On the Attack Against Social Media ... and Thus Democracy

It's bad enough, as I've written below, that government is failing to interact with the public through social media. Some folks are on the attack against communication. Here's a link to a sad story about Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin who is suing AOL to find out the name of bloggers who have been critical of Godwin.

Spending money on such a lawsuit is a sad corruption of public resources. The blog itself, MPD Enforcer 2.0, claims to be a place where officers and others can gather to talk, and that right is rather protected in these United States.

There's no question that blogs, email and the Internet pose a challenge to government in certain circumstances. But not when someone starts a blog critical of government. To do so is an American right. That's not a challenge. That's an opportunity for democracy.

And most folks clearly realize that. Read some of the comments posted on the Commercial-Appeal site about the lawsuit; many are hysterical.

Missed Opportunity

As part of my day job, I attended the Internet Strategy Forum in Portland yesterday. As you can see from the link, there were a lot of distinguished panelists who talked about how the Internet ties consumers and businesses together.

There was not one ... not one .. and did I say, not one? ... reference to government. And when I look at the list of attendees .. well, the lack of government attendees speaks for itself.

This is just sad. There is no place more important for people to interact with another entity than with government. It is government that has powers to give and take away freedom, to tax, to spend, to develop, to lead ... and to listen.

And government is not only letting the train go by, it's starting to look to me like a lot of governments do not know there is a station.

But that's not true of everyone. Governing.com has an encouraging item today about how Delaware is making it easier for people to find the most popular topics on their web page through what's commonly called a 'word cloud.' (You can find it under 'one-click search'on the Delaware home page)


Writer Ellen Perlman notes, "The word cloud shows that visitors to the site search for information on employment issues more than any other subject. 'Wanted persons' is the second most popular."

Well, that's a state, not a local government, which is my personal area of interest and where citizens engage with a lot of passion with their government. But it's a start, and a good sign that not everyone is asleep.

Listing Toward Change

Pensacola City Councilman Sam Hall posted an unusual article centered on the theme of change, complete with clip art of fortune cookies. The post is a list of numerous and varied changes or signs of change.

You can tell Hall is trying to create more of an effect than just providing information. Clearly, he's try to set up an atmosphere in which to embrace change.

Says Hall: Pensacola has some of the greatest assets of any Florida community but we are failing in nearly every measure (education, jobs, quality of life, public services, etc.).

Many of us feel it has to do with the political structure of the area. I feel there is no way we can attract outside talent or outside investment without measurable political change.

I think the city is poised for it. In 2006, only three of ten City Council seats were contested. This year all but one are. Many of the races have two challengers.

I think most of the incumbents will return, but a shift of three will make all the difference in the world.

It's interesting how he is trying to set the stage for change on his blog without slamming someone over the head about who to vote for. Hall is trying to give people little bits of information to carry around, and even share, to support an atmosphere of change. A blog can be so much more than a statement of information about a calendar event. It can set the scene for a gentle version of American revolution.

Using Email to Send News to the Community

This arrived in my council email a few minutes ago from a company that helps cities send out customized news feeds to citizens:

I am pleased to announce that the City of Kirkland, WA has launched their email subscription system with GovDelivery. They join the ranks with Bellevue, Lake Forest Park and Vancouver in offering free government to citizen email communication. Because communication is a top priority to them, they were able to get GovDelivery up and running in 6 days! They currently offer 39 subscription items, but intend to add more subscription items and features in the near future. Visit their website and sign up for email updates to see what a great job they did. http://www.ci.kirkland.wa.us/E-Bulletins.htm

I love that reference to 'free,' because it is sure hard to imagine charging anyone for this service! Heck, newspapers can't get people to pay for online content. Anyway, I recommend calling up that link to take a look. What I like about this is that people can request email about specific issues. I was sending out an email bulletin for awhile, and I found folks often care most about one or two items in each bulletin. And of course, which item the person would care about would depend entirely on the person.

You can't assume someone will call up a lengthy email if they do not know for sure there will be a topic of interest to them within. With personalized news, you can be assured at least the topic is of interest, even if the development is not. At least the citizen is more likely to read the information.

So it's great to hear of customized news. Here is the text from the Renton list:

The city of Kirkland has recently replaced its e-mail bulletin software and we are in the process of moving all lists over to the new software. We are pleased to offer notices and subscriptions on the following topics at this time.

* Annexation Updates
* City Council Agendas
* Downtown Strategic Plan Update
* Neighborhood News
* Shoreline Master Program Update
* Touchstone (Park Place), Orni and Altom PARs
* NE 85th Street Corridor Improvements Project
* Kirkland Wireless Project
* Totem Lake Mall Development Update
* Kirkland Developers Partnership Forum
* Kirkland Events Guide
* Kirkland Green E-Updates

How it all works may be self-evident, but there's a description on the Bellevue site.

A Revolution?

I've been trying to get some resources in line before advertising this blog, and the best I have found so far is an online report, The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0.

From the very first graf of the introduction:

Moving Toward Citizen Engagement in a Virtual Age

Writing in Foreign Policy, Drezner and Farrell (2004) hit upon an amazing reality of modern life. Today, unlike at any time in the advance of history, people simply no longer need to leave their houses to participate in a revolution. With the advent of new technologies, new means can be used to foster online engagement, in both the individual and collective sense, and to create new dialogues between
government and citizens (Reece, 2006).

The thing runs 98 pages and showcases many examples of blogging. I was quite happy to see a list of mayors who blog, because I am trying to build a list of elected officials who blog. I immediately dived in to add the blogs that were listed individually to my list of links.

The thing I find interesting is that more than half of the links are gone ... and that's only a year after the report came out. What this tells me is that there is a lot of turnover among elected officials, which of course is not a surprise, but also a lot of turnover in blogging. Why, I wonder? Looking forward to learning more about the whole topic.

A Congressman's Use of Twitter Causes Much Twitting

A post by author Mike Masnick at this link on techdirt describes a fuss in Congress about an elected official's use of the Internet to get involved what the author describes as a partisan battle. It's great that the congressman himself weighs in on the comments section of this blog. What a lively discussion.

I'm intrigued by one of the comments from a reader at the end. If I remove some of the partisan elements, this is what the person wrote:

"Judging from the time he spends twitting & videoing & raising campaign funds,& meeting with oil companies/driller/producers that"I proudly represent" one can see that he has little time to read and comprehend legislation & regulatory issues. Once he does, perhaps he will back down and apologize."

This reminds me of a theme that came up in my little controversy. Is the time spent communicating via Twitter or a blog worth it when the elected official could be spending the time studying an issue? To me, communication is crucial to the understanding of government. And yet an official can always be better educated. It's a good question, and perhaps there's no easy answer. It just feels odd to me that a person can be criticized for communicating, and I feel I myself need to understand better the root of the concern.

(It's also worth reading the post, even though it and the comments are long, because clearly the federal rules about the use of the Internet in Congress are complicated...)

Talk About Embarrassing

For this project, I have been compiling a list of other local elected officials who blog. Either there are not that many such blogs, or I am looking in the wrong places. I'll keep at it. If you know of any blogs by local electeds, please let me know.

Along the path, I've found the occasional news story that shows how we are still learning .. and how sloppy handling of a local blog can even do damage. This story was both priceless .. and cautionary! As you can read, a city councilman deleted his blog, and someone else apparently took the blog name over. Yipes .. that made for a bad day.

In development ...

After my recent brush with fame, thought I would see if it would make any sense to compose and collect a blog about elected officials who blog. Still putting it together, as you can see ...