Matthew Allen

Keynotes, Day 2, EDEM10 Conference

The Promise and Contradictions of E-Democracy, Obama Style
Micah L. Sifry (Personal Democracy Forum)
Sifry begins by drawing a distinction between the social media, Internet based mobilisation from Obama during the election campaign and the lack of such activity within the administration, since Obama’s victory. At first (for example the Transparency and Open Government directive), there was a strong sense of Obama moving towards digitally enabled collaborative and participatory government. But, we have ended up, Sifry says, with an administration that is centralised and traditional and dominated by the big institutions.
Sifry demonstrates that the USA is now in an era of mass participation in the electoral process; gives the example of the Vote Different citizen advertisement pro-Obama and against Clinton. Sifry asserts that Clinton campaign was a monologue – not a conversation; scripted and led from the front by Clinton; Clinton was ahead clearly in 2007 and Sifry claims the Internet was the key factor which pushed Obama ahead. Relations between citizens and activists, not just between citizens and the leaders/ politicians are what the Internet enables; that said, the mass mobilisation effects did depend a lot on Obama’s personal qualities and the particular spirit of the times. Fundamentally, though, the mass of the population – even over 60 – are all now getting online. “people are not just going online to access information: they are doing it to participate” (based on Pew ILP data). Data on Obama campaign – 13 million email addresses; 200,000 events; 75,000 related (self-made) webpages; 4 million donors; 2 million people on myOB social site; $750 million raised, 2/3rds online – so clearly this campaign worked.

Simple argument here, based on pretty clear data, that Obama was compellingly successful in mobilising people for his electoral cause – not just giving money, but organising activities, linking between the campaign and the voters. It’s clear that Sifry has identified the key point: social media not only recruits, and funds, it also empowers a cadre of activists, turning followers into micro-leaders.

Starts the next part of the speech with a deeply offensive image of Obama which was made by the Tea Party and is being distributed, via social media, by the rightwing of US politics. The point is: social media is not just ‘the good guys’. It can go in both directions and there is perhaps less grass-roots that Obama might like to claim.
Sifry now starts to unpick the mythology of the ‘small donor’ myth of Obama. The trend in US politics is who raises the money, from big business, in the year before the election wins. This is true for Obama – he got 36%, Clinton only 30%. Obama also has an overall donor pattern that is similar to McCain and others. Howard Dean, in fact, had all the ‘small donor’ ($200 or below). Obama might have tapped into some additional funds, but principally his campaign was funded in the normal way.
Turning to the grass roots campaign – shows video of Obama expressing his hope that the network he has built around his campaign will be sustained “I want to continue that after the election”, he says. “I want to revamp our Whitehouse website…I want people to be able to say, today, this issue is going on…Creating the kind of situation where, if people want to get involved, they have the information they need”. Not just Internet, however, he focuses also on town hall meetings and getting leaders out from Washington to visit the people – “the more we can enlist the American people to get involved, the more we can move forward”. Ties this sort of participatory behaviour to fighting the Washington special interests and institutional structures.
Reviewing this myth, he cites one of Obama’s key campaign managers – at first, the campaign didn’t really appreciate what they were doing, and perhaps even saw some social media use as simply a way of creating a positive spin for the campaign through traditional media. Plouffe is cited saying his view of the campaign’s email havesting was “we had essentially created our own television network, only better”.

Sifry reveals here that the Obama campaign did not, itself, understand or deploy social media so much as discover it, and then harness it, all the time seeking to turn it back into something which is controlled, managed, and top-down and hierarchical. Once again, the Internet blindsides the centres of power because it threatens their identity as the experts of media manipulation

Sifry then turns to analyse the way Obama behaves as President – highly critical of the level of control from the Whitehouse press office (less press conferences than Bush); also critical of the trivialisation of participatory forums online by Obama. Notes, too, the way the special interests (such as the Tea Party) have attempted to hijack some of the open government debate. Looks at the way very few people have actually participated in the open government dialogue, though some valuable information gleaned.

Sifry is trying a difficult trick – to see both positives and negatives in the way the Obama administration has done ‘open’ online digital government. Speaks of the duality of “Obama”. It is clear that the duality is partly to do with the fact that there are many players (various departments and agencies), that some e-government topics / uses are not very contentious or perhaps appeal to the ‘rational’ in the public. A good analysis, if perhaps needs to explicate the way in which e-government has a series of dimensions – political, rational, expressive and so on – which don’t always fit together easily.

Sifry now reports that the kind of engagement Obama promised has not really occurred and indeed those things which have been done have not had any impact on the populace. Asserts that there is now a loss of trust; that the administration has not been ready to cope with, to embrace the “loss of control” which social media requires. Uses a slight analysis of health care speech by Obama to show that the “we” and “us” of the campaign has morphed into “I” and “you” now that he is President. And yet, Sifry cleverly identifies that the participants themselves have “walked away” from their responsibility to stay engaged.
So, conclusions. The Internet doesn’t empower anyone; we empower ourselves. One-to-many and many-to-one are easy; many-to-many is hard. Describes the Internet’s technologies for collaboration and networking as “weak tools”. Ends up, really, with a technologically oriented approach – it’s the tools that are the fault.

Sifry’s analysis is very useful here. He doesn’t explicate it, but hints at the reasons for the failure – that opposition and campaigning is not the same as government and administration. The promises were easy to make, and were – through the force of the campaign – easy to build on, but the realities are much more complicated. Furthermore, he astutely undercuts the reality of the ‘social media’ campaign idea – in fact it was only marginally so, or (perhaps) was seen by grass-roots participants as participatory while seen by the campaign management as not at all like that. It is therefore slightly unusual to see him conclude that we need better tools. I am wondering whether, in fact, the point is this: all online tools are weak tools and thus what matters is the intersection between strong ties outside of the Internet, with ‘weak tools’ to sustain and expand those ties across distance. And, in discussion, Sifry to some extent showed the problem: the tools can be made stronger – at least in the USA – in electing candidates, or shaping the candidates to stand, but become less effective when those candidates are serving politicians.

Discussion: media….“the government’s ability to be media is incompletely understood” (that is, how to mediate a conversation) ; discussing the failure of the mass media, the bias, the extremes and immediacy of cable news and the way the mediasphere in US politics is adapting to change by emptying itself out of authority through reporting and demanding authority through opinion (“truthiness” – reference AoIR Conference keynote 2009)

And, interestingly, a lot of Sifry’s discussion of successes with social media were couched in terms of ‘and it made an impact on the mass media’: so, is this too media-focused?

Discussion: “weak tools”…“politicians really do respond to money in the USA” – discusses how tools, especially around money raising and making visible the aggregation of micro-contributions, can show politicians why and how people are giving; yet still, Sifry notes, the problem is this: what happens when the political candidate is elected – do they remember what the participation meant and why they received the voter support?.
Discussion – Obama campaign had massive plans for transition of themselves to administration and no plans for transition of the grass roots to a supportive governmental grass roots campaign. Cites the fact people were calling up their local Dem office and saying ‘what do I do now?’ that Obama has won… there was nothing. Concludes – most Obama people do not believe in and are hostile to grass-roots empowerment: Democrat party is cynical of their own voters – even despite the evidence of Obama’s success.

Keynotes – E-Democracy conference (EDEM10)
4th Conference on E-Democracy, EDEM10, Krems, Austria
Conference blog: http://digitalgovernment.wordpress.com/

Over the next two days I will be attending the 4th E-Democracy Conference, EDEM, in Austria; this is the first of several slightly live blog posts that will report and reflect on the proceedings

Distribution and Empowerment: Embedding Citizens at the Heart of Democracy
Andy Williamson

Williamson avoids the phrases e-government and e-democracy – “nobody knows what democracy is”, adding the ‘e’ probably means it is even more abstruse and excludes the participants. “the conversation is not about technology; it’s about people”. Importance of making a difference: “we are sitting on a technological wave of innovation that allows us to reconstruct our world” but, “our society is not static – we are in a neo-liberal environment”. Notes the shift to consumers, not citizens – this includes attempts to make people consumers of democracy and its services. Links this shift also to the way we are now a society of individuals, not a community.
Key concern for Williamson: “Privileging individuals over the collective reduces opportunities for citizens to be engaged, debate and modify their beliefs”

Am struck by the last point – “modify” – engagement is often thought of as ‘having a say’ but perhaps it is also about creating a space for ‘listening’ to others; and, in a collective, social world, it is listening to others of the same kind – other citizens – which will help to ‘modify’ beliefs

Starts with ideas that most people are not actively engaged in political action. In the UK – 4% are actively engaged; – very small, sure, but Williamson focuses our attention on the 5% who say they are NOT engaged but WANT to be. 25% do not want to be ‘active’ but want to have a say in how their communities are run.

Reminds us that digital engagement in a particular country is linked to the culture and social standing of ‘politics’ as an activity. Focuses on the fact that people want engagement at local levels, outside of the broadly politicised circuits of power. For example, in Britain, politics and politicians are held in contempt by most people; there is a lack of respect for politicians. And, as he states later in his talk, governments hold people in contempt. And a further development – if civil society is a sign of a healthy democracy, then we are in trouble, because civil society is now layered and complexified by the significant number of NGOs between citizens and their governments. NGOs abrograte to themselves the power to speak for fractions of society and yet are deeply unrepresentative and non-consultative. Governments like working with NGOs because they are within the discourse, speak the same language as government. Effectively, Williamson implies, government and non-government organisations collude in the further marginalisation of citizens from actual engagement. Finally Williamson concerned about the potential of the independent public sphere to work for democracy because the public sphere is “colonised” by the media and, indeed, by government.

The Internet might help, through both changes to the mediasphere but also in managing better communications between and from and to citizens, but Willimson remins us of the problems of technology adoption: he points to the ‘gap’ between early adoptors and early majority – this is the gap that, if not bridged, will lead to the failure of a technology dispersion and adoption process. This gap is clear at the moment in relation to e-government. This gap can be understood as access problems – lists several: mental; material; skills; usage; civil; democratic. This is a very rich picture of the potential and actual digital divide around e-democracy. It is not just technical skill, nor physical access. “The Internet doesn’t change my motivation to do something…what motivates me is an issue that I feel passionate about…what the Internet does is lower the threshold at which engagement occurs.”

Utilising addiction theory as a guide, points out how helping people past addiction requires a focus on disruption of the preparatory stages which lead to the addictive action and that this disruption has to be persistent, not a one-off intervetion: claims that e-government initiatives are often failing because they are not sustained, do not lead to systemic changes in mindset, both among citizens and government.

To make egovernment (what Williamson wants to call digital democracy) work, “digital media [needs to be ] positioned as an integral part of the democratic process, giving equal recognition to the folksonomies of civil society as is currently given to the taxonomies of experts”; it’s about translating the questions and processes of gaining opinion into the language, needs and expectations of citizens, not requiring them to become part of the discourse of government.
Discussion: – nice question – essentially mobilising a ‘will citizen participation lead to fascism?’ argument – Williamson’s response – voters know there is a problem, but don’t understand the issues. So, digital democracy can work, implicitly, to prevent totalitarianism in two ways – first, by helping people to become educated; second, by extremists getting elected and then they will be observed to be doing nothing. The vote for extremism is a vote for action: it produces no change.

I am not convinced that citizen participation necessarily means that we can avoid the spectre of fascism or totalitarianism; but it would seem that this threat is everpresent in democracy and therefore we should not fear the people’s voice. Indeed, the fear of ‘too much’ democracy is indeed totalitarian, but expressed from the smug position of the entrenched and comfortable elites

Discussion: question regarding bridging gap from issues-based movements to persistent citizen motivation to engage. Part of Williamson’s answer? Government to go into the spaces of citizen debate and discussion and place themselves within that discourse, rather than requiring citizens to move into governance.

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Goverati: E-Aristocrats or the Delusion of E-Democracy
Ismael Peña-López
Opens with a brief discussion of the production process in an industrial society: resources feed into the production process leading to outputs; the production process is formed at the intersection of capital and labour. The process can be understood as the sum of scarcity, transaction costs and intermediation (eg the coordination of suppliers and consumers)

Then looks at the democractic processs – five components: information (getting informed); accountability; deliberation / argumentation; negotiation and opinion formation; voting / explication of preference.
Information – the internet changes things – information is now more available, it is not scarce and, more importantly, the transaction costs (time and money) are significantly reduced.
Deliberation – how do people work out together what they should do – calls out to the historical model of ‘gathering together’ to discuss and debate: claims this cannot be done by a large number of people (high transaction costs) which now perhaps can be done via the Internet
Negotiation – refining the proposal so that it can gain a consensus. Again, made easier via the Internet
Voting – the final moment of decision, where people commit to one proposal or another. Voting is very expensive and complex unless it is done electronically (again focus on transaction costs).

The way Pena-Lopez is describing democracy doesn’t account for the fact that democracy has emerged, over time, as a non-participatory system not just because of external, economic reasons – eg transaction costs – but because it has been thought to be better if there is less direct involvement by citizens in government

So, for Pena-Lopez – who accepts he is an economist and is taking that approach – the key issue to discuss is cost optimisation of democracy – optimise the fit between the outcomes and the costs.
Now, looking at a model of the information economy – Inputs and outputs are both information; labour is now ‘knowledge’ and capital is ‘ICTS’. This is a new productive process. This reduces scarcity and transaction costs and the intermediation process has changed dramatically. Looks at how this might provide a new model for democracy.

While Pena-Lopez’s model is seductively simple and, therefore, a useful approximation of reality for the purposes of debate, I find it overly focused on the dramatic changes which technologies of IC normatively make, but which are not made so clearly or effectively in reality. It certainly reduces users / voters / citizens to objective elements in an informatic machine, modelling the notion of perfect information action that can be presumed of computers. Not only does this approach fail to grasp the complexity of ‘the human’ in the system, but it also presumes computers themselves are neutral simple actors. They are not. Further, by using comments like “All the information you want”; “there’s no lack of information”; “no barriers to access” – there is a serious problem here with the discourse of technology-centred hyperbole around e-government.

P-L looks to be on safer ground when he looks at the way information can be transformed and manipulated into new versions and narratives online – uses the example of nuclear power stations mapped in the USA from public, but otherwise difficult-to-access information. He argues that information can then become more useful, in forms more suited to citizens’ needs. He gives another example of citizens ‘voting’ for particular directions and possibilities in the development of a city’s infrastructure: not clear if the relatively small sampling would be representative. He also provides better examples from the more politicised aspect of e-democracy – the use of the media for many voices to emerge critiquing or supporting existing political positions (eg examples from US presidential campaign).
Overall, P-L presents a broad picture, very positive, about the way the internet, especially in its Web 2.0 form, has improved the way democracy functions due to the rapid and different interactions of people with information. It’s not without merit, but makes some big assumptions about the scale, effectiveness and value of e-government. He then does start to present some of the challenges – questions of digital divide, especially in terms of skills, knowledge.
A useful point – Digital Presence is formed at the intersection of informational literacy and media literacy, founded on technological literacy and then leading to, or enabling people to have e-awareness.
P-L’s creation of a ‘gap’ between the idealised and the muddy reality is a useful reminder of the significant journey ahead of us to implement effective e-democratic activities and institutions. His data show that, at least for Spain (and probably elsewhere), the lack of knowledge of what to do online and how to do it (both explicit and implicit knowledge) impedes most people and therefore means the Internet has become a place where elites colonise and lead debate, political activity and so on, just as they do in the offline world.
So, while P-L is probably overly optimistic in his analysis of the normative state of edemocracy, he is right on the mark with his analysis of the kinds of literacies needed and how they fit together.