Web, politics and everything else....

Writing actual science posts takes a lot of time, research, thinking and energy. I assembled a large pile of papers I want to comment on and I actually started writing posts about a couple of them already, but Real Life interferes...and it is so much easier and quicker to post a short opinion-post or a linkfest.

Also, my mind has lately been mostly focused on Science Blogging, more Science Blogging, Open Science, Open Notebook Science, organizing the next Science Blogging Conference, Framing Science, Teaching Science and similar stuff I've been reading about a lot lately due to the excitement about the potential job. I'll be in San Francisco interviewing on Wednesday and Thursday and I'll try to write and schedule a couple of straight-up science posts to appear here while I'm gone.

I always blogged in phases, i.e., my interests shift week after week, so I just realized that it's been a very long time since I last wrote anything about electoral politics or wrote a pitch for John Edwards. Perhaps I'll do that again next week, but here is something brief about the way current campaigns are using (or not) the power of the Internet wisely. There is a tension in all campaigns between the dinosaur campaign managers who grew up in the age of flyers and thought TV ads were the next best thing and the new generation of Web-savvy folks who actually do grok the power of the Web.

As Andrew Rasiej says in Jose Antonio Vargas' excellent article in WaPo (via, via):

"But you have to look at where the power lies. How much influence do their online people have? Not much right now. Fact is, most campaigns, on both sides of the political aisle, think that the Internet is just a slice of the pie. They don't realize it's actually the pan."

Or, as Ed Cone summarizes:

Traditional media remain powerful and relevant, and it's easy for those of us who live online to forget that a lot of Americans aren't (yet) right there with us. But as the 2008 campaign gets serious, it looks like the net still isn't getting the respect it deserves from some of the folks in charge.

I've argued before (and I am far from being the only one) that the Edwards campaign gets the Internet better than any other campaign, or at least that their star-studded online team pulls more weight inside his campaign than their equivalents working for other candidates of both parties. Recent hiring of Joe Trippi adds to that impression. Here is the most recent example of their embrace of Web 2.0 in a smart combination with the rusty, old media:

A couple of days ago, Edwards campaign released this TV ad:

They filmed it in their DC office and people shown are close supporters and friends who were shuffled into the studio where the ad was produced. Very old-school. But, before the critics could start whining about who the people in the ad are, the campaign introduced a brand new twist to it - they invited regular people to send in their short clips and such clips were then edited into the existing ad:

This started an avalanche of submissions and the ad is growing bigger and bigger, including more and more regular people:

You go to the comments on the Edwards blog or on DailyKos and there are people shouting with delight pointing to the exact moments in the ad where THEY are included. Sure it's a TV ad, but it is partially a people-designed TV ad. People can feel a bit of ownership of it. Very Web 2.0.

Compare that to the clumsy and old-timey Obama flap with MySpace - reminds everyone of the heavy-handed, Chicago style of politics, doesn't it?

Related:
No Democrat Started The War
Edwards on Iraq
John Edwards -- 'This is deja vu all over again' -- Cut the Funding!
...more...