Thoughts, Themes, Arguments, etc.

Any general themes that you think are emerging, specific arguments that you wanna make related to a topic, or other interesting ideas should go here. We'll use this page to build the site and respond to feedback.

Major todo List
create template or help page with examples of citationsEdit LinkRemove
clean resource pageEdit LinkRemove
add guidelines to the publicity planEdit LinkRemove
absorb "risks-involved" into a pageEdit LinkRemove
finish site by 4:30 on WednesdayEdit LinkRemove
turn reflection in by 4:30 on Wednesday - KN 3 FLEdit LinkRemove
finish todo list by 4:30 on WednesdayEdit LinkRemove
majorToDo
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Tarleton's comments on the proposal

Just had a chance to read your proposal. I completely agree with Dima, I'm thrilled to see how much thought seems to have gone into this, both into the question at hand, and into using the wiki in a productive way. I like the categorization you have in mind, i.e. the three parts of the broad question, and the two halves of the question about third-party platforms. Since you're not planning to go into 3A, the effect of blogs on the political process, you on't have to worry too much about Dima's concern about causal statements there, but its a good point to heed: you can pose these as hypotheses, not that you intend to to test in the next two weeks, but that (a) you have a good basis for thinking are relevant, but (b) are not foregone conclusions.

As for the part you intend to develop in depth, 3B, on politician and campaign use of and relationship to third party platforms, this sounds very worth exploring. And Dean is a great example, particularly his campaign's relationship to Blog for America and Meetup. You might compare it to some of what Obama, Clinton, and McCain are doing with current platforms — one thing some have noticed is that Dean depended on these other platforms like Meetup, whereas (at least) Obama and Clinton are both setting up their own networks AND using them to feed content to, and draw people in from, sites like youTube and others. You might look for Tom Streeter's work on the Dean campaign — he has an article on it himself, and he co-edited a book with Zephyr teachout, who was with the Dean Campaign, on how that campaign worked. you might also see if you can find anything by Dan Kreiss at Stanford. he's working on a dissertation on the subject. And there's lots of other literature.

One thing I would say about your approach. The "neutral point of view" is specifically a principle at Wikipedia, not necessarily of wikis more generally. Interesting that you have chosen to maintain that. Do so for the right reasons, but not if it gets in your way of making compelling argument…

Bax's Ideas

Amateur Productions

  • A lot of people make fan videos of/for the candidates in order to help them gain popularity, but they also use these new platforms to publish videos of candidates that wouldn't otherwise have been shown
    • Camera phones and video phones make it really easy to get quick candid decent-quality videos and upload them to a blog or youtube or a website.
    • These videos are sometimes embarrassing, sometimes helpful

Politicians to People

  • Politicians are struggling to embrace new media as a way of increasing their visibility, popularity, etc. but they sometimes have to take big risks to do so
    • People argue about the merits of new media
    • A lot more information is now easily available to more people who want it
    • Candidates can become a "brand" through their websites or increase their donations

Group Ideas

  • Focus on YouTube's effect on how involved the average person is in the political process
    • making fan videos
    • getting more information about candidates, becoming more informed
    • putting up candid videos
  • YouTube's effect on candidates and how they approach their campaigns
    • YouTube debates

replace "YouTube" with "blogs"

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