Politicians Embracing Technology To Actually Communicate With Constituents

from the warms-my-heart dept

There have been plenty of stories over the years about politicians (especially presidential candidates) embracing the internet. However, they're usually focused on bringing together communities of supporters, often for fundraising purposes. There hasn't been as much where it's really about the politician actually communicating directly with the people he or she represents. There was a period of time when politicians started using email, but most have since locked down the ability of people to contact them via email, limiting it to cumbersome forms. However, it appears that some politicians are figuring out ways to actually use technology effectively to directly communicate with the people they're supposed to represent.

There was some buzz this evening (I'm guessing kicked off by a post by Robert Scoble about politicians embracing technology in DC) with people pointing out that a Texas congressman named John Culberson has his own Twitter account. If you look at it, it's pretty clear that it's Culberson himself who's using it -- and he's actually talking and listening to what people are saying to him. He's also using the mobile phone video streaming service Qik to shine some sunlight on what actually happens in Congress -- and even tried (but wasn't allowed) to do a video with the President from the Oval Office, but was stopped by the Secret Service. There's another congressman named Tim Ryan who is also on Twitter, though he's not following anyone else or talking with anyone else -- just communicating one way.

This evening, Culberson also hosted a "Virtual Town Hall" meeting on his own website. Apparently he's been hosting town hall meetings via a phone system which dials a bunch of constituents in his district and lets them ask him questions -- but he expanded it tonight to the internet using Ustream, broadcast video and allowing text chat too. Watching the video, you see quite clearly that it's just him talking directly to people. There's no one "screening" the calls or limiting who is saying what to him -- and he's not shying away from questions at all. Whether or not you agree with him politically (and there's plenty I disagree with him on), it's fascinating to see an elected official in DC actually embracing technology to communicate directly with people in a way that isn't just him broadcasting a message to people. It's also impressive to see politicians using technology to communicate with (not to) people, rather than hide from them (or just to squeeze money out of them). Hopefully other politicians will start to do the same thing.

Filed Under: communication, congress, john culberson, politicians, technology
Companies: qik, twitter, ustream

If So Many Content Creators Don't Understand The Law... Perhaps It's The Law That's The Problem?

from the symptom-or-disease? dept

Over in the UK, a lawyer has penned a column for Silicon.com bemoaning the fact that so many folks who create "user generated content" online are unfamiliar with how things like libel law apply to them. He worries that since so many people don't know the law, they're opening themselves up to tremendous liability. He's almost certainly correct about that. Especially when it comes to libel, many folks who blog think they're immune. But what the column is missing is that the problem might not be one of education -- it might be a problem with the law.

People look at blogging or other user generated content endeavors as being no different than talking to a friend. They view the internet as just another way to communicate, rather than as a mass "publishing" platform. But defamation laws aren't built for such a world where everyday communication is also available to the masses. Defamation laws are really designed for a day when there was a restriction on publication. It was to deal with the situation where a powerful publishing entity could write false things, and the victim had no recourse or way to respond. That's just not the case anymore. These days, just about anyone can respond with ease and make their voices heard. Yes, you still have the occasional situation of "mob justice," where a false statement falsely lives on -- but the traditional expansive view of defamation law makes less and less sense when pretty much anyone has access to their own publishing mechanism to respond.

So rather than complaining about the fact that not enough bloggers are taking the time to learn the intricacies of defamation law -- perhaps we should be wondering why that defamation law is there in the first place?

Filed Under: blogging, communication, defamation

The Difference Between Content And Communication In The YouTube/Viacom Billion Dollar Spat

from the this-may-take-a-while dept

It's been well over one year since Viacom sued YouTube for $1 billion, but these things take time. Late Friday, Google filed its response to Viacom's recent filings in regards to the lawsuit, and basically said pretty much what you'd expect Google to say:

1. that it follows the rules of the DMCA's notice-and-takedown procedure
2. that it does everything it can possibly do to stop the sharing of any copyrighted content that it's alerted to and
3. that Viacom's claims that it's not doing anything are clearly incorrect.

Google also makes the rather important point that the DMCA safe harbors were put in place for a very good reason (to make sure liability is focused on those actually liable) and if the court were to overturn those safe harbors it could dismantle much of what makes the internet work as a communications platform.

What's really left unsaid (but is an important point of conflict that we're going to see more and more of over the next few years) is that this suit demonstrates the different ways that certain companies are viewing the internet (and how our existing laws are basically duct-taped together to account for this difference). Media companies still look on the internet as a content platform. That is, they think of it as a new broadcast medium. Most other folks recognize that the internet is a communications medium, and the focus should be on the ease of communication. That's a problem for anyone who comes from a world of broadcast media, and it creates all sorts of problems for copyright law that is designed mainly to protect a broadcast-style media. Yet, when it comes to communication, the idea of using copyright to restrict content gets weird in a hurry.

In typical communication, copyright makes no sense. You don't worry about copyright (even though it exists) when you send a letter or an email to a friend. You're communicating, so of course the idea gets copied and repeated. In broadcast, the broadcast media model was always based on control and artificial scarcity. The DMCA safe harbors are kind of a kludge to deal with this difference, putting the onus on the communicator not to be breaking someone's copyright, leaving the communications platform out of it. Yet from the perspective of the media companies, they view the internet as a broadcast media, and thus the YouTube's of the world aren't communication platform providers, but competing broadcasters. Hopefully, the court will recognize the reality that the internet was always a communications platform, and it's just the broadcast media (who are late to the party, anyway) who are trying to force it to act more like a broadcast system.

Filed Under: communication, content, copyright, dmca, takedowns
Companies: google, viacom, youtube

Unintended Consequences Of Technology On Distance And Global Communications

from the good-and-bad dept

We tend to be in the camp that believes technology is neither inherently good nor inherently bad -- but, rather, is a tool that can be used for both good and bad purposes. However, we are certainly big believers in the law of unintended consequences. No matter how much you think through how technology will impact something, you can almost never predict many of the resulting consequences (again, for both good and bad purposes). Jeremy Wagstaff has a fantastic post pointing to two articles that highlight these unintended consequences (both good and bad) when it comes to distance and communication. The first article is about how African refugees seeking to get to Europe now find it much easier thanks to GPS. Thanks to GPS, many are now setting sail for the Canary Islands, 60 miles of the coast of Africa. Without GPS, it was quite difficult to find the small islands -- but no longer. No matter what the legality of the situation is, as Wagstaff notes, GPS technology has just made distance much shorter for many Africans seeking to get out. It's unlikely anyone ever thought of that when they were designing GPS systems.

The second article suggests that all the modern communication equipment soldiers get to lug around these days could explain why US soldiers are having so much trouble relating to locals in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article focuses on 11 US airmen who were stranded in Borneo during World War II, without contact to the outside world. They quickly learned to adapt to their surroundings, learning the local language and communicating and respecting the local natives who then were an effective force in fighting off the Japanese on the island. The article suggests that thanks to advanced electronic communication tools, our soldiers today are always tethered back to other Americans, and never need to really get to know the people in the regions where they're fighting, meaning they're less able to relate to them or get along with them, in part as an unintended consequence of having all that communications technology available. It's not too hard to see how this could be true. It is always easier to fall back to communicating with people you know or who speak the same language you do and observe the same customs. While this certainly isn't to condemn the use of communications technology, it is worth noting the unintended consequence of it, especially in thinking about how we continue to relate to other cultures around the globe.

Filed Under: communication, gps, language differences, unintended consequences

Email Communication Continues To Be Misunderstood

from the flame-this dept

As we have noted here before, emails are very easily misinterpreted, which explains why online flame wars are infamously common. With the emergence of social neuroscience new findings have been published to further explain why emails often result in misunderstandings. Email is at a distinct disadvantage since it lacks the sensory richness of a face-to-face conversation. In a face-to-face conversation, we can judge the tone of the conversation by body language, gestures and tone of voice. So, left with only the words in an email, we are left to interpret the tone of the emails in a vacuum. But, never fear, there are ways to improve email communication. Since studies have shown that misunderstandings occur less between people who are familiar with each other, Professor Clay Shirky recommends to start communication face-to-face and then move on to email. Even saying "Hi" every morning goes a long way to facilitating the social glue. Long touted as the true "killer app" of the Internet, email has definitely improved communications -- that said, it's critical to recognize the differences of this medium and be sensitive to the challenges that it brings.

Filed Under: communication, email

Online Publishers Association Now Confusing Content And Communication

from the shift-in-strategies dept

For many years, the Online Publishers' Assocation (OPA), a trade group representing various online content providers, has tried to push a specific story in the media with incredibly misleading studies. In 2003, 2004 and again in 2005, the OPA wanted the world to believe that people were willing to pay for content online. That was the story that came out in their press release, and that was the story that many in the press ran with -- even if it was wrong. The problem was that the OPA was confusing services with content. Specifically, they included dating site subscriptions in their definition of content sites -- and that made up a huge portion of the "paid for" online content. But that's misleading. The people who subscribe to online dating services aren't buying "content." They're buying a service that connects them to other people they hope to date. Unfortunately, in pushing a bogus agenda, they really only succeeded in fooling themselves. It gave hope to a countless number of content providers who now thought the bogus model of charging directly for content was increasingly a sustainable business.

Of course, these days, with publisher after publisher realizing that free content is a better business model (hell, even the paid dating services are getting hit from below by the free dating sites), apparently the OPA realized they couldn't spin the same story this year. Instead, as reader David informs us, they're pitching the equally bogus story that the web is increasingly becoming a content platform rather than a communications platform -- which simply isn't true. The value of the internet is always in being a communications platform -- and the repeated mistakes that many companies (from the entertainment industry to newspapers) keep making are often due to their inability to understand that simple fact. Having the OPA come out with yet another misleading report on the topic doesn't help them get there any faster. It will simply encourage more bad business models.

Yes, it's true that content and communication are really closely connected. After all, communication is simply multi-directional content. So what's wrong with the OPA report? The full methodology isn't clear, but from the quotes, it sounds like they considered "communications" to be things like email and IM, but anything web-based was counted as "content." For example, the OPA claims that social networking services helped drive the growth in use of content sites. Say what? Social networking sites? Those are completely about communications, rather than "content" in the online publishers sense. It's the same thing as the dating sites from past years, just replaced now with social networking sites. Even sites like YouTube are often much more about the communications aspect, than the content. YouTube took off because it was easy to embed a YouTube video, allowing people to "communicate" with the videos on the site, and also because of the nice comment system that was included. Sure, the content is a draw, but it's the communications part that made it valuable. The OPA seems to totally misunderstand that fact in the blind hope that its "publisher" members will think that their online strategy is correct. And that's a problem, because such reports will lead more people to focus on bad business models that are about single direction "broadcast" content online, rather than real communications.

Filed Under: communication, content
Companies: online publishers assocation