The Internet Insurgent’s Buzz versus the Incumbent’s Fizzle

The Internet is a natural ally of insurgents rather than incumbents. That’s because an insurgent has the built-in incentive to widen his political base and broaden his legitimacy, sometimes starting from scratch. Incumbents, however, have been in their position for several years and thus their vision statements and inconsistencies are already well known. The messages they sent out fall on the already converted or the inconvertible. Either way, messages from incumbents tend to fizzle out, while those from insurgents tend to create a buzz. And if the insurgent knows how to harness social networking power of the Internet, the buzz can become a conversation.

Throughout history, there is a clear pattern that the devolution of power has been associated with the democratization of knowledge. Insurgents thrive on creating and disseminating knowledge, which explains why they are feared by ruling elites. As insurgents mobilize the citizenry to demand more transparency and accountability, more elite power erodes and devolves. For millenia, this demoratization process spanned decades if not a whole century, often entailing tremendous violence.

Not anymore with the Internet. If we believe that history repeats itself, insurgents will continue to arise and democratize knowledge, with the Internet as their peaceful ally. But history’s joke is that today’s insurgent cannot play that role indefinitely. Who will be the new insurgent in 2012 and how will he/she harness the Internet in ways that will make the 2008 presidential campaign look like … the fizzle of an incumbent?

More Concerns About Obama on Energy and the Environment

With Obama’s selection of Clinton for Secretary of State, Gates for Secretary of Defense, and Volcker as Head of the new Economic Recovery Advisory Board, many are asking: “Where’s the change?” 

 

The next big appointments to watch are for energy and environment. Will Obama take risks and push for radical measures on climate change?  Tom Blumer of Pajamas Media doubts it.

 

With an economy in official recession, Obama and Team will not be in a position to raise Social Security and other taxes on the wealthiest Americans, restore bans on offshore drilling that Bush just removed, and establish a cap-and-trade system targeted partly to delay or prevent the construction of new coal-based power plants.

 

Green policies could mean less money in people’s pockets, and actions which the public perceives as crippling to the economy are simply not the things to do while calling for expansion to pull it out of a downward spiral.

 

And Europe may be giving Obama his best excuse to backtrack.  The European Union, so far the most vociferous proponent for the global environment, seems to be muting its some of its extreme positions on the climate change agenda. The Czech Republic is assuming EU presidency in 2009, and Vaclav Klaus will most likely use the position to object loudly and frequently to Kyoto Protocol-type targets and agreements to markedly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. No wonder the expectation is that the ongoing climate change talks in Poland will probably yield few if any concrete results.

 

And the promised millions of green jobs?

 

Based on the long experience of the British wind power industry, Michael Liebreich, the Chief Executive of New Energy Finance (a consultancy specializing in renewable energy), warns that “… expectations are being set unrealistically high by politicians who are making promises inconsistent with economic fundamentals.”

 

Despite the strong commitment and support of the UK Government, there is still a big gap for the UK to reach its target of 30 gigawatts from renewable energy by 2020. How many jobs will be created still remains to be seen.

 

And Obama has not even begun yet.

 

We wish the President-Elect a lot of luck and we will give him our support. But it is going to be a very tough local and international setting to be pushing for meaningful actions on climate change.

 

 

Blogging Ethics

Surprisingly, despite the recent, exponential growth of the blogosphere and Internet-based organizing—of which the most recent evidence is Obama’s highly successful online campaign—there is very little analysis available related to ethical principles that could govern new social media.  I am struggling with developing my own set of blogging ethics, since I will need it for my planned work related to using new media tools to promote good governance and anti-corruption in development countries.

It will take time, practice and some mistakes to develop my own set of principles that are specifically adapted to my socio-cultural context and working conditions in the Philippines and Asia. But, as a start, a good set of proposed blogging ethics is presented below. (This was taken from: Kuhn, Martin. C.O.B.E: A Proposed Code of Blogging Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Law School. Presented at the Blogging, Journalism and Credibility Conference, January 21 and 22, 2005) Its core features seem very consistent with the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists.

A PROPOSED CODE OF BLOGGING ETHICS (C.O.B.E.)

 

Promote Free Expression by posting on your blog on a regular basis as well as visiting and posting on other sites in the blogosphere. Avoid restricting access to your blog by certain individuals and groups and never remove posts or comments once they have been published.

 

Be as transparent as possible by revealing any personal affiliations that might effect the opinions you express on your blog.

 

Emphasize the “human” elements in blogging by revealing and maintaining as much of

your identity as is deemed safe; promote equality by not restricting specific users or groups of users form your blog; minimize harm to others by never knowingly hurting or injuring someone with information you make available on your blog; and build community by linking your blog to others, maintaining a blogroll to encourage visitors to your blog to visit others, and by facilitating relationships between you and your readers.

 

Strive for factual truth and never intentionally deceive readers. Make yourself accountable for information you post online. Cite and link to all sources referenced in each blog post, and secure permission before linking to other blogs or web content.

 

Promote interactivity by posting regularly to your blog, honoring such etiquette and

protocol policies that are posted on blogs you visit, and make an effort to be entertaining enough to inspire return visits to your site.

 

The Best of the 2008 Presidential Campaign: Crowd-Organizing as Crowd-Sourcing

 

Looking back at the 2008 campaigns, I think its most significant achievement was to harness the Internet as an organizing tool.

 

I always thought that the Internet had the opposite effect, which is disorganize thought and people, because the fun act of clicking away led to so many disparate and unrelated sites.

 

But the 2008 presidential Internet campaigns—particularly the one waged by Obama—showed that when used strategically, the Internet can be a powerful organizer of crowds. It can help form coalitions and lead people toward a common goal.

 

The most ground-breaking achievement was fund-raising. A question must to be asked, however.  Did the Internet create first the interest in and commitment to the candidate, which then led to crowd to a single-minded mobilization of massive amounts of money to elect him?  Or did other forms of media or communications (not the Internet) create the commitment to the candidate first, and the Internet merely served as a tool for collecting contributions?

 

It is more likely the former. As Garrett reflected in class a few weeks ago, the Internet was there from the start, serving to create a small base of adherents to Obama, which started to legitimize him as a possibly credible leader. The Obama campaign then used the Internet once again to deliver new campaign messages while exploiting the Internet’s networking potential, which then created progressively larger political bases and a stronger legitimizing environment for Obama.

 

This happened as a snowball effect, with the Internet playing a bigger and bigger role. Serious fund-raising came in at some point and by that time, the snowball effect was so exponential that the amounts raised become phenomenal. The analogy to a ripple effect is inaccurate. No one threw a rock, no rock sank to the bottom. And Obama’s campaign certainly cannot be characterized by ripples that do not reinforce themselves but instead dissipate outwards and become nothing.

 

In other words, the Internet’s crowd-organizing power is at the same time a crowd-sourcing tool—to reinforce the candidate’s legitimacy, and to mobilize money.

 

This has important implications for campaigns and fund-raising other than for presidential elections. It seems doubtful that an abstract cause per se can directly rally large masses to make financial contributions. Much more effective, it seems, is a determined individual who starts with a small base, obtains legitimacy from them, and then uses the Internet to broadcast that incipient, legitimate platform. Then he goes back out again through the Internet and through networking, he invites more people (or he “sources the crowds”) to help amplify that vision, that mandate, in a participatory way (e.g., through blogs, wikis, Facebook, MySpace, etc.). Repeating this process enlarges the sphere of his legitimacy and carries progressively greater masses of people around an evolving political vision. It crosses a certain line where the periodic burst of messages becomes a constant buzz. This is the point where asking for financial donations can take off exponentially.

 

This is what I think I have learned, but it remains to be tested. Perhaps this social development and organization theory around Internet use can be useful to what I want to do eventually regarding participatory journalism for promoting good governance and anti-corruption in developing countries.

 

But for now, it all starts with someone who believes in something important.