Doug, I feel that the Patrick administration has thus far used BMG in a very “traditional” manner that is getting you a minimum of benefit, and is really not worth your time. You can get a lot more value from us.
I have a kernel of an idea about how to use BMG, which I’ll discuss below. But first, here are a few guidelines for how not to think of us.
- As a fan club. You have fans on here, but talking to the entire community as if they love you will turn off as many people as it turns on.
- As critical supporters whom you must keep on your side when the chips are down. Again, we are not. We are a wide and varied audience and we are no more or less deserving of your attention than a Massachusetts voter who reads the daily newspaper.
- As just another recipient of press release-style communications. The press-release tone is suited to communications with professional journalists and the environment they work in; for blogs, the tone should be closer to persuasive dialog supported by an abundance of hard facts.
- As people divorced from traditional media, who will at the first prompting disregard any negative press the administration has received. In reality, we will disregard negative press when – and if – you show us why it is inaccurate. Again, think “abundance of facts,” not “press release.”
So, on to what should be done: The administration should use online communities to get its message out in ways that are impossible with traditional media. This is done by leveraging the unique qualities of online communities:
- We have a long attention span. When the administration has a complex argument to make in support of an initiative, they should make it through BMG. In practice, every communications effort should have two components: the “short” version for traditional print/televised media, where the emphasis is pure sales with one or two flashy talking points; and the “long” version for online forums, where the emphasis is on carefully built arguments and several in-depth talking points-which ideally correspond to the “short version” talking points, but are presented with analysis and factual support.
- Example: when talking about a new biotech initiative, the message to traditional media is, “jobs and education”; the message to the online community is, “the biotech sector is a key growth industry (and here’s why…), Massachusetts is situated to grow our industry footprint and recover our manufacturing base (and here’s why…), and the synergies with academic research will help our public universities reach world-class status (and here’s how…).”
- We’re politically savvy, we want to be treated as such, and if we are, we can help. For example, Governor Patrick has had some stumbles in his first year on the job. That’s understandable. If you want our support, talk to us about those challenges. Take a risk. Instead of saying “Governor Patrick is doing great because of x, y and z,” say “Governor Patrick is working hard on the (xyz) initiative, and we have frankly had a lot of challenges because of …” I’ll bet that for every challenge you name, you will find someone on BMG who can help with it. Of course, everything you say here is public, so you have to balance that. But that’s what you guys are good at.
- Challenge us to help improve our state…using tactics that reflect what we are. If you want to get a message out, don’t give us that message and say “go talk to people.” Challenge us to build on that message with our own research and initiative. Let us figure out a whole slew of reasons why your idea is good. We may even improve it in the process.
- Chorollary: Our community won’t mobilize if all you give us is a cheap party line. But, if the opposition is using a cheap party line that is assailable with facts, you can challenge us to marshall those facts and attack that party line with every means available to us (blog posts, calls, letters, emails, the works…) and this community will go to it with a gusto.
- Chorollary: Our community won’t mobilize if all you give us is a cheap party line. But, if the opposition is using a cheap party line that is assailable with facts, you can challenge us to marshall those facts and attack that party line with every means available to us (blog posts, calls, letters, emails, the works…) and this community will go to it with a gusto.
In short, focus on using the blog community as another tool in your communications toolbox: which means first figuring out what the tool is designed to do. Figure out how we can help advance your agenda by doing what we do best. Do that, and “keeping us happy” will happen by itself.
Of course, all of this assumes that you have an agenda, and that the folks in the corner office are all doing their part to move it forward. All the points above stem from that mandate. They do not replace it. At the end of the day, the blogs are a reality-based community, and your success here will always be proportional to your actual accomplishments. Which is how it should be.
I hope this helps. And in the spirit of blogs, I imagine that folks in the comments can build on these ideas (or provide their own).
another way blogs differ from traditional media is that communication is not one-way. anyone wishing to get something from a forum like this must be willing to participate to a degree. a great example of the worst way to use the forum were posts by the tsongas campaign. they dropped chatty posts on us, then didn’t bother to converse whatsoever with readers who had replied in good faith. some people didn’t mind, but for me it was a major turn-off. perhaps what it comes down to is understanding the medium and working within it appropriately.
Then repeat.
Some of us have a lot more time to kill, and like arguing and insulting each other ad nauseum (if not ad baneum). We would love to imagine Nikki Tsongas up at three in the morning responding to our latest response to their response, but of course anyone that does that must not be getting much work done, and is probably sitting in Diesel Cafe all afternoon. And Rubin and Tsongas and their staff surely know this, they have seen the thousand-comment threads on DKos that all somehow manage to wind up being about Robert Bork, the 2000 election, charter schools, socialism, the Crusades, etc. So they are probably justified in not “joining the community” and just dropping little updates on us now and then. But it would be good if they came back a day later and made one more comment that indicated that they read our questions, and perhaps answered a few of them, perhaps sometimes in great depth. There is nothing they should save for a NYT interview, let the NYT find out their position here, instead of us finding it out from the NYT. And if the NYT notices that they are avoiding answering questions here, they should note that and start asking the same questions.
no one should expect Niki herself to be doing that in a busy campaign, but if you have a staffer who’s cleared to represent Niki and he or she comes back with answers, that’s almost as good. If that’s the case, though, the staffer shouldn’t pose as the politician – because this type of community is just as happy having a campaign staffer as it is the politician coming on over, as long as we’re getting more information on issue specifics and on how to advance the agenda (for those who are interested in advancing it).
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p>Doug’s posts have already been influential, I’m just hoping he learns the ‘blog format’ quickly, so they remain that way.
They usually just cut and paste talking points from the website, or give guarded non-answers. Sometimes they might have “specifics” and marching orders, but those don’t concern me. What I want is a chance to interact with the person who actually votes and signs the legislation. I want insight into their personality, I want to know how they feel, I want acknowledgment that they have heard and understand my concern. I could get specifics and marching orders from a staffer on the phone, or by coming into the office, and not have any confidence that they actually pass along my concern to their boss. It’s like their job is to keep their boss from having to deal with us. All they do is nod and give some sort of brush off and chalk up my concern on a tally board in some ill-fitting category, and I get the sense that the actual rep or senator or governor never gets bothered with my concern, all they hear is the tally totals and the slant that the staff thinks they want to hear.
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p>So, no, staffers won’t do. It’s a little better when it is the chief of staff, but still you get the sense that there is a whole lot of filtering and insulating going on.
campaigns and staffs just have to learn how to engage in the blogosphere. Don’t tell me they can’t do it, because I’ve seen it done before =p
There is something great about blogs by people like Paul Levy and Dan Bosley, I can feel the difference when I type in comments: I’m actually going to be heard. If they choose to ignore me, at least I know that they are choosing to ignore me, they aren’t just being kept in the dark by a staffer who decided that my concern wasn’t worthy of reaching the boss.
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p>There is a role for staffers to go out and interact with or use the blogs, but if I’m talking to a staffer, I feel like I’m being used, polled and prodded and probably ignored.
Certainly, the Big Cheeses participating adds a certain extra credibility to it, if only perhaps because you know they’re listening, but that’s not necessary the only formula that works. Furthermore, it can fail just as easily as staffers coming on. For starters, if a politician doesn’t way into the comments, you then get the even worse sense that they’re using you and not even listening.
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p>So, I’d rather a top-level member of an administration becoming involved if he or she actually engages in the comments, provides specifics and shows what the admin is doing on behalf of the comments coming from their constituency. As you say, staffers don’t always do that – and when they don’t, you feel polled, prodded and probably ignored, but there are plenty of campaigns that have done this well and effectively. Blogging is still a new medium for campaigns to deal with; blogs didn’t exist in 2002. Campaigns are still learning how to engage in the blogosphere, how that differs from engaging in other mediums and how you can engage in both without compromising the campaign’s overall message. It’s not clean and it’s not clear, but it will become more so as the years go by. Quite frankly, I think it’s the type of activity that people have to learn one person at a time.
If I’m not mistaken, that’s a brand new pun, copyright 2008 by Ryan. I like it.
puns and alliteration are by far my favorite literary devices. I’ve even been known to sneak in a few examples of alliteration in serious academic work…
Use the linkies. If you make a post without linkies, I assume it’s a copy/paste press release, and frankly, I’m not interested.
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p>If it’s got a series of good links, it shows me that you’ve backed up claims with references. Maybe those references are solid, maybe not — I’ll judge that for myself.
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p>No linkies from a politician’s staffer, and it suggests that the staffer isn’t using this medium as anything other than a press release, and frankly I’m neither interested nor impressed.
(see examples here, here, here, here, here and here)
An unkind term used by elected officials to describe the constant stream of policy experts offering their own penetrating fact based analysis and opinions on pending policy solutions but lacking any capacity to mobilize a critical mass of affected constituents able and willing to tell their own compelling and sympathetic story and offer a strategic practical policy solution to their own elected and appointed officials just as they (the public officials) are trying to sort out their political options.
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p>Often described as opinion makers nevertheless, Horseless Headmen and Headwomen can be found in Academia, Policy Think Tanks, MSM and, of course, Blogs.
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p>It’s hard to do real political work and blogs at the same time. Just ask the new Selectman from West Brookfield. (Congratulations Mr Eisenthal.)
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p>Unless one can justify that participating in political blogs is an effective way to organize and mobilize a network of affected constituents and empower them to tell their own stories and offer practical solutions to their own elected and appointed public officials at the right time.
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p>Whaddya think BMG folk. Do we collectively or do enough of us individually have an organizational base worth spending time trying to mobilize, or even herding us like cats? Or are we just a collection of opinionated Horseless Headmen/women?
From the administration’s point of view, blogs don’t always have to “organize” or “mobilize”. They just have to distribute ideas to other places.
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p>The measure of success is when ideas, talking points, and positions inserted into a blog discussion make into into mainstream media, into the rhetoric (or yea-or-nay position) of elected officials, or into policy. So far, this has happened in limited incidents (Charlie, David or Bob can provide better examples than I) that occurred pretty much at random. The Patrick administration, or anyone who wants to use a blog as a communications tool, should learn how to control this process and use it to their benefit.
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p>Calling blogs “horseless headmen” or whatever names you want, while doubtless making you feel very smart, is denying the power that blogs do have. Better to figure out how to use it for advantage.
Charlie in his introduction to this very thoughtful post offers the following equation
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p>Community + Dialogue + Power
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p>I think the equation could be, and as you point out sometimes has been,
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p>Community + Dialogue + Action = Power
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p>
Actually, it is the potential, become a reality, of two way communication [dialog] that is creating community.
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p>That community is beginning to lead to action – whether meeting in person, successfully running for office [whether the State Democratic Committee – or the House] and projects in the real world.
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p>I note, too that some blogger columnists like me will put a bibliography of links below the fold, or include links to data and information to back up what we are saying.
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p>Because, Judy before action comes imagination. Folks will not, cannot “do” what they cannot imagine doing – and it takes enough vision, to have enoughs hope, to take any risks at all.
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p>So I suggest that continuing to “weave” real world real time activities into the “mind touch” of the blogosphere is what is needed for continuing momentum and impact.
Actions are the result of power, not a part or form of the equation. You have it backwards. The whole point and focus of power is to produce actions. But our society is addicted to mere action and divorced from power: we wouldn’t forgo our adrenals for all the power in the world. This is the root of our present powerlessness.
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p>There are, it has been surmised, three forms of power and they are: condign (or punitive actions), compensatory (that is, reward) and conditioned (persuasion). Each of the three aims to produce actions in keeping with the will of the wielder of power. Of the three, the most powerful is that of persuasion. Persuasion relies upon choice and requires a deliberate internalization. This is in marked contrast to both the condign and compensatory forms of power, each of which pivot s (that is to say, acts) according to some fear, hope or greed solely contingent to externalities. Persuasion is, in fact, the opposite of fascism and the highest aspiration of democracy. An integral tool of persuasion, and therefore at a close remove from power, is dialogue.
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p>For a moral being, persuasion is really the only acceptable form of power because the truth is the most persuasive thing there is… This is Ghandi’s truth.
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p>For those… not so moral… the way to power is to obscure and harry the truth. Karl Rove is so powerful because he knows how to make you doubt the truth, or at least he knows how to make you sit and think about it long enough for him to shiv you. But the truth is, not even Karl is gonna win that game.
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p>With regard to power either condign and compensatory BMG has nothing other than the occasional shout-down that may only serve to stifle some attempt at suasion. However, with respect to persuasion, BMG is at once both mighty and feckless. There is a tension here between the moral and the deliberate; between those who want what’s right and those who want what’s righteous. The very desire (dare I say the need?) to have an impact often carries us right past righteous.
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p>Were it up to me, the sole purpose of BMG — the only ‘leverage’ needed — would be the upholding of dialogue. If we’re on the side of truth, then persuasion belongs to us. If we’re not on the side of truth then we’ve already lost.
I have a list, and a group of friends, professional contacts, and relationships that I try to build and maintain, by being there for them when I can, being truthful, and expecting the same from them. I mobilize people for certain issues, taking a leading role, and other times, I’m a supporter and a volunteer, doing my part as directed, occasionally offering a little constructive advice up the ladder. You?
all too often I find myself in the role — like amberpaw — of helping various victims of social,economic or racial injustice figure out how they can organize themselves and find a champion to help them define and win a policy change that helps more than a little bit.
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p>Don’t I sound self righteous. Not very sorry about that.
knows exactly what he is doing. He is not naive. The same goes for most of the posters with political purposes on BMG. The good thing about BMG is, as Laurel points out, there are two way communications. It’s a lot more convenient to post something here rather than stand in front of multiple audiences to determine whether the boos are going to drown out the applause. There’s enough diversity of opinion here to get a fairly good sampling of what the response will be (i.e., casinos).
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p>Ernie Boch III is a good poster to keep in mind. He/she says whatever the hell he/she wants because he/she is anonymous. EBIII could be Sal, Deval or more likely GW (based upon grammatical skill). Blogs can be tools for communicating messages, airing grievances or poking fun at stupidity. They are a poor source for finding activists, but they can be used to get the word out to groups of people who may be interested in helping with something. Always be skeptical about who is posting and why.
What you see is what – and “who” you get with me.
you are exactly as advertised. 😉 People should use caution however. What you write on blogs can hurt you (just ask Farnkoff). If you piss people off, you can become a target. This is why I don’t attach my real name or contact info. Many of you know who I am, but there are others who will hopefully never know. I know of at least one instance where someone posting on BMG was being sought out by some very angry people. Hopefully, he or she was never found out. People do need to use common sense. Being anonymous might be the best choice for some.
You can’t harrass and marginialize an anonymous person. You can’t target and destroy an anonymous person.
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p>We should not allow anonymous posters. It is contrary to out extreme left agenda.
that I should go ahead and out you Ms. Boch?
now slow down there cowboy.
in my blogging life, I’d have been a teensy bit more anonymous than I have been in terms of blogging. First, but not last, name. It has on one occasion came back to bite me. Although, when you stick yourself out there completely, there are more rewards as well – so it is a balance that is worth it. Hence, why I’d still use my first name.
That way prospective employers don’t necessarily connect you with a million hours of posts during work hours, and angry mobs of lesbians can’t show up with pitchforks in the middle of the night (though I’d love that, I’ve got wine waiting).
grammas, spelling, and atitude aside, people reading EB3 over the past couple of years know what I am about. They know I’m not Deval or anyone with an agenda. Why? Because I don’t hit and run. I have a track record. Opinions all over the board and I’m not one issue.
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p>Attack and marginialize me. But believe it or not EB3 has credibility with many readers.
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p>My anonimity
you are certainly not one issue and your are all over the board. Calm down. How could anyone ever suspect you of having an agenda?
Never mind.
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p>I have to get back on my meds.
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p>sorry lolorb
EBIII can certainly be all over the board and have an agenda, couldn’t he. Rumor has it that (s)he can walk and chew gum at the same time too.
I feel comfortable speaking for the editors in saying that we sure haven’t figured out what precisely the tool is meant to do — for us, not just for our elected officials and their staff who post. Hell, how do we leverage BMG?
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p>Charley, does “we” refer to you and Bob and David, or to all of us with an account, or to the subset of like-minded progressives?
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p>I’ll tell you what I think the tool is meant to do for me: raise awareness of issues that don’t get any attention, be a flag pole for ideas to see if anyone salutes. It is someplace where there is no editor tossing out letters because “no one is talking about that”, and choosing to print only the things that fit into the pre-set news cycle as decided months ago at the editors meeting. It’s a place to toss bombs, shake things up. Of course, it is only valuable for that if there is a big enough audience and it is credible, and yet small enough that it doesn’t get buried under subsequent (generally irrelevant) bombs from other people. Another problem is that people can ignore ideas that threaten their agendas, and play into the MSM’s control by just hoping that the blogosphere doesn’t hear about the idea. But this is almost like wishing the tool didn’t exist at all, because it is too powerful.
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p>So, I think that function could be maximized better in Blog 3.0 in order to allow ideas to reach an audience and stay in front of an audience without being either censored or ignored, and yet without annoying and distracting other (useless) discussions. There ought to be a way to defend and promote an idea in a way that builds up a permanent edifice, perhaps by compiling FAQs and common arguments and some way of resolving each objection or contention, or establishing weaknesses and errors. Some sort of wikipedia for ideas, that are hashed around on talk pages by a huge community.
Will, thanks for your thoughtful comments and for starting this important dialogue.
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p>I want to assure you that I do not see the BMG community as a fan club, or as a group of supporters that must be kept on the side of the Governor. In my opinion, BMG and other blogs like it are different from traditional media outlets, in particular because they offer immediate and in-depth responses and the opportunity to engage in a substantive dialogue.
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p>I am sensitive to the charge of posts that read like press releases, and am struggling to figure out the best way to deal with this. Obviously, I am a strong supporter of the Governor and want to get information about the work he is doing to the BMG community. I do believe that the community is politically engaged and responds well to information and facts. However, I also want to hear from others, get suggestions and comments, and engage in the debate around issues. I have always enjoyed the response to my posts, and tried to respond and engage in the back and forth around each issue.
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p>I don’t think any of us are sure what exactly is the best way to proceed yet, but I hope we all agree it is important and can help move things in a positive direction. And that’s what makes it fun, interesting, and a new kind of politics, one where we can have a real conversation.
For example, in the post about the Governor going all across Massachusetts, listening and meeting with his entire constituency, don’t just bring out the quote of the town official (although, definitely bring that out too). I think it would have made a better post if you talked about how frequently the Governor does these kinds of events (with actual numbers – even if it’s something like “the governor’s held forums in 20 different towns in the past 15 days, from Boston to Springfield to Fall River to Gardner”).
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p>Even better, though, would to bring up the kind of results that you’ve had from those events – for example, someone made X suggestion, and here’s what the admin has done so far to address it. Basically, give examples that illustrate how the Governor and his constituency is benefiting from these kinds of events.
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p>Lastly, though I know from personal experience how busy these events typically are, it would be a good idea in that kind of a post to show where people can find out about the Governor’s next forum in a community near them – maybe a calender on his website or something. To wrap that all up, if you added all of these points, it would have made it feel far less Press-Release-ish, included interesting facts that showed how the Governor is affecting positive change and it would have included information for further acting. All three of those things are essential in the creation of a good blog.
IMHO, it’s difficult to get an initial post to sound like much other than a press release, if perhaps one that is longer and more detailed than average. The key is that the author (Doug, in this case) sticks around, reads the comments, and responds to them. That is what the MSM simply cannot replicate. That’s what we do really well. So thanks to Doug for doing that.
David, if as host you want to thank Doug for his participation, I can understand that, but I don’t think ‘sticking around to read comments and respond’ is even scratching the surface of the ways to leverage a blog. Since my thoughts are already up top, I won’t repeat them, but I wanted to point out that I am suggesting a lot more than just back-and-forth dialog.
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p>For an example of a paid blogger for a candidate (not elected official, but comparable) who showed some of these techniques, check out some of the posts by BMG’s Cos for John Bonifaz (look at the posts related to Bonifaz or election reform)
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p>http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/s…
BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC
BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC
BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC BMG PAC
for that 2 years to start a PAC. The BMG PAC.
I know zip about PACs.
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p>How much do you need to be a player in state politics?
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p>What’s the best way to dole out limited $$$? Lots of little fish, or a few big fish?
Ernie has a point – the leverage of the blogosphere would be greatly enhanced if we can raise money and buzz for candidates we like and challenge this we don’t. Just as BlogPac has been useful on the national level, I think there is a good deal of merit to this idea. Ideally, however, I’d like to see a BlogLeft PAC be more inclusive and ideologically diverse.
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p>Did you read each word carefully? You saound like you did.
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p>tool
do we all have to register as lobbyists?
Experience
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p>distills
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p>Like sunshine among moving leaves.
I’m going to add one of my own, though: trust and consistency. If the admin wants to use the online progressive community to its maximum, it can’t just talk about the good stuff and ignore or mislead the community on the areas in which we disagree. Example: At a recent forum in Lynn, the Governor said the casino issue was over and done with. A few weeks later, he’s talking about attaching casinos to the racino bill – something he vowed to veto if it ever passed at one point in this administration.
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p>I’m not saying that the Governor has to agree with every issue this community does if he wants to be successful here again. However, he’s got to be honest with his progressive base. If he says something in one breath, he can’t say its antithesis in another.
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p>If the Governor still wants to pursue something that many in this community are vehemently against, he just needs to come out to this community and say it. “Look, I know you guys disagree with this, but I’m going to actively pursue it as long as I’m governor. Here’s a few of the other things I’m working for, and they’re directly tied to the issues this community cares about most. Let’s work together on these issues to get them passed, even if we agree to disagree on the other issue.”
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p>Ultimately, this community – on average – is more politically savvy than most. Most of us have years of political experience, either volunteering or actual paid work. We’ve worked for nonprofits, we’ve worked for politicians and many of us are elected leaders in some capacity – be it at the municipal level, or inside the state or local party apparatus. This means that honesty is the best policy – because we’re more immune to message work and, if we do buy in, we’re more likely to find out about message inconsistencies. We’re also big girls and boys and can realize that we’re not always going to agree with particular politicians, but what we don’t want to find out about is that the same person who said he was ‘done’ with a policy issue we disagreed with is still actively pursuing it. That’s just not honest – and while we don’t need to agree with every issue a particularly candidate has in order to work with them, we do need to trust them.
You raise some helpful points, both here and in your post above. In particular, I will try to include more facts and more detail about actions that have been taken in response to the Governor’s proposals.
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p>One point of clarification on the casino issue, because I have seen it raised a number of times on BMG over the past week. The Governor’s recent comments were in direct response to a question about whether he believes the casino issue is dead in MA or whether it will ever come back. He gave an honest answer that, particularly given the needs of cities and towns and the stress on the property tax, plus the issue of federal recognition of the Wampanoag tribe, the issue will probably come back at some point. He did not say he was planning on attaching the legislation to any debate on racinos, nor did he say he was planning on bringing it back himself.
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p>Given the extreme hype around this issue in the media, it is difficult to even provide a direct answer to a question in a public forum without attracting some attention. However, I do think it is important to get the facts on this particular statement before we rush to judgement.