became one of the first bloggers called to offer expert testimony before a Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is the co-founder of The Online Coalition, a bipartisan association of bloggers and online professionals formed to support freedom of speech and political participation online. Mike is a frequent lecturer at technology and Internet seminars.

Nov. 12 – McCain, the GOP, & the Internet
**NOTE SPECIAL DATE**
Guest: Cyrus Krohn (RNC)
Cyrus Krohn will be joining us from the RNC to talk about the internet and this presidential race. We’ll be working understand what he learned over the course of the campaign and trying to establish some rules for online campaign tactics. One critical question: how should the internet and other emerging technologies be integrated with traditional campaign methods? We’ll also talk to Cyrus about the innovative GOPPlatform2008.com — a tool that allowed the public to engage in the GOP’s platform-crafting process. Cyrus Krohn is director of the Republican National Committee’s eCampaign Division. He joined the RNC following two years at Yahoo! as director of content production and election strategy. Prior to Yahoo!, Krohn spent 10 years at Microsoft. He was Slate.com’s first employee and then publisher while the webzine was owned by Microsoft. Krohn also managed the political advertising efforts for MSN.com, the Microsoft Network, and was executive producer at MSN Video. Krohn worked in CNN’s Washington, D.C. bureau producing Larry King Live and Crossfire and served as an intern for Vice President Dan Quayle. 

Nov. 13 - Video Games & Political Messages
**NOTE SPECIAL DATE**
Guest: Ian Bogost (Persuasive Games)
Video games are a larger media industry than the movie industry and the music industry combined.  Barack Obama bought persuasion advertising inside of Xbox 360 video games; in 2003, the Howard Dean campaign designed a video game to explain the Iowa Caucus to his supporters.  Ian Bogost will be joining us to talk about his experience designing video games with embedded political persuasion messages and discussing the possibilities the future might hold. Ian Bogost is a videogame researcher, critic, and designer, as well as an author and an entrepreneur. He is a professor at Georgia Tech (a university), a Founding Partner at Persuasive Games (a videogame studio), and a Board Member at Open Texture (an educational publisher).  Persuasive Games is currently focusing on "newsgames," a genre that blends videogames with editorial cartoons. In mid 2007 they announced a publishing relationship with The New York Times, who runs their games in the op-ed section of their TimesSelect subscription service. They've also launched a game about the politics of nutrition called Fatworld, commissioned by PBS and the iTVS.

Nov. 17 – The Making of the President 2.0: How the Internet Changed the Game
Guest: Micah Sifry (TechPresident.com)
As the co-founder and editor of TechPresident.com, Micah will give us a broad overview of the role of the internet in this election cycle.   In May 2004, Micah L. Sifry helped co-found PDF. Since 1997, he has been a senior analyst with Public Campaign, a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington, DC working on comprehensive campaign finance reform. In that capacity, he has published articles and op-eds in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The American Prospect, The Hill, Salon.com, IntellectualPolitics.com and many smaller papers and magazines. He is also, with his colleague Nancy Watzman, co-author of Is That a Politician in Your Pocket? (John Wiley & Sons, 2004), a book on how money in politics affects people in their everyday lives. He is also a freelance writer whose work has frequently appeared in The Nation, The American Prospect, Tikkun magazine and on the web in TomPaine.com and Salon.com. His book Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America (Routledge, 2002) was described in Newsday as "a commanding survey of contemporary third parties... In a more politically developed country, Sifry's reporting would be the gold standard of contemporary journalism." He has also written for The New York Times, Newsday, HotWired's Netizen, World Business, The New York Observer, George, Los Angeles, Elle, Inside Media, The Village Voice, and The Progressive. In 1998-99, he was an Independent Project Fellow of the Open Society Institute (1998-99), and was invited to write the epilogue of The Encyclopedia of Third Parties in America (M.E. Sharpe, 2000). He has appeared on CBS "This Morning," MSBNC, C-SPAN, MTV News, National Public Radio, Air America and many talk radio programs, and is frequently consulted as a leading source on third-party politics by many reporters. Prior to joining Public Campaign in 1997, Sifry was an editor and writer with The Nation magazine for thirteen years, writing widely on domestic and international politics, especially the Middle East, his first love and specialty. He is the co-editor, with Christopher Cerf, of The Iraq War Reader (Touchstone, 2003), of which the Weekly Standard said: "Most public-policy anthologies are a bore--either too slight in substance or too academic in tone. Not so The Iraq War Reader. It combines polemics with solid policy statements; forceful opinion pieces with scholarly analyses. Readers will find in its pages key documents, speeches, and essays that give depth to the debate about American policy toward Iraq. Sifry and Cerf also co-edited The Gulf War Reader (Times Books, 1991), which The Washington Post reviewed as "a highly valuable book....a fascinating tour back through the dilemmas and edgy emotions of the crisis." From 1993-96, in addition to being associate editor of The Nation and politics editor of RadioNation, he published The Perot Periodical, a quarterly newsletter, which was praised by the Columbia Journalism Review as "indispensable reading for politics junkies of any political persuasion: first-rate reporting by first-rate reporters." He is a graduate of Princeton University (B.A. in Politics, 1983) and New York University (M.A. in Politics, 1989). He is also an adjunct professor at the Political Science Department of the City University of New York/Graduate Center, and a founding member of its Independent Politics Group.

Nov. 20 – Obama and the Internet
**NOTE SPECIAL DATE**
Guest: Jascha Franklin-Hodge (Blue State Digital and Obama for President) The Barack Obama campaign has dramatically re-imagined political campaigning.  We'll be talking to Jascha Franklin-Hodge, the CTO of Blue State Digital, the Obama campaign's technology partner.   A BSD founding partner, Jascha brings more than a decade's experience in software development in the corporate, nonprofit, and political spheres to his role as BSD's Chief Technology Officer. He manages  the company's technology staff and operations out of BSD's technology center near downtown Boston, including our infrastructure, the maintenance and enhancement of the BSD Online Tools, and our technology client services. For Gov. Howard Dean's groundbreaking 2004 presidential campaign, Jascha led the technology team responsible for scaling, securing, and maintaining a high-visibility, high-traffic Web site, which received praise from both the political and tech communities for its usability, reliability, and depth of functionality. Before entering the world of politics, Jascha was the director of software development for America Online's Digital Music Division. He helped architect several cutting-edge applications including Radio@AOL, Spinner, and MusicNet, as well as the digital music player Winamp. He has also worked for the Art Technology Group and Software Tool and Die (The World), and has consulted to the Computer Museum, Andiron Press, the School of The Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Jascha studied computer science at MIT, and lives in Boston.