I have a ton of things on the desk at the moment, and I don't have the time to really run out this story before Election Day, but I want to bring to your attention something very strange that I found on the 2008 "Christine O'Donnell for Senate" MySpace page.
What it basically comes down to is that the United States Marine Corps and the United States Army are "Christine O'Donnell for Senate" MySpace friends, or that there are persons who have created United States Army and USMC MySpace pages that purport to be official that have "befriended" her candidacy. There's also a Navy page that appears to emanate from a US Navy recruiting office in California on her '08 campaign's "friends" list.
At a minimum, all of this would seem to be a combination of inappropriate behavior and poor management of social media; at worst, you have activity that is "some kind of unlawful", either on an administrative or civil level.
I'll make this fast...but I'll also make it interesting.
Follow along, and you'll see what I mean.
This past summer, The Opportunity Agenda conducted a scan (PDF) to determine the state of immigration advocacy on the social web, looking specifically at the following: blogs that frequently cover politics and reach a mass audience, Twitter, YouTube, and the two largest social networking sites (Facebook and MySpace). This research built on a similar scan we conducted in 2007.
Turning specifically to social networking sites, we found a landscape transformed. In 2007 anti-immigrant groups dominated social networking sites approximately two to one. Today the majority of groups on Facebook with a focus on immigration support commonsense reform. MySpace, meanwhile, seems to no longer serve as an active tool for advocacy.
While the main point of our scan was to provide a snapshot of online immigration advocacy in the summer of 2009, our research did lead to a number of recommendations.
First, we wish to point out the success of DREAM Act-related groups on Facebook. Of all the immigration groups on the site, these were the most popular in terms of membership. We speculate that an important reason for this was the ability of these groups to consistently update their content and have active members routinely post information and news related to the DREAM Act. This is key. Members often need to see the vibrancy of a group before they will participate. Once they do, these members' networks see this activity and learn of the group. It is this cycle, we believe, that led to much of the success seen by these groups.
Our crude measure for participation in these groups, membership, is not uncommon. As seen by the proliferation of Facebook groups looking for "1,000,000 for..." any number of causes, it would help the movement to combine its numbers to show unity and support for practical immigration re- form. The best example, again, is the dream Act with its 33 different groups advocating for the same piece of legislation. Despite the difficulties in doing so, it would be beneficial to work toward fewer groups and higher membership rolls.
Again read the full report online for more. Meanwhile, any more tips? Let us hear them in the comments below.
Disclosure: MySpace is paying my travel
MANCHESTER-Following John Edwards and Barack Obama, tonight (7PM eastern) John McCain will be the first Republican candidate to participate in a MySpace/MTV interactive forum.
It should be an interesting night. On one had, New Hampshire's same day registration provision allows candidates on both sides of the aisle potential for a youth surge not showing up in the polls -- which could be a substantive boost in the expectations spin. For McCain specifically, he has been bleeding market share in the MySpace friends primary. I'll be looking to the interactive perspective as it fascinates me. What do you think I should be looking for during the event?
The details of the much blogged about MySpace/MTV candidate forums were released today, and much as we all love to loathe Rupert Murdoch, and bash MTV for crappy political coverage, the two look set to hit a couple home runs this fall.
Starting on September 27th and running through December (with John Edwards as the inaugural guinea pig in this new experiment), the two companies will host individual candidate forums. Running one hour in length, the forums will potentially provide viewers with a substantive glimpse into the positions and qualifications of the many candidates for both parties' nominations. Trumping even YouTube in interactivity, the forums will be held town-hall style in front of a live audience on yet-to-be-determined college campuses. Questions will be submitted live via IM, text messaging, and email. Most intererestingly, the event will employ continuous live polling, allowing the audience to rate candidates' responses (and allowing a competent moderator to properly follow up when candidates dodge, obfuscate, or just plain don't answer the question). At the end of the event - which will be broadcast on MTV, MTVu, MTV.com and MySpaceTV - all footage will be available for remix and reuse.
While this still leaves open the question of who actually gets to select which questions are presented to the candidates, the potential here for a truly new kind of candidate/voter forum is pretty high. If MTV and MySpace can truly create a working feedback loop in which voter-generated questions are presented to the candidates, the audience rates the answers, a competent moderator incorporates that feedback into a follow-up question, and the audience itself is then led to ask different questions based on the candidate's response, we might actually find ourselves in the midst of a national, truly participatory debate.
As a format that would be both informative and empowering for voters, it would stand in stark contrast to our current debates, which are disempowering in the passivity they enforce on the audience and the maddening way in which they actually make the electorate dumber by allowing candidates to obfuscate their positions and filibuster their time with non-responses. The national press corps has let us down in their role as moderators in previous events, abdicating their responsibility to pin down the candidates in the name of time constraints. If MTV/MySpace's forum runs properly, there will be nowhere to hide. After that, being able to remix the video content is just gravy.
This comes just as MTV announced it would hire 50 vloggers (video bloggers) - one in each state - to cover the 2008 election. I've criticized the Choose or Loose campaign in the past for being nothing more than an ineffective broadcast media campaign, but MTV truly looks to be innovating in the field of election coverage this year. It's going to be exciting to watch all of this roll out.
STATE BLOGS
