[NEC] 3.1: Is Social Software Bad For the Dean Campaign?

[nec at shirky.com]

NEC @ Shirky.com, a mailing list about Networks, Economics, and Culture 

           Published periodically / #3.1 / January 26, 2004 
               Subscribe at http://shirky.com/nec.html
			       Archived at http://shirky.com
          Social Software weblog at http://corante.com/many/

In this issue:

 - Introduction
 - Essay: Is Social Software Bad for the Dean Camapign?
     Also at http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/01/26/is_social_software_bad_for_the_dean_campaign.php

* Introduction =======================================================

An unusual one to start the new year. Last week, I was in the middle
of a "State of VoIP" piece, but got distracted by the results of the
US Democratic Primaries. In particular, Howard Dean, whose campaign
has made the earliest and best use of social sofware, did remarkably
poorly, coming in a distant third to two people he was expected to
beat.

Much of the coverage has said, essentially "Despite his use of the
internet, Dean supporters didn't turn out in force." What I'm
wondering, based on other patterns of use in social software, is
whether that "Despite" is actually "Because." Did the use of tools to
gather the like-minded create an environment where the faithful were
more like Dean believers than Dean supporters, when support (and
particularly votes) is what he needed. 

This month's piece is also unusual in that I wrote and posted it to
the social software weblog Many-2-Many as well, so its a bit more
colloquial than the work I usually post here.

I'll try to finish up the VoIP piece and get it out soon, as we're
expecting a new baby any day now, which, if memory serves, will cut
down on my ability to write coherent sentences for a while.

-clay

* Essay ==============================================================

Is Social Software Bad for the Dean Camapign?
   http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/01/26/is_social_software_bad_for_the_dean_campaign.php

I'm getting the same cognitive dissonance listening to political
handicappers explain Dean's dismal showing in Iowa that I used to get
listening to financial analysts try to explain dot com mania with
things like P/E ratios and EBITDA. A stock's value is not set by those
things; it is set by buyer and seller agreeing on price. In ordinary
markets, buyers and sellers use financial details to get to that
price, but sometimes, as with dot com stocks, the way prices get
agreed on has nothing to do with finance.

In the same way, talking about Dean's third-place showing in terms of
'momentum' and 'character', the P/E and EBITDA of campaigns, may miss
the point. Dean did poorly because not enough people voted for him,
and the usual explanations -- potential voters changed their minds
because of his character or whatever -- seem inadequate to explain the
Iowa results. What I wonder is whether Dean has accidentally created a
movement (where what counts is believing) instead of a campaign (where
what counts is voting.)

And (if that's true) I wonder if his use of social software helped
create that problem.

We know well from past attempts to use social software to organize
groups for political change that it is hard, very hard, because
participation in online communities often provides a sense of
satisfaction that actually dampens a willingness to interact with the
real world. When you're communing with like-minded souls, you _feel_
like you're accomplishing something by arguing out the smallest
details of your perfect future world, while the imperfect and actual
world takes no notice, as is its custom.

There are many reasons for this, but the main one seems to be that the
pleasures of life online are precisely the way they provide a respite
from the vagaries of the real world. Both the way the online
environment flattens interaction and the way everything gets arranged
for the convenience of the user makes the threshold between talking
about changing the world and changing the world even steeper than
usual.

We also know from usability testing that the difference between "would
you" and "will you" is enormous -- when "would you use this product?"
changes to "will you use it?", user behavior frequently changes
dramatically. Apple's eWorld imploded after the beta testers all
dropped the service once it started charging, despite enthusiastically
declaring that they would pay for such a service.

"Would you vote for Howard Dean?" and "Will you vote for Howard Dean?"
are two different questions, and it may be that a lot of people who
"would" vote for Dean, in some hypothetical world where you could vote
in the same way you can make a political donation on Amazon, didn't
actually vote for him when it meant skipping dinner with friends to
drive downtown in the freezing cold and venture into some church
basement with people who might prefer some other candidate to Dean.

The Dean campaign has brilliantly conveyed a message to its
supporters, particularly its young ones, that their energy and
enthusiasm can change the world. Some of this was by design, but much
of it was a function of people looking for something, finding it in
Dean, and then using tools like MeetUp and weblogs to organize
themselves. The story of the bottom-up and edge-in style adopted by
Dean's staff has been told a thousand times, and it's a good one.

But what if this style has also created a sense of entitlement or even
inevitability about the change, and a sense of accomplishment and
satisfaction that comes from participation in the effort, but hasn't
created a sense of urgency or threat? What if Dean supporters believe
that believing is enough, and what if the Dean campaign's brilliant
use of tools to gather the like-minded both online and off fed that
feeling?

Voting, the heart of the matter, is both dull and depressing. Standing
around an elementary school cafeteria is not a great place to feel
like your energy and excitement is going to change the world, and
unlike getting together with like-minded Deaniacs, where affirmation
can be the order of the day, the math of the voting booth undermines
any sense of inevitability -- everyone in line not voting for Dean
cancels your vote.

When the Clinton campaign used an MIT-furnished e-mail list in the
1992 campaign, they didn't use it socially, they used it as a fast
cheap fax, and they used it to help them manage the traditional news
cycle. Many of us assumed that this was the crack in the dam, and that
online tools would become critical in 1996, or 2000, and we were
surprised when they didn't.

Finally, when Dean (and Trippi and Teachout and Rosen) came along, we
thought "This is it -- these are the people finally making it happen!"
And in a way they are, by providing the model -- all top 3 finishers
in Iowa use MeetUp, and they all have weblogs. But the Dean campaign
used those things organically, while everyone else is playing
catchup. And many of us (self very much included) thought that the
inorganic adoption of social tools by Kerry, Clark, et al left them at
a disadvantage.

Now, though, I'm not so sure. Maybe the adoption of those tools by a
traditional campaign is a better way to fuse of 21st century
organizing and 19th century "Get out the Vote" efforts. This would be
especially true if these tools, used on their own, risk creating a
sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that doesn't translate to
driving down to the polls in freezing weather.
 
When I was 19, I remember seeing a bunch of guys in a parking lot in
New Jersey absolutely rocking out to Twisted Sister at top volume, "Oh
we're not gonna take it, No, we ain't gonna take it, Oh we're not
gonna take it anymo-o-o-o-ore" and thinking the song was using up the
energy that would otherwise go into rebellion.

Just rocking out to Twisted Sister so hard, and feeling so good about
it, made those guys feel like they'd _already_ stood up to The Man,
making it less likely that they would actually do so in the real
world, when the time came. And I'm wondering if the Dean campaign has
been singing a version of that song, or, rather, I'm wondering if the
bottom-up tools they've been using have been helping their supporters
sing that song to each other.

* End ====================================================================

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2004, Clay Shirky