Apr 07 2008
How Axelrod Coordinates the “Grassroots” and “NetRoots”
All questions as to how Axelrod coordinates Obama’s internet and media message are answered at my.barackobama.com
You have to try it, to understand that it is nothing like Clinton’s latest Hillary Responders, which is a belated effort to react to anti-Hillary media and internet bias, and like ourselves, is unaffiliated with the Clinton campaign. (click on any picture to enlarge)
Obama’s portal, is a one stop proactive coordinating mechanism for all pro-Obama activity nationally. From local events, placing calls, fund raising, organizing groups, and even organizing blog activity, its all there - at your fingertips, both physical and online.
Anyone familiar with social networking theory, knows that sites such as MyBarack, allow for very accurate visualization and measure of influence of its members. You can access such visulizations on facebook with Nexus program. MyBarack boasts a nice point system, to see who contributes the most to the portal, but you cannot browse it, so you cant know who is number one. The point system is another way of measuring for Influentials - the one in ten who tell the other nine what to do.
Central to MyBarack are events and groups. Most groups are public, and anyone can join. But not every member can be contacted by the public. Some groups, like the Obama MyDD group, has a private membership closed to other members, so you can not see who is a member and who is not.
Joining MyBarack, you basically enter the Obamaworld - and if you were a lonely youth last night, you can make friends tomorrow evening. Facebook, MySpace, and always Eventful at your disposal - Obama Everywhere, reads the unreflective Orwellian header-
Finding events on MyBarack is incredibly easy. If Gregory thinks Obama Girl motivates Obama youth, wait till he sees how easily it is for boys and girls to finally get out of their suburban pre-fabs and break the ice at Obama rallies and meetings. Under the pretext of Obamathusiasm, you don’t even have to search for that elusive one-liner.
Look how easy it was for me, to see upcoming events 100 miles of New York City:
400 and more events!
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Once you join the Obamaworld, the portal has a resources guide download page, with handy instructions on how to organize yourself. Of particular interest is the “Grassroots Action Guide“.
Once you know how to organize, you need to have some content, and MyBarack has all that, and more. Meeting people in public, you can exchange print-outs of all Obama flyers and statements on various subjects.
Information is centralized through The Action Center and Obama Rapid Response Team. If you find your inspiration sagging, Obama is always on hand, with Obama TV- where you have the latest statements, and archives of speeches.
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Two groups that struck my eye, and readers will no doubt find of interest, The DailyKos group, and Huffington Post groups - the two largest communities on MyBarack, dedicated a specific blog.
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Dominating a great deal of the MyBarack activity, is Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook. He is the founder and head of twenty different groups, especially the most important ones: Action Center Updates group, Group Administrators for Obama - Collaboration Group, Obama Rapid Response, and Students for Barack Obama Blog.
This is a list of the largest groups on MyBarack:
And here are some groups I found particularly relevant to Obama’s media presence.
(also Netizens)
I was surprised the number of groups dedicated to Obama supporters across the world. From Kenya and Somalia, to Canada and France.
This one in France struck me as particularly interesting, as it was up to date, and its most recent post linked to a worldwide effort of Obama supporters to take photographs on or near bridges, and promote them. The info can be found on a site called the World Wants Obama, whose very url sums up the entire “Grassroots” effort represented by MyBarack.
MyBarack is central to Obama’s internet presence, and serve as the springboard to Obama’s conquest of Myspace, and Facebook, and helps coordinate pro-Obama blogging activity.
Far from “grassroots” the portal is a centralized mechanism for controlling all pro-Obama volunteer activity through the World. Its lack of transparency, and maintenance and financing by the Obama campaign, should put to rest once and for all any doubt about Axelrod’s Astro-Turfing abilities.
While Axelrod is not the brain behind the technology and appearance of MyBarack, he is the inspiration for the whole idea of making something look bottom-up, which by its nature, is top-down. This is part of his “shorten distance between Candidate and Voter.”
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For Hillary supporters, MyBarack is not something we need to imitate. Those who vote Hillary don’t have time to spend hanging-out on social networking sites. It is also something most of us, I think, do not find particularly attractive to our Democratic sense, or appealing to our understanding of politics. Ironically, as Clinton supporters, by eschewing the Facebook model, we are more grassroots than Axelrod-Hughe’s brainchild, which teaches us, that far from being spontaneous and natural, pro-Obama online activity is a highly centralized and co-ordinated affair, which keeps Obama-loyalists on cue.
13 responses so far
I think your article is spot on.
I have seen a few comments that suggest Obama’s operation is creepy because it is so well coordinated and centralized and focused in keeping people on message. You have even gone as far as to say it is undemocratic. Please dont jump on me for being an Obamabot, because I am not. In fact, I am NOT his ideal target…a thinking person who scrutinizes him as much as I do Clinton and McCain. In fact, I have begun to change the channel or keep the TV off when the Situation Room (CNN) comes on.
But here is my question: if Hillary were doing the same things from the start and having less, equal or more success with these “Geobbels-like” techniques, would you still consider the tactics undemocratic?
I like Obama’s message, but am nervous as hell about the fact that HE is the one at the center of it. If Hillary are the one blazing ahead of him in funding, votes, all polls and “grassroots”, would you be as critical of the way Obama marshalls support?
In other words, where do we as people who do not like our thoughts to be usurped (unfortunately, many Americans ant to be told precisely what to think, and Obama, Clinton and your whole team knows this is much as I do, I suspect), draw the line of what is acceptable campaign coordination and what is not?
Do you think for one minute that Hillary, assuming she gets the nomination, should NOT use the Obama camp’s cult-like following against the Republicans?
How much support is okay for a candidate to have, before they get compared to mass murderers and their apologists? Do we think that Obama is the Jim Jones or David Koresh of politics, and therefore set the bar lower (the secret fear I and everyone who is “aware” wont talk about in polite company)?
I support the message, but not the man.
I think the marketing is brilliant, but not the man.
I think democracy and the channels through which it is practiced, is changing, but I am not convinced this man is the change.
If we are the change we seek, as he says on his site, then who the hell will be running the White House?
My take on this issue of dissecting his campaign effectiveness is that the problem, as people see it, is that his support wont implode as easily as conventional wisdom suggests it should. Effectiveness beyond the conventional, then, is a cult or conspiracy, something unseemly, sinister and unnatural by that logic.
Here is another question: do you think for one minute that the internet will not be invaded by every politician in the US, now that its power - or one aspect of it - has been demonstrated in this election?
Part of the rationale for this site is that Obama does not deserve his popularity and certainly does not deserve the credit for creating it - that I do agree with. I am less certain, though, of how to set the “rules” for which politician gets to be popular and competitive and which does not. Do you have any thoughts or guidelines on this?
What is the tipping point from strong support to nazi-like publicity manchine? Even more importantly, whose tipping point is it?
If Bill Gates were a politician instead of a monopolistic businessman, would he deserve his popularity for what he sells or would we be demonizing him for the crime of being able to capture an opportunity more effectively than his rival? And Bill has 80% “control” of his constituency in a more insidious way (his message a la software touches almost everyone and everything), whereas Obama’ fortunes can surge or slip with every little shift in political wind or faux pas committed by one of his scarily green-and-wet-behind-the-ears converts.
From where I am standing, the only way to put the genie back into the box or X-box (chuckle), is to immediately take out a court order of some kind against ALL campaigns and ban them from the internet, so that no candidate can become more popular than we would like them to be. If the goal is to guarantee that Democracy is not hijacked by saavy marketing and outreach, then don’t we need to prevent all future politicians from doing anything more advanced or efficient than dialing phone numbers and scouring paper-based lists of potential voters instead of computerized ones? Yes, I know this is unrealistic, but I put it out there simply as a thought experiment and attempt to engage a little more honesty.
And I think we can all be honest by saying that if Obama were Colin Powell or some other known quantity with years of the experience that he doesn’t have, we would all feel more comfortable saying that our candidate presents the future for the brilliance with which he uses 21st Century tools. But like you and many of my friends, I am nervously tapping my finger on the table, because something about him is making me nervous.
Well, that’s a yikesfest. This is how he arrived “out of the blue” on the ballot. He doesn’t have the experience to be the president. It’s troubling how he used target marketing around the world to enhance himself — you found it!
Another link for me, today, to your post. Great job! On the “great unmasking” What really bothers me? That the “web” decided to go for him rather than be fair to all the candidates. It was rigged from the start from that NOI and the “roots” people.
Great article. Some of the Obamabots do way more harm than good with all the trash they spew. I honestly believe they turn some voters away from Obama.
Heather Arnet, a Clinton supporter who runs a Pittsburgh organization that lobbies for more women on public commissions and corporate boards, recently surveyed the Internet and found more than 50 anti-Hillary Clinton sites on Facebook. One of them, entitled “Hillary Clinton Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich,” had more than 38,000 members.
“What if one of these 38,000 guys is someone you, as a woman, have to go to and negotiate a raise?” she asks.
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http://www.hillaryclintonforum.net/discussion/showthread.php?t=4117&highlight=barricades
Oh man that Obama, it really sucks how effectively he’s using the internet to get his message out there.
“It is also something most of us, I think, do not find particularly attractive to our Democratic sense…”
Yeah, who wants a democracy where everyone gets an equal voice? Where you can find people in your community that share your political views and try to make real change? Not Hillary, not Jeff, and certainly not stop-obama.org.
Jeff,
What you describe, I think, is first and foremost a tool for involving Obama supporters in the Obama “hero-tale”.
When I looked at myobama, I had the impression most of it was dead, or not very updated.
But I also had the impression, that once you sign on- your in the game, in the story, in the narrative.
That, and NOT the technology, the interface, IS Axelrod. The rest, that’s just Blue State Digital and Hughes.
As for “stop obama is a bad joke”’s comment. Point me to a SINGLE example where your MYOBama membership has allowed you to express anything BUT flattery - and then talk about equal voices.
The whole Obama campaign is like a science fiction thriller. Their marketing technique is an attempt at mind control and it’s a pretty scary thing. Axelrod tried to package and market a hollow character as something more then what he was and it failed this time. The technique will be fine tuned and used in the future. We’ll have a madman running this country one day thanks to what will be known as the “Axelrod technique”.
uh oh. you led me to something….so thanks!
big posts over at my place this morning……………in tandem with you!
[…] own variations and embellishments. Our word of advice, just be Consistent and persists. Axelrod achives both through his MyBarackObama portal, we have to achieve it by sticking to the […]
well——there’s more here: you’ll get it…
http://www.fastforwardblog.com/2008/03/17/more-the-obama-campaign%E2%80%99s-use-of-web-and-enterprise-20-from-rolling-stone-magazine/
unpacks it………
I’m so glad you’re on this…there are a lot of us!
Ijane:
And, the most ironic part of it all, is that Obama’s compaign (someone formerly at Blue State Digital), is responsible for that 1984 anti-Hillary video. Everything Obama and his campaign says or does is the complete opposite of what they really mean.
I love how you’re all against getting people involved in the political process. Too bad Billary have no shot at the nomination. I can’t wait for April 22nd. Each and every poll leading up to the PA primary shows Clinton losing ground and Obama gaining.
This is so silly to blame Obama for strong internet and organizing skills.
Nearly all the anti-Obama sites are filled with hate words, such as Hobama, “Putz Richardson” just to name a few I have read here on this money collecting site.
I was going to vote for Hillary, but I happen to like Obama’s campaign tactics, you know, not throwing the kitchen sink and crying racism at every turn like you people do, when actually the biggest perpetuator of racial hatred and race whining is sites like yours.