I find particularly compelling his longitudinal view of things as opposed to focusing on a momentary instance (i.e. Twitter/Facebook/OtherTrendyWebsite Revolution).  For example, he refers to the protests in Belarus, which followed their presidential election in 2006 – there were flash mob protests organized using LiveJournal, which attracted a lot of attention from the Western media.  However, looking back, the results of those protests and the online activism are minimal to non-existent.

However, Evgeny does not stop there and suggests that the oppressive regimes are also learning to use the web.  Not only they use the web to to get to the activists (for example see how the Iranian government is using the web to identify the particularly active individuals in the post-election protests in the country), but they are also learning to use the “new” media to fight back and even to predict future unrest.

Evgeny explicitly mentions Clay Shirky as “the man most responsible for the intellectual confusion over the political role of the internet.”  Shiry responds, acknowledging some of Morozov’s criticism, but stating that regardless of that the “new” media should not be disregarded.  Unfortunately, in his argument, Shirky he seems to repeat some of the old claims focused on what might happen based on very limited evidence.  For example he writes: “It is impossible to know how the next few months in Iran will unfold, but the use of social media has already passed several tests: it has enabled citizens to coordinate with one another better than previously, to broadcast events like Basij violence or the killing of Neda Aga Soltan to the rest of the world, and, by forcing the regime to shut down communications apparatus, the protesters have infected Iran with a kind of technological auto-immune disease.”  However I don’t think he provides much evidential support for those predication, at least at this point.  Having said that, I admit that I don’t know much about the idea of “information cascades” and cannot address their debate on that ground (others seem to know much more about that).

I think one of the points Evgeny is making in this article (as well in some of his other commentary), even if he is not stating this explicitly, is about the dichotomy between the online and physical spaces.  The narrative of digital activism as a catalyst of  “real” political change is heavily based in the assumption that the “digital” realm is substantively different from the “real” and it is possible to change the later through affecting the former.  First, the old-fashioned political apparatus is not as savvy in comprehending this “digital” realm, which supposedly allows the activists new forms of engagement, communication, and mobilization.  Second, whatever emerges in the “digital” world has “real” impact on the “real” world (but rarely the other way around).  The result of this last assumption is a hype about Facebook uprisings and Twitter revolutions.

Evgeny’s skepticism, and to a degree Caly’s reply, highlight that the distinction between the “digital” and the “real” does not hold water as the “digital” is inherently rooted the “real.”  Adoption and diffusion of information technology does not happen in vacuum, but under physical and social constraints that constitute the “realities” on the ground.  The technology is not infused into existing societies and immediately starts processes of change, but it is appropriated, reinvented, and reinterpreted subject to the norms, customs, legal, political, and economic systems of the place and more.  That is not to say that adoption of the technology does not have an impact, but if we are to wear an activist hat and look for efficient ways of utilizing technology for civil activism, particularly under oppressive regimes, we should be blinded by the convenience of the artificial separation between the “digital” and “real.”

For me, the takeaway from this debate is that thinking about the role of political uses of “new” media it is important to keep the big picture in mind.  While those can be useful tools for enhancing the flow of information and potentially empower grassroots activism, the “digital” realm in itself does produce “real” change.  Revolutions, dissent, and political change are very “real” and are conducted through very tangible means.  Thus, while it is important to continue the discussion and the study of the political role of “new” media, the digital tools cannot be viewed as detached from the realities on the ground.

These are my thoughts.  What are yours?

“…looks at the surprising phenomenon of perfect remembering in the digital age, and reveals why we must reintroduce our capacity to forget. Digital technology empowers us as never before, yet it has unforeseen consequences as well…  In Delete, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger traces the important role that forgetting has played throughout human history, from the ability to make sound decisions unencumbered by the past to the possibility of second chances. The written word made it possible for humans to remember across generations and time, yet now digital technology and global networks are overriding our natural ability to forget–the past is ever present, ready to be called up at the click of a mouse. Mayer-Schönberger examines the technology that’s facilitating the end of forgetting–digitization, cheap storage and easy retrieval, global access, and increasingly powerful software–and describes the dangers of everlasting digital memory, whether it’s outdated information taken out of context or compromising photos the Web won’t let us forget. He explains why information privacy rights and other fixes can’t help us, and proposes an ingeniously simple solution–expiration dates on information–that may.”

However, I think the book talks more about issues of information control and management, where forgetting is an important mechanism that allows the users to exercise their agency in an environment, which is becoming more and more information-intensive. The first half of the book is dedicated to setting the stage. It is a rather detailed and rich account of the history of the contemporary information environment particularly print, evolution of the memory devices and information storage, and development of information governance institutions (defined in broader terms) such as copyright. While I was aware of some of the stories, many of them were rather new to me. For example, did you know that the subject index, as an alphabetical list of topics covered in a book, was introduced in thirteenth century, but the idea of adding page numbers to the index to ease the actual navigation was added only in the sixteenth century? Quite interesting.

Telling this history Mayer-Schönberger draws a picture of ever growing body of information about us, as individual members of society, and the way we may interact with it, even if in an indirect way. One of his favorite examples is the story of Stacy Snyder who was denied her teaching certificate because of a picture she had posted on MySpace of her dressed as a drunken pirate. The gist of the argument, if I read it correctly, is that while it becomes easier and cheaper to collect and store information about us and our behavior, we, as individuals, are losing more and more control over that information (once you or somebody else posts your picture online, you no longer have control over where it may appear, who may see it, and in what context). He labels it in terms of remembering and forgetting – if in the past it was difficult and costly to remember and easy and cheap to forget, this balance has reversed.

These days it is so easy and cheap to remember that we start losing our ability to forget. The repercussions of this development are that the accessible, durable, and comprehensive digital record of our past directly impacts the way we conduct and make decisions in the present. For example, I know that once this post will be published, it will become a permanent record of my take on “Delete”. Knowing that, I should probably be very careful with what I say about it, because it may impact my future interaction not just with Viktor (with whom I am currently working), but also with other potential readers of this post. I may choose to self censor myself, to present a biased view, or abstain from publishing it altogether. The point is that my behavior today is guided by the uncertainty about the future uses of this information – on the one hand I know it is there to stay, probably attached to my name, but on the other hand, I have no idea who, when, and under what circumstances will use and interpret this post.

To better understand this idea, I think it is helpful to focus on some aspects of socio-psychological functioning of information, which Mayer-Schönberger discusses in length in the book. One of those aspects is interpretation. The bits and bytes in themselves do not mean much, unless we interpret them (similar to the idea of data in knowledge management). It is through interpretation that the information gains meaning and thus also social functions. This leads to another important aspect, which is context. In different contexts we will interpret the same information differently and this is one of the dangers of digitized memory – information is recorded in a certain time and in a given context, but when it gets retrieved at a different time and in a different context, it will likely have different meaning. Thus we are losing control over the interpretation and meaning of the digital information about us and our behavior. When we, as individuals, are losing control over the information, we are becoming powerless compared to other actors (like the state and the corporate world) who have the capacity to collect, store, and retrieve information about us, thus making them even more powerful (they know more about us than we know about them and they control the interpretation process of information about us). Another aspect of this is the negation of time, which threats our ability to make rational decision in the present. Instead of focusing on the big picture, we are focusing on managing the mundane details of our lives, because those are recorded and stored and will have impact on us in the future.

The shift of control over information and negation of time are at the heart of Mayer-Schönberger’s concern with digital remembering. The rest the book is dedicated to analysis of potential responses to this concern and finally a proposal of an alternative solution. The book lists six different potential responses, each addresses either the power or the time aspect of digital remembering on one of the three levels: individual, law, and technology. The six solutions are digital abstinence, information privacy rights, digital privacy rights (sort of a DRM for personal information), cognitive adjustment, information ecology, and perfect contextualization. Each one of the approaches has its merits, but each one also has its drawbacks either at the conceptual or practical levels.

Mayer-Schönberger suggests expiration date for information as his solution to the negative effects of digital remembering. On the face of it, this is a rather straight forward idea – we need a piece of meta-data attached to each bit of information, which will determine how long this bit of information should be retained. Of course, his suggestion is much more nuanced and he goes into various scenarios of different ways in which information can be forgotten or partially forgotten, but I hope my one-line explanation carries over the gist of the argument. Mayer-Schönberger acknowledges in his book that expiration date addresses the time-related aspect of digital remembering, but it does little at the “power” front. In fact, the “power” is supposedly influenced indirectly, as by allowing automatic deletion of information the powerful side in the interaction is giving up some of its powers (if my power stems from having information about you and being able to mine it for my purposes, giving up the control over when this information is deleted, is equivalent to giving up part of my power).

I think that the main weakness of the expiration date argument lies not in the fact that it focuses primarily on the “time” aspect of the issue, but in the fact that it puts great hopes into the agency of the user. The idea of expiration dates gives user the power to decide for each and every piece of information how long they want to retain it. However, I am still slightly skeptical whether the user will use that power, because it comes with a cost. This idea assumes that (1) people want to make a decision about each bit of information they process and (2) they are capable of estimating the usable time span of each and every bit. I am not sure that people are that zealous about managing their information and are that thoughtful about the future prospects of its use. Just imagine if you had to decide for each one of the 300 pictures from your last trip, how long you want to retain it… wouldn’t it be easier just to keep them all? … just in case?

However, I think the main task of “Delete” is not offering a practical solution (that may be better done through establishing a startup :), but undertaking a rather ambitious conceptual and educational task – bringing the idea of “finitness of information” (p.171) into the public consciousness.  There may be numerous socio-technical solution to the negative effects of digital remembering, but you need a well stated argument to start thinking in that direction.  I think this is what “Delete” is trying to achieve.

Here is also Viktor’s talk about the book at Berkman, just about a month and a half ago (caution: it is rather long – over an hour):

So I decided to share a couple of insights I have learned from (and about) my students.

Insight #1: Last semester I TAed for an intro communication class.  At some point (somewhere in late October) we were talking about the upcoming election and the use of MICT in election campaigns.  Specifically, the students were presented with a way of assessing political websites in terms of interactivity, hypertextuality, and social presence.  At the end of the class the 102 students were polled about what aspect of the website would be most important to them.  Thanks Laura and Sue, who agreed to actually count all the votes, I am able to share them with you:

• Interactivity – 35.3%
• Hypertextuality – 34.3%
• Social presence – 27.5%
• Combination of a number of aspects – 2.9%

If I recall the discussion in class correctly, this means that (1) the students appreciated an ability to “talk” to the candidates, express their opinions, and get involved in discussion, and (2) they appreciated an option to learn more and in depth about the subjects presented on campaign websites.  Needless to say that this is not by any means a rigorous or comprehensive study and we cannot really learn anything substantive from it, but nevertheless I think it is an interesting indicator.

Insight #2: The class I am TAing for this semester has a blog where the students have to post weekly assignments.  In the last assignment they had to observe their own usage of their mobile phones for a couple of days and then discuss issues that bothered them the most.  I have no numbers to provide this time, but here is what I learned from reading their reflections:

• They are connected! Not that this needed any proof from me reading the blog posts (PDF), but it is really amazing to read about the central role this device is playing in their social life.
• They are very responsive. One of the most common complains was about phone calls and text messages interrupting their studies, their sleep or their class sessions.  On the face of it, what can be easier than simply turning your phone off, but it turns out that missing phone calls or taking too long to response to text messages is not very socially acceptable.
• They want control.  As one of the common solutions, many students offered to have an equivalent of tagging so that they could catalog people in order prioritize phone calls and text messages as they arrive (note that this is different from assigning different ring tone to individual contacts).  Another popular feature they have advocated for was an ability to link their calendars to their mobile phones, so that the phones would ring, vibrate, or turn off according to their schedules.
• They don’t like uncertainty. Another commonly suggested feature was status notifications.  On the one hand, they want to let people know why they are not responsive or signal to people when it is appropriate to contact them.  On the other hand, they want to know why somebody is not answering their calls or text messages.
• Mobiles are social. Anther common complain was that the phone rings in inappropriate times (class, library, etc.).  It turns out that people really care about this and it is considered very embarrassing even to the digital natives.

Again, none of those observations is subject to any rigour, but I found reading these blog posts really interesting and insightful.  Hope you will find those interesting too and I wonder if any of the mobile industry players is actually working on developing some of the features the students have advocated for.

We Report, We Decide: Civic Media’s Impact on Mainstream News

In recent years, civic media projects have increased in numbers around the world. Ordinary people armed with inexpensive production equipment are using the web to share news and information with others in their communities and beyond. What can mainstream media learn from these experiments in community news-gathering?

NeighborMedia, a civic media project at Cambridge Community Television, invites you to attend this special discussion. Veterans in the fields of print, television and Internet journalism will share their views and take questions from a live studio audience, of which we hope you can be a part.

The even will take place on Monday, March 16, 7pm, Cambridge Community Television, 675 Massachusetts Ave. If you want to go, you need to RSVP by Thursday, March 12, by emailing colin@cctvcambridge.org.

More information is available here.

This latter idea probably deserves a separate post, but in the meantime, I just wanted to share a couple of observations from visiting change.gov after consuming it primarily via an RSS feed for quite a while now.  What you miss when you consume content via RSS are the comments.   This is where it is getting interesting.  When I checked the aforementioned post, there were only 16 comments and here is what I saw.

First, it is really difficult to maintain an open platform and at the same time maintain your agenda.  Naturally, the TIGRs are using change.gov in order to share information about government activities presented in a positive light.  However, it looks like people are not necessarily interested to talk just about the topic set by the administration.  Thus, for example, there were a number of comments dealing with some controversy surrounding Bishop Robinson.  I’ve been slightly out of the loop recently, so I am not sure what the controversy is about, but people seem to care and seem to feel free expressing their dissatisfaction and critique on the transition team’s website, even when the topic is something absolutely not related.

Second, kind of related to the previous one, if you open your communication channels, there is no way you will be able to downplay criticism.  In this particular post, people have been voicing their criticism also about the technology and innovation aspects of the transition team’s conduct.  Particularly, there were some comments about people’s dissatisfaction with the way their opinions were treated in the Citizen’s Briefing Book project.  Apparently, the visitors of change.gov voted legalization of Marijuana as their top priority, but this topic was apparently neglected from the book.  I am not sure whether this opinion represents the popular opinion of the American society or just that of those who feel comfortable using the web to participate actively.  Anyhow, the TIGRs are probably factoring in additional information and not just the users’ comments.  It looks though that the users of change.gov do view themselves as representing the entire country.

Third, again related to the previous, the issue of digital divide was brought up in this discussion by the users. A user named Mona Marlow wrote:

“While I think this is a vast improvement, one aspect has been overlooked. There is a huge portion of us who live and work in rual America. We cannot view some of this “new” tech, thus miss out on alot. Due to the lack of having access to or affording the high-end internet access required to partisipate and/or view some of this new content. It would be of great help and service to “us” if there was a basic html view as well. There is not much you can do of the video content, but perhaps have a transcript of it for rual America to read.
Thank You”

The bottom line is that after almost 3 months in the air, change.gov is evolving in terms of user participation and it will be interesting to see where the new administration will take it.

In the meantime, on the other side of the Atlantic, things are also changing.  The Russian president Medvedev has also opened his website to comments, but in the meantime only in the Russian version (RU).  I couldn’t spend much time on the site, but from what I saw the comments are more on the topic.  Of course the space is moderated (RU) and on the face of it there are more and clearer restrictions than on change.gov (here).  At the end of the day, however, I don’t think we have many chances to actually know what comments are not getting published on both websites.

So, these were my few observations for the moment.  Now back to work!

P.S. By the time I finished writing this post, there were already 33 comments on that post.  They got traffic!

P.P.S. An update. Actually, on kremlin.ru the discussion is also split. They actually provide a split of the main themes of the comments. So, in the latest post (RU) 785 comments were left on the topic (development of mass/public sport) and 396, the second largest category, were about the management of the comment space.  The admins of the website have even published stats for the period between Jan.12 and Jan. 19 (may be still available here in RU):

• 7558 – Activated users
• 961 – People who have not confirmed their email addresses
• 230 – Blocked users
• 2354 – Comments published
• 982  – Blocked comments
• 396 – Comments being reviewed

According to them, comments that were not published, contained personal complains or specific requests that needed an individual answer (that is not allowed according to their comment policy).  They say however that in all(?) those comments no contact information was provided, so they will not be able to take care of those complains and requests.

As i noticed in the last digest, change.gov is now offering a mechanism for interaction and is trying to build an active community on their website.  First there was a discussion about health care and now there is a discussion about economy.  They keep those discussions limited in time, which is understandable, and it will be interesting to see how these discussions will be implemented in actual policy making.

In a number of face to face conversations I had with people following my post criticizing change.gov for lack of a feedback mechanism, was the trickiness of having an open platform when it comes to an official website.  While it is natural and expected that on an election website there would be heated, and not always politically correct debates, it is not necessarily appropriate for an official government website.  Moreover, while it can be understandable if messages viewed as inappropriate by the campaign are removed from the website, it is again much more complicated when it comes to an official government website.  What does it say about free speech, when the government website starts making decision about appropriate and inappropriate content produced by it users.  Where is the line between censorship, or even more so, appearance of censorship?

Back then, I argued that clear and up-front community rules, may be a solution for this sensitive situation.  Interestingly, this is was the strategy taken by change.gov.  They just published a guide to comments, which is also linked to the comments policy.  They implement a set of community principles and technical tools to foster a community.  For example, while you can comment each time by a different name, they encourage you to register and maintain an online identity as a means for community-building.  They also have a rating system for comments, which seems like a useful tool.  The comment policy is also very simple, yet it leaves an ample room for the website managers to remove content and block users.

All in all, the first steps look very promising and the snippets of discussion that I saw seem rather thoughtful and constructive.  It will be interesting to see how the website managers will deal with removing content and blocking users, something that will have eventually happen.

A couple of side thoughts, though…

First, I wonder if what allows such an open policy is the fact that change.gov is not really a government website.  I remember reading that the website is run by an NGO registered to support the transition team (even though I could not find a reference to that on the website now).  So, formally, even though the website carries a .gov domain, it is not a government website, thus there are less strings attached to what can be done there.  I wonder, whether after the inauguration, they will maintain a similar approach.

Second, I think that if this approach of using online tools for an open public discussion will take off, we will probably witness a renewed debate about the digital divide.  The kind of discussion hosted at change.gov is absolutely unprecedented in its scope and it is open to many more people than any other government discussion so far.  However, it clearly leaves out those who do not have the technology, or who are not technologically savvy enough to engage in an online discussion.

The MICT-related innovation of Obama administration is definitely impressive and I feel I am really lucky to being in the US to witness this.

Officially the channel is dedicated to “breaking down stereotypes about the Arab and Muslim worlds and to bridging the East-West divide” and I am really curious how well it works from the queen’s point of view.  On the one hand, the comments on the channel page are not really constructive (to say the least).  On the other hand, I think that the content reflects a rather innovative approach to this sensitive topic and it is yet another example of different model for a leader communicating with her followers.  To a degree, it can be another chapter in my post about Obama not being the first leader to embrace the new media (Rania launched her channel about a year and a half ago).  I don’t mean this as a criticism of Obama.  On the contrary, I simply find this whole line of developments rather exciting.

The point of this post, however, is not just providing another example to the “Obama Effect“.  There was another something curious I’ve noticed while exploring Queen Rania’s channel.  It was actually about copyright…

My attention to the channel was brought by the Youtube channel of the Israeli TV Channel 2 (so many “channel” in one sentence :).  They aired a report about Rania winnig YouTube award for this inititiative and used her spoof of Letterman’s Top 10 while accepting the award at YouTube Live.  As I said, it was really well done and caught my attention, so I went on to check out the original.  I watched the same spoof again on the royal channel, but for some reason, not all the jokes worked for me.

Let’s see if you can spot the differences:

Here is the Channel 2 report (it is in Hebrew, but the actual video from Rania’s channel is English, so I think everybody can understand:

And here is the current version of the video on the official channel of Queen Rania:

If I watched it correctly, the scenes from Madonna’s clip and from 24 are now removed from the video.  I think particularly, the Madonna joke does not work without the visual.  My guess is that these scenes were removed due to the copyright rules YouTube are trying to enforce on the website.  I find it really fascinating.  It looks like even roaylties are subject to copyright wars.  I think it is interesting in itself.

In an attempt to fill the information vacuum about what is going on, I found myself switching between various website.  Veronica first noticed the report on Ynet (HE), then I checked NY Times, CNN, Washington Post, back to Ynet (HE), Haaretz (HE), BBC.  All the media seem to be rehearsing the same update about the estimated casualties, ongoing battles, hostages, and the fire.  Nevertheless, and this may sound crazy, I couldn’t help myself but noticing a number of media related phenomena.

The comment section on Ynet, included not just the expected emotional reactions, but also practical attempts to establish connection with people in India.  You may know that India is a popular destination for young Israelis who spend there extensive periods of time, usually before they embark on an academic journey.  So, among the comments to various reports about the attack, you could see people asking their friends and relatives to call back home and let them know that everything OK.  This is really interesting not only because the comment section is being reinvented for purposes initially not intended, but also because those who posted those comments, assumed that their friends/relatives in India will refer to the Hebrew online newspaper for information in such a critical time.

NY Times reported that a lot of information about the casualties and what is actually going on in Mumbai, is coming from blogs, Twitter, and other social media.  They mentioned (but not linked to) Noah Shachtman of Wired, who reported on the issue in their emergency blog (not sure how long this link will remain active).  Just a hint of where the journalists look for the information they later report in the mainstream outlets.  It also looks like the same pictures from the scene are circulating all over the cyberspace.

Finally, I briefly checked Facebook, and just a few hours after the the events began, there are 5 or 6 groups dedicated to the topic and a couple of them already have a few dozens participants.  Also, just a few hours after the attack search for “Mumbai terror” on Youtube returned almost 500 results and at least the entire first page seemed relevant.

I am not jumping on any conclusion, but I felt it is important to document those developments.  It got me thinking about (1) the grassroots use of MICT and (2) about the changing relationships between the grassroots content creators and the mainstream media in emergency situation like this.  The last thought was also fueled by a recent conversation with Grisha about his followup of the reports about a plane crush in Russia a few months ago.

If you have any thoughts on the topic, please share.  In the meantime, I hope the situation will get resolved with minimal further casualties.

Prologue

Following are my not very systematic results.  This is a rather long, but quite clunked post.  I hope you will find it interesting though, because I found the “research” behind it quite intriguing.  All in all I looked at the search results for the main parties (Kadima, Likud, Avoda, Shas, Ysrael Beitenu) and the major candidates (Livni, Netanyahu, Barak), at their website, their presence in social networks, and in spreadable media.  Please let me know what you think.

To ease your reading, here are the links to different parts of this post.  Read just the one that interests you.

• Search for parties
• Search for candidates
• Party websites
• Personal websites
• Parties on social networks
• Candidates on social networks
• Candidates in spreadable media
• Parties in spreadable media
• Epilogue

Search for parties

I decided to start with looking at what somebody would find trying to look up information about the parties.  After all, we want people to make informed choices and internet brings information at our fingertips :) I conducted all the searches in Hebrew on November 10, 2008, and here is what I found.

In most cases, when you look for the major parties in Google, the first result will lead to the party’s website.  This is clearly the case with Kadima, Likud, Shas, and Yisrael Beitenu.  Searching for Avoda, however, yields mostly job-search related results, and you will not find the party’s website among at least the first 30 results.  This probably stems from the fact that unlike other party names, which are relatively unique, “Avoda” in Hebrew stands for work and is a rather common word.  However, if you specify that you are looking for the political party Avoda, you still get weird results.  The first result is a Wikipedia article about the party, but non of the following links clearly suggests a party’s website.  There is a link to verify your membership in the party, but we will get to it later.  Interestingly, none of the parties is utilizing the option of advertising with Google, which was “given” in the US election, even though searches for candidates’ names and parties usually yielded their websites as the top result.

Testing the same searches with local search engines, such as Walla (powered by Yahoo) and MSN.co.il (powered by MS Live Search), yielded somewhat different results.  Searching for Avoda with Walla, lead to the same job-related results.  Specifying that you are looking for the political party, still yeilds some job-related results at the top, and only then some party-related content.  Searching for Kadima yielded the Wikipedia article about the party as the top result, followed by party-related results with the link to the main party website only as the 10th result.  Searching for Shas, Likud, and Yisrael Beitenu leads to the parties’ website as the top result.  Walla also has an option for contextualized ads, but non of the parties seem to utilize those.

Searching with MSN.co.il yielded results very similar to those of Google.

All in all these are good results for Shas, Likud, and Israel Beitenu, and rather decent results for Kadima.  Their website and related (positive) information can be easily found with the most simple search.  Kadima is not doing very well with Walla, which is one of the (if not the) most popular search engine in Hebrew these days.  At the same time, these are rather bad news for Avoda, as their information is very difficult to find.

Search for candidates

So, far we reviewed the search results for the main political parties competing in the February election. What happens if we search for the three candidates for the Prime Minister (PM) post?

Searching for Livni in Google brings up the Wikipedia article about the candidate as the top result, followed by a mix of relevant and not relevant results.  Among the first ten results, there is no link to the party website or to Zipi Livni’s personal website.  If you specify your search to Zipi Livni (full name vs. just the family name), the results are more relevant, however very few of them are official communication from the campaign and many are not very flattering.

Netanyahu is performing much better here.  If you search for just his family name or for his popular full name (Bibi Netanyahu or just Bibi), the first result will be his personal blog, followed by a Wikipedia entry about him, followed by a website commemorating his brother, and then a mixture of relevant website, including a website of his supporters.  The most positive for Netanyahu results are yielded when you search for his popular name.  If you search for his more official name, Benjamin Netanyahu, there is a slight shift in results (Wikipedia article is coming first), but they are all relevant and contributing to what I can imagine as potential causes of his campaign.

Barak is loosing the race here again.  If you search just for his family name, the first two results are related to an international communication company carrying the same name, and only the third result is the Wikipedia entry about the candidate.  Other results are a mixture of irrelevant results, some of which are actually about Barack Obama.  However, if you specify your search to his full name, Ehud Barak, the results are much better and after the Wikipedia article at the top of the search results, you will actually receive his personal website.

Moving on to Walla, Netanyahu is again leading the pack with yielding the most positive results for his campaign.  Whether you search for parts of his formal or popular name, the top results will always containt links to his personal website and to the support website I’ve mentioned above.  At the same time, things look not as good for Livni.  Searching just for her last name, yields a lot of results, which are rather critical of the candidate.  If you focus your search to her full name, the results are slightly better, with the Wikipedia at the top, but there are still enough critical materials, which I am sure Kadima’s campaign would like not to have in the top ten results.  For Barak, the situation is slightly better in Walla.  Searching just for his family name, yields a mixture of results, some of which are relevant.  Searching for his full name, yields similar results to those in Google.

Sorry, for making the MSN summary shorter again, but its results were rather similar to those of Walla.  In fact, all the candidates do slightly worse with MSN, as it bring less relevant results and when those are relevant they actually tend to be more critical.  All in all, Netanyahu is doing the best with search there, followed by Barak (only if you search for the full name), and then Livni.

Party Websites

In the Israeli political system, you do not vote directly for the PM.  You are voting for a party and later the head of the party that leads the formation of a coalition, gets the PM job.  This is why I started testing the search with looking for parties and only then for the candidates.  Now I would like to talk about the party websites, before I move to talk about those of the candidates.

I start with Kadima, which has a relatively decent and updated website.  Although its design seems to be stuck in the late 1990’s when they just started discovering that you can do online slightly more than showing HTML.  The website is extremely busy with graphics and not very trivial to navigate.  It has an option to watch videos on its homepage and it has a survey (with a question about whether Zipi Livni should declare general election, which was decided a few weeks ago).  Besides a rather updated stream of news and static information about the website, the only interactive features on the website are an option to send email and joion the party.  Well, I might be exaggerating, because they also allow to download campaign related stuff from the website with the only caveat that it is from the previous election (I think).  The entire website is in Hebrew, but there is a link to the Russian version of the website.  If click that however, you get a pop-up window saying that the site is under construction.

Likud have just launched a new website.  I am certain that just about a week and a half ago, when I first thought about this post, they had a rather horrible website.  The new one, however, is really up to date and is rather impressive.  It is rather pleasant aesthetically and has a number of 2.0-ish functionality, such as the ability to search for local events, start a blog, etc.  A number of Likud members of Knesset have blogs that are linked to from the website.  There is not much content there yet and it will be interesting to see how it evolves.  Clearly following Obama’s footsteps, they are trying to build a community of supporters at: my.netanyahu.co.il.  In fact the main Likud website is now sitting on www.netanyahu.co.il, which I think is an interesting attempt to focus attention on the party’s main political asset.  Of course they have information about the party and an option to join it.   The highlight, however, is the ability to donate to the party online – something I have never seen in the Israeli politics before.  Currently, the website is focused on the municipal election, but from the way it looks and feels it is definitely the currently best built online space in this campaign so far.

It looks like the news about invention of the internet did not really reach the Israeli Labor Party.  The most official page for Avoda I could find is a mostly empty page where you can check whether or not you are a member of the party or download a form to join it.  That’s it.

Yisrael Beitenu is doing much better than Avoda, but not as good as Likud; probably closer to Kadima.  They have a rather static website, which is more pleasant to the eye compared to that of Kadima.  The website is mostly about pushing information to its users.  It has a rather updated news section and a lot of information about the party.  The only interactive feature I spotted was an option to join a mailing list.  There were however, a couple of features that I have not seen on the other two websites.  First, Yisrael Beitenu attempts to publish the names and ID numbers (equivalent of SSN in the US) of their donors.  That is quite transparent, but I am not sure what it does to people’s willingness to contribute and how sustainable this is (there is only information about May 2008 presented on the website).  Second, they have rather elaborate versions of the site not just in Hebrew, but also in Russian and in English.  This is interesting.  While I can understand their willingness to invest in the Russian version of the website (a lot, if not the most, of their supporters are Russian-speakers), but I cannot understand the motivation behind the English version.

If Kadima and Yisrael Beitenu are stuck in late 1990’s, Shas is confusing.  On the one hand, when it comes to the website design, it is stuck in the early 1990’s.  On the other hand, in terms of functionality, they are almost as good as Likud’s website.  It is possible to join a social network on Shas’s website, edit a profile, send and receive messages within the network, and more.  Other than that, the website is very long HTML page that has a lot of content about the party, its spiritual/cultural agenda, news, and information about events.  The site has quite an extensive multimedia collection and at the same time, it is not available on Saturdays.

To summarize, I was really surprised to see the overhaul Likud’s website went through and the extend to which Shas’s website has embraced the modern technical abilities.  At the same time, other parties are really lagging behind.  Particularly surprising is the Avoda’s negligence of the internet.

Personal websites

This one is relatively easier as I think Zipi Livni does not have a personal website, so there are only two to look at.

Netanyahu is definitely in the lead here and as I mentioned in the previous section, he just re-launched his entire online presence mimicking Obama’s campaign.  It definitely looks impressive and it will be interesting to see how it evolves.  To their credit, I have to say that Likud not just channeled their online efforts into a single place, but it also preserved some of the older materials.  Netanyahu used to have a blog and a personal website for a while now, and I think many (if not all) of his blog posts made it to the new website.

When it comes to his personal website, Ehud Barakis doing much better than his party.  There is actually a decent website with a lot of static information about the candidate.  You can become Barak’s supporter and join his mailing list.  Weirdly enough, there are fields for a user name and a password on the website, but there is nowhere one can join anything that resembles a social network.  They do have a section on the website for announcement for “authorized personnel only”.  Whatever that means, it does not support communication with potential voters.  Moreover, many of the pages on the website are empty, which creates a feeling that they wanted just to put something out there, without putting enough resources into it.

Parties on Social Networks

I started with Facebook.  I remember looking at the information about the Israeli network on Facebook and being impressed.  Unfortunately, Facebook no longer provides access to networks statistics.  Nevertheless, here is the membership count for the various parties I could find:

• Likud: 985 members (and they also have separate pages for the international and the English speaking wings of the party)
• Avoda: 154 members
• Kadima: 149 members
• Yisrael Beitenu: 17 members (another 44 members in their English speaking wing)
• Shas: I could not find any

There are of course more groups focusing on the parties and there as well, Likud is much more represented compared to other parties (even though the discussion is rather polarized).  Interestingly, I ran a similar search on a Russian social networking website VKontakte and actually found a couple of groups supporting the following parties:

• Yisrael Beitenu: 107 members
• Likud: 35 members

I didn’t see other parties represented there.

Candidates on Social Networks

For that category I looked on Facebook.  Frankly, I don’t think there is another significant social networking website in Israel, if you do not account for communities formed in places such as Tapuz or Nana for example.  Those are more blogging communities, but I may be mistaken.

Since all three candidates have Facebook profiles, we can start with pure numbers of the kind social networks usually care about:

• Netanyau: 1230 supporters
• Livni: 858 supporters
• Barak: 87 supporters

There is not much activity going on the politician’s website, but you can observe clashes among supporters and even some criticism on the discussion boards.  I don’t really know what else one can see looking at their profile pages.

One can see a much more colorful picture if they look at the groups arguing in support or against certain candidates.  It is quite difficult to say something systematic about these groups but here are some of my unsystematic observations.  First, Ehud Barak as a politician is almost non existent in this sphere.  Benjamin Netanyahu is coming out of this comparison as the most controversial figure.  He has probably the largest amount of groups focusing on him, but those usually have limited membership.  Tzipi Livni is giving a “good fight” to Netanyahu in this sphere.  She may have fewer groups focusing on her, but those that do are mostly supportive and have relatively large memberships.

Also, with all the personalization, I am not sure I am seeing anything nearing a complete picture.  So, I wonder, when you look at how these candidates appear in social networks, what do you see?

Candidates in Spreadable media

I started my search with YouTube.  Searching for the candidates’ channels, the only one whom I found present was Netanyahu – at least I think it was his channel.  The other two candidates were absent from YoutTube, even though there are many videos focusing on all three.  I wonder if there is a reliable way to measure whom users on YouTube favor more among the three candidates.  Do you have any idea about the best way to do it?

I also searched Flix, the Israeli version of YouTube. There was no dedicated equivalents of channels and most of the videos posted by various users were captures of TV translations of either speeches and news items or satirical programs.  There is very limited user generated content dealing with politics that goes beyond simple power-point-style presentations.

Parties in Spreadable media

I was not able to locate dedicated party channels on YouTube, but most of the major parties are being mentioned in various videos.  You can find items ranging from captured TV performances to user-created content, usually criticizing the parties or their members of the Knesset.  Interestingly, looking for Avoda-related content, I saw that two of the party members, Ami Ayalon and Ephraim Sneh, actually have their own YouTube channels.  Nothing like this stood for any of the other members of Knesset or party members.

As before, I also searched Flix.  It had significantly fewer political videos.  I could not find dedicated equivalents of channels owned by the politicians, but there were some channels clearly supporting Netanyahu or Livni.  Most of the relevant content on Flix seems to be snapshots of the official speeches of the candidates.  There was no Israeli version of Obama girl.

Epilogue

From my unsystematic analysis above, it looks like Likud is currently leading the way with technological innovation in this campaign.  Although they just launched their new environment, it already looks promising and I hope other candidates and parties will follow their example.  It will be great if this election produce more “new” media innovation in both the technological and the strategic realms.  There are of course other parties that are using the online environment for they purposes, but none of them is doing an extraordinarily good job.  Anyhow, this is just a beginning of the electoral race in Israel and although the entire election period is only 3 months, a lot can change as we move on.

In the meantime, in the US, Obama seems to continue innovating with technology.  His administration “in formation” launched a website for supposedly direct communication with the people.  I first read about in Megan’s blog and I share her careful scepticism abot whether or not this direct channel will work and whether ot not it will be actually direct.  Nevertheless, there is a lot of interst and some expectations from this initiative and the future of the community created at my.barackobama.com This one will be an extermly interseting to watch.

Right now this sounds more like a speculation, but it looks like the Russian social networking websites are actually experimenting with the subscription-based models.  I wrote in the past about the various ways Odnoklassniki.ru is monetizing on the social aspects of online social networks.  Recently, my father pointed out an item (RU) in the one of the Russian-language new websites, which states that Odnoklassniki is now requesting payment from new users asking to register.  According to this article, the registration now will cost between $1-2.  Those who choose not to pay will not be able to view other people’s profiles, contact other users, etc.  In other words the free registration is lacking any of the “social” elements, which is the main reason for people to join.

I looked a little bit around and there are more news items about that move in RuNet.  The official rationale stated by the Odnoklassniki management is that the paid registration is aimed at combatting spammers, who tend to open numerous accounts and use them for promotion of their products.  Some of the critics disagree (RU), suggesting this is just a way for Odnoklassniki to force the spammers to share their profits from the network.

In any case, it will be interesting to see whether or not the paid registration model will turn out to be sustainable.  Probably Facebook crew and others will be watching as they think about their next move. In the meantime, I do wonder if you would pay to socialize online?