{"id":1143,"date":"2008-07-27T23:19:46","date_gmt":"2008-07-28T04:19:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=1143"},"modified":"2008-07-27T23:19:46","modified_gmt":"2008-07-28T04:19:46","slug":"organizing-inside-mybarackobamacom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=1143","title":{"rendered":"Organizing inside MyBarackObama.com"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Barack Obama reversed his position about the bad FISA bill (that updated US surveillance law by pruning the fourth amendment), Obama supporters didn&#8217;t just get mad, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/bob-ostertag\/obama-web-site-protest-gr_b_110825.html\">they organized<\/a>.   What&#8217;s new is that they used Obama&#8217;s online social network, <a href=\"http:\/\/myBarackObama.com\">MyBarackObama.com<\/a> to organize their opposition to their candidate&#8217;s position.<br \/>\nBarack Obama&#8217;s campaign has been innovative in using online social networking to organize his supporters &#8212; it&#8217;s a milestone like FDR&#8217;s use of radio, Kennedy&#8217;s use of television, and Viguerie&#8217;s use of direct mail.  But a social network is not like radio or direct mail.  Participants can talk to each other and organize. This is the first well-known instance of a candidate&#8217;s supporters organizing using the candidate&#8217;s tools. I don&#8217;t think it will be the last.<br \/>\nThe FISA opponents lost this battle.  <a href=\"http:\/\/emptywheel.firedoglake.com\/2008\/07\/12\/the-fisa-loss-recommendations-for-the-future\/\">Marcy Wheeler&#8217;s debrief shows that the participants are learning lessons for the next battle<\/a>, not just about online organizing or even messaging, but about longterm strategy and tactics, understanding the unwritten legislative process; dogging committees; and organizing primaries against key adversaries.<br \/>\nThe discourse about social media often sounds like marketing rebranded; how to market to the buyers inside the social networks.  But the people in social networks can talk to each other, and that&#8217;s a fundamentally different thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Barack Obama reversed his position about the bad FISA bill (that updated US surveillance law by pruning the fourth amendment), Obama supporters didn&#8217;t just get mad, they organized. What&#8217;s new is that they used Obama&#8217;s online social network, MyBarackObama.com to organize their opposition to their candidate&#8217;s position. Barack Obama&#8217;s campaign has been innovative in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=1143\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Organizing inside MyBarackObama.com&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-software"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prDRq-ir","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}