Viral politics 2008: how social media is changing the presidential debate

October 4, 2007 By Leave a Comment

User (or voter)-created media provides an instantaneous and widely-consumed venue for debate, critique and fact-checking of political candidates, but Thursday’s WebbyConnect panel in Laguna Beach, Calif. was unable to reach a consensus as to whether the candidates themselves were ready to surrender their top-down spin control in favor of a truly bottom-up free market of ideas.

Old game, new tools

Andrew Rasiej, the founder and publisher of Personal Democracy Forum and Tech President.com had a somewhat grim view of the actual dialogue. “It’s direct mail for the 21st century,” he said referring to the influential lobby MoveOn.org. “It’s not the robust participatory democracy it could be.” He said that candidates like Hillary Clinton, who recently invited users to vote for her campaign’s theme song, were really just harvesting an e-mail address list.

The famously viral “Vote Different” video that targeted Clinton with a remixed dystopian Apple ad was so popular because Web citizens found that she was saying one thing and doing another online, said Rasiej. “She claimed it was a debate, but the questions were all preselected and filtered.” Rasiej believes that Clinton’s campaign managers wanted to capitalize on the online community but “didn’t understand” that the dialog has to be free and open to gain the trust of the Internet community. Four million viewings later, Clinton’s campaign has “woken up” he said.

The panelists noted that many politicians allow finite debate and video posting in so-called “walled gardens” of their campaign websites and MySpace pages, but haven’t yet embraced open-source politics. “The politician who fails to recognize the trend does so at their own risk,” said Rasiej.

Barack Obama’s campaign (which of course had nothing to do with the Apple ad) is also backwards thinking, several panelists noted. The webmaster running the Obama MySpace site–with 160,000 supporters–asked Obama for a salary, $39,000, and was refused. “That’s 25 cents a voter and they said no,” said Raseij. “Keep in mind, campaigns often spend one dollar per email address for mailing lists.”

New game, new players

Steve Grove, head of News and Politics at YouTube, was more optimistic. His site has seen an unprecedented rise in user-created political dialog in the form of videos and “…anything that brings more people to the table is a great first step.”

“It’s a conversation, not a distribution mechanism,” said Grove. “It’s so antithetical to the way politics has been run for the past 30 years.”

Tools like Meetup and Eventful allow regular citizens to choose when and where the real-world debates happen, as well, essentially giving citizens a voice to demand the discussion come to them in person.

One audience member asked about the infamous “Don’t Tase Me, Bro” video of a student agitator getting tasered by security at a John Kerry speech. “Are we in danger of high-keyed, emotionally-driven politics in this trend, are we being desensitized to real issues?”

Raseij responded “What’s shocking about that video is that John Kerry said nothing.”

Truth.con?

The panelists agreed that in an era of horizontally accessible media, fact checking, like that done by panelist Viveca Novak of Annenberg Fact Check, at the University of Pennsylvania, becomes increasingly crucial.

“The Internet is a blessing and a curse,” she said. “There’s great information and a great deal of disinformation,” noting that her website busted Bill Richardson for including bogus facts in his YouTube videos. “Now we are drinking from the firehose.

“There’s a low barrier to entry, but many [participants] aren’t armed to the teeth with facts, as they should be,” said Grove. “But I don’t share Andrew’s disdain for MySpace politics. This is an era of intense experimentation. Not all top-down politics is a bad thing.”

In an election with no incumbent, and a range of candidates as diverse as America has ever seen (female, African-American, Mormon, pro-choice Republican, etc.) new media throws an additional curveball into an already unstable game. The real question is whether new voters and non-voters will turn out as a result of the YouTube revolution. Online registration, mobile phone voting information and a bevy of other technologies designed to get out the vote can become “the digital equivalent of walking the precinct and knocking on doors,” said Raseij.

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Everyone is an expert

October 1, 2007 By Leave a Comment

“We’ve done this before,” said CNN.com vice president Mitch Gelman, referring to so-called citizen journalists and user generated content.

“They used to be called stringers.”

Such was the tone of Monday’s Knight Digital Media Center discussion “It’s a Conversation, Stupid: Blogs, Wikis, Social Networking, UGC and Journalism,” hosted at USC Annenberg.

As it turned out, there wasn’t much “stupid” to go around, either in the audience or the panel. Gelman, along with Yahoo News editor-in-chief Neil Budde, Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson and Kinsey Wilson of USAToday.com were pretty much preachers addressing a converted choir. It wasn’t a question of whether online interactivity and talkback were worth incorporating into the way news is reported, it was a question of when, how and with what vetting process.

The panel began by presenting a few examples of what didn’t work: the L.A. Times’ 2005 reader wikitorial experiment that lasted two days before collapsing under the weight of user-posted pr0n, following a referral from Slashdot. Neil Budde said that a similar fiasco caused Yahoo News to shut down its forum features.

Budde then pulled up a slide of a Google search for his name, with “Neil Budde sucks” being the top list item. So, clearly, user talkback is going to happen whether the professional news dot-coms facilitate it or not.

Anonymity versus persistent identity

“What’s the right amount of anonymity [on a site] to get validity as a poster?” asked Budde. The panelists agreed that the push and pull between a user’s desire to post anonymously versus the site’s interest in culling out trolls creates a unique dilemma, one that increasingly complex software can solve.

“We wanted a sort of universal credibility meter,” said Davidson. “Until that exists, things like Open ID and other technologies create portable reputations.” Newsvine’s system puts new users into a holding pen, called the “Greenhouse” where they post and debate and the good seeds naturally separate from the bad. Senior users help junior users “graduate” to the main content area.

“We want to differentiate the good from the bad in new users,” he aid. “But you can’t just pay attention to the good, you have to carefully monitor the new.” Unlike eBay’s user rating system, which has been shown to shut out new users from transactions, he said his site is good at assessing who will become a “valuable” contributor.

Metrics such as page view time, frequency of views, traffic habits and so forth help them build a picture of each user and decide whether or not to reward him or her with content-creation privileges.

“I can’t reveal all of it,” he said, in regard to his site’s user-profiling techniques. “If I did, it would be too easy to game.”

An army of photographers?

CNN.com’s Gelman pointed to a number of examples of his news network’s ability to get fresh, breaking and legit images quickly, thanks to “iReporters,” users who post material themselves.

The recent political upheaval in Myanmar, the so-called “Saffron Rebellion,” presented a challenge for CNN because they had no reporters in the country at the time. Yet, images of the conflict began rolling into the website–material that no other networks had. They decided to run with them.

“You have to balance the possibility that it may be wrong with the importance of getting (the pictures) out there. After they passed the threshold of authenticity, we put them on the Web and on air.”

One audience member asked about profit sharing: “Aren’t these citizen journalists doing your job for you, for free?”

Gelman said no, that in certain circumstances, as in the Virginia Tech shootings where CNN used Nokia cellphone video taken by Jamal Albarghouti, his network does pay for UGC. And handsomely, too. But the vetting process, as well as quality control concerns, are quite serious, he said. [OJR smelled trouble way back when, though. Visit the archives here.]

Questions within questions

Moderator Michelle Nicolosi, managing editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (and its website) and former editor of OJR, boiled it down to what she called “The Big Giant Question.”

“Should newspapers and their websites have the same brand? The same quality level? How heavily should they maintain filters? Are they doing a service or disservice [by allowing uncontrolled online content]?”

USAToday.com’s Kinsey Wilson said “there needs to be some commonality; we have about a 50-percent overlap. You have to play to the strengths of the medium, though. One of the interesting conversations we have is the question of quality: how do you maintain credibility and what role does speed play in credibility?”

Gelman: “Trust is the bond with the audience. At CNN we call ourselves ‘the most trusted name in news,’ and according to studies by Pew, that’s true. But if you look a little closer, you see that there’s not a lot of trust of journalism. How do you redefine what trust is–there are different expectations now–a different standard of trust. Part of the opportunity for us was to figure out what our audience demands. Authority or authenticity?”

Each panelist seemed to agree that more journalists, citizen or otherwise, on the streets equals better news. “We can’t be everywhere at once,” said Wilson.

Gelman agreed: “Ninety percent of being a journalist is showing up.”

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Lord of the Ringworld

September 26, 2007 By 1 Comment

Unless you (A) live underneath a gigantic asteroid with no Internet connection or (B) are one of those journalism types who ignore the video game world, you probably know this week is Halo 3 week. In a huge way: $170 million-in-first-day sales kind of huge.

This third installment of Bungie Studios‘ epic, if convoluted, tale of cyborg supersoldier (Master Chief) vs. religious zealot aliens (the Covenant) vs. infectious galactic zombie plague (the Flood) picks up where 2004′s best-selling Halo 2 left off. Though the Xbox Live online features of the previous game were wildly popular, fans complained about the somewhat abrupt and unsatisfying ending.

Unlike say, George Lucas, Bungie was smart enough to listen to its fanbase and cranked out an unexpectedly moving finale to the Halo trilogy with many community suggestions incorporated into the final disc.

One such ardent Bungie fan is pillar of the Halo community Claude Errera, better known by his admin handle “Louis Wu,” (an apropos nod to Larry Niven’sRingworld) the founder of halo.bungie.org [aka HBO]. Though unaffiliated with Bungie, Errera’s site is the most widely-read fansite for the Halo series and garners a jawdropping 600,000 pageviews a day. (He doesn’t sell advertising, by the way.)

HBO’s recipe of game rumors, news, strategy, “machinima” (animation cinema made by video capturing Halo games), fan-made art, contests and forums are the focal point for the Halo community–so much though that Errera’s name appears in the Bungie “Thank you section” of the credits in Halo 3.

OJR spoke to Claude about what makes a vibrant fan community and how to run a good forum site for them.

OJR: You’re thanked in the credits of Halo 3. How long have you been involved in the Halo community and how did you get started?

Claude Errera: I was one of the people who kicked off blam.bungie.org when the first information about what was to become Halo leaked out of E3 1999. So… I guess 8.5 years. :) I got started because bungie.org covered ALL Bungie games; Blam (and Halo as it followed) was just the next step on the road.

OJR: Why do you think the Halo series has such an active community? What’s most rewarding about being involved with it?

Claude Errera: It’s active for a few reasons – Bungie does a great job of interacting with their fans, which makes their fans want to interact with them. Bungie’s inspired enough enthusiasm with the game that people want to create things for it (artwork, models, fiction, etc), and sites like HBO provide a place to show those creations to the world, which in turn inspires others to do the same. It’s a positive feedback loop.

The most rewarding part of being involved is seeing what people are capable of creating – and helping to get those creations out to the rest of the world.

OJR: How will Saved Films (built-in video capture feature) and Forge (built-in level editor) affect the quality and popularity of user-created content–machinima for instance?

Claude Errera: I think quality will go WAY up, because getting the shot you want will become much, much easier. (We might go through a phase of ‘every angle under the sun because we can’ filmmaking at the beginning, but it’ll settle down; it always does.) I’m not sure quantity will increase all that much; it still requires the ability to capture video from your Xbox to turn it into something that can be shared on YouTube.

OJR: What’s the best thing about the Halo fan base?

Claude Errera: For me, it’s the amazing creativity the fan base is capable of.

OJR: Where could the community improve?

Claude Errera: Well, that seems like a nebulous question. Where could the planet improve? Where could our nervous system improve? The community is made up of individuals – some are positive contributors, some are negative contributors. I don’t think the COMMUNITY can be blamed for either one.

Subgroups (like site forums) can improve their own little worlds by treating newcomers with kindness and respect, instead of scorn; on the internet, we’re usually too quick to flame. That is not unique to the Halo community, however, and the solutions are not different for us than they are for any other group.

OJR: Describe the culture that has grown up around halo.bungie.org. Generally speaking, would you say posters are well-behaved? What are some problems you guys deal with? How did you resolve them?

Claude Errera: In general, yes, the community is well-behaved. We occasionally have people who want to see if they can disrupt things; they actively troll to try and rile people up. We deal with them with warnings to begin with, and then bannings; often, what’s perceived as a problem is really only a misunderstanding, and some gentle guidance is enough to get things back in line. For folks who really ARE a problem, it’s just a matter of teaching the forum regulars that feeding trolls is generally a bad idea. If they don’t get a reaction, they leave.

OJR: Does HBO make advertising revenue? How many traffic do you get?

Claude Errera: HBO has a strict no-advertising policy. We get about 600,000 pageviews/day.

OJR: You could be making tons off Google ads right?

Claude Errera: When we started bungie.org, we had one overriding dislike, among the entire group of founders – we HATED banner ads. I still do. I’m willing to forgo the income to avoid subjecting viewers to them.

OJR: You are doing all the work for free–what do you do in your day job and how to you find time to run the whole site?

Claude Errera: My day job is web design/webhosting. Bungie.org is just a busman’s holiday. I find time… hmm. I don’t know how that happens. I think I must be cheating someone.

OJR: What lessons does the Halo experience teach for creating online gaming communities? What lessons have you learned about running a healthy secondary forum community around a game?

Claude Errera: I’m no expert – but my experience tells me that the keys to managing a successful community are consistency and fairness. Update regularly, give people credit for what they do, stay on top of issues that might build into problems, don’t overreact. If you give people a platform from which to spread their love for a great game, they’ll flock to it.

OJR: Newspapers still sort of treat Halo and other massively successful game franchises as underground or outsider. A lot of the reporting is like “Gee, games make a lot of money, who knew?” Why are journalists so far behind the curve? What would you like to see in mainstream media reporting about games that’s not there now?

I think journalists might be behind the curve simply because gaming became a successful adult entertainment outlet relatively recently. Not that long ago, video games were the domain of kids – I think there are just a lot of writers that haven’t noticed the change. It’s becoming clearer with every runaway success, though.

OJR: Big open-ended question: the future of gaming and online communities-where are we going? You’ve been hosting LAN games for years and have made lots of friendships purely online-how does something like Halo change the way we forge relationships in real life?

Claude Errera: Heh – you lied. You said there wouldn’t be anything long. ;) I don’t know where we’re going – but I think that neither aspect is going away any time soon. Online gaming is getting more and more social; full voice communication, optional video communication, and now tools that let us relive (and share with others) the moments we enjoy together in a game. At the same time, getting together to play with friends in person is so enjoyable that no matter HOW good the online gaming gets, we’ll still find time to do this; there’s nothing like high-fiving the guy next to you when you score a particularly hard-fought flag cap, or throwing a pillow (or something harder) at the guy who just betrayed you for the hell of it.

10 years ago, the idea of teenagers traveling out of state to play games at the house of someone they’d never met in person was unheard-of; not only was the potential payoff unclear enough to make the risk hardly worth it, but parents would never stand for it. Today, however, it happens regularly; we often know our online friends better than we know our local ones, and the bonds formed can be pretty strong.

Halo is showing that even folks who don’t want to play competitively can enjoy companionship online – co-op is a great way to enjoy the campaign experience. All in all, I think that Bungie is lighting the way towards the future of social gaming – we’ll look back at Halo 3 as the beginning of a paradigm shift. (Heh – now THAT sounds a little pretentious…)

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