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May 16, 2009

Whitehouse.gov: Give your bloggers’ names!

The Whitehouse.gov blog continues to improve, by which I mean it’s getting less like the glass-topped version of White House press releases. But it’s missing a big opportunity by keeping the blog posts anonymous.

The White House bloggers seem quite aware that a press release isn’t a post and are trying to create a difference between the two. For instance, the blogger begins the post on President Obama’s speech on credit card reform with a friendly paragraph about the citizen who introduced him. It’s not much and it’s still directly tied to the President’s remarks, but that paragraph doesn’t read like a press release or like a speech. And, that post ends with the blogger’s evaluation of the President’s proposal: “Long overdue.” That last phrase, expressing some personal enthusiasm, is uncalled for, and thus is refreshing, for blogging is a medium for the uncalled and the uncalled-for. (Which is why I love it.)

Still, it’s hard to see how the posts can blow past this minimal level of bloggishness…unless and until the bloggers start signing them.

The problem, I believe, is that the bloggers feel (and are made to feel) the awful weight of speaking for the White House. Their posts come straight from the offices behind the long lawn and the pillared portico. In some weird, ineffable way, they represent the building, its inhabitants, and its policies, just as press releases do. Press releases have authority because they’re not an individual expression. They have authority because they are unsigned and thus speak for the institution itself. Blog posts come from the same building, and, if they’re unsigned, maybe they’re supposed to have similar authority, except written in a slangier style. So, we don’t yet know exactly what to make of these unsigned posts. And neither do the bloggers, I think. It’s too new and it’s too weird.

But, if the bloggers signed their posts, it would instantly become clear that bloggers are not speaking for the institution of the White House the way press releases do. We would have something — the bloggers — that stands between the posts and the awesomeness of the White House. That would create just enough room for the bloggers to express something other than the Official View. They would be freed to make the White House blog far more interesting, relevant, human, and central to the Administration’s mission than even the most neatly typed press releases ever could be.

Already most of the bloggiest posts at Whitehouse.gov come from guest bloggers who are named and identified by their position. They feel free-er to speak for themselves and as themselves, in their own voice. Now, I don’t expect the official White House bloggers to speak for themselves exactly. They are partisans and employees; they work for the White House because they love President Obama. But, if they signed their names, they could speak more as themselves.

This might let them do more of what the White House blog needs to do, in my opinion. For example, I’d like to read a White House blogger explaining the President’s decision to try some Guantanamo prisoners using the military tribunals President Bush created. White House communications officials probably consider it bad politics to acknowledge the controversy by issuing a defense. But bloggers write about what’s interesting, and hearing a spirited, partisan justification would be helpful, and encouraging. I personally think that Pres. Obama probably has good reasons for his decision in this matter, but the “good politics” of official communications are too timid. I want to hear a blogger on the topic. And I would love to learn to go to the White House blog first on questions such as this. And isn’t that where the White House would like me first to go?

Bloggers with names are the best way to interrupt the direct circuit from politics to official public expression. That would put people in the middle…which is exactly where we want them. [Tags: blogs white_house obama blogging media egov e-gov e-government ]


Posted in slightly improved form at HuffingtonPost and TechPresident.

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Categories: blogs Tagged with: blogging • blogs • e-gov • e-government • egov • media • obama • politics Date: May 16th, 2009 dw

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May 7, 2009

Stars and Stripes: Blogs away! (OR: The great default switch)

According to Stars and Stripes, military service people are being enabled and encouraged to blog. That military blogging is going on is hardly news, but the degree to which it’s being embraced is remarkable.

It’s part of the Great Default Switch we’re living through in everything from privacy to “piracy.” Where the military default was security and secrecy, now the “Why not?” is becoming “Sure, go ahead — talk and be social.” Within limits, of course. But the news isn’t the blogging and isn’t the limits. It’s the change in defaults.

[Tags: military blogging milblogs defaults ]

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Categories: blogs Tagged with: blogging • blogs • defaults • digital culture • milblogs • military Date: May 7th, 2009 dw

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May 3, 2009

Whitehouse.gov turns on the comments. Sort of.

To me, the coolest thing about WhiteHouse.gov going all social media on us is not that it shows that the White House knows about this stuff, or even that it understands that we now want the news to come to us. It’s that at the White House Facebook page, the comments are turned on.

I do understand why the WhiteHouse.gov site has been reluctant to allow us to leave comments on the official site. Oh, sure, you can fill out a form and submit it, but this knowingly commits the Fallacy of Scale, i.e., believing that anyone is going to read your message. We want at least to be able to read one another’s messages. But, I assume the staff is afraid that open commenting on White House blog posts will enable situations that are sticky beyond escape. What do you do when people get racist, anti-Muslim, and all around stupid? There are answers, but none are as good (from the White House media point of view) as not enabling the problem in the first place.

So, now WhiteHouse.gov is cross posting to its Facebook page. If you want to comment, go there. Because it’s not the White House’s site, trashy comments don’t littering the White House lawn. Facebook allows WhiteHouse.gov to distance itself sufficiently from the commenters to enable commenting. It’s a great step forward.

The next step: WhiteHouse.gov should respond to some of the comments, either in the comments area or in blog posts themselves.

Meanwhile: Well done, WhiteHouse.gov! Well done.

[Tags: white_house whitehouse.gov egov e-gov cluetrain e-government blogging facebook ]

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Categories: Uncategorized Tagged with: blogging • cluetrain • digital culture • e-gov • e-government • egov • facebook • white_house Date: May 3rd, 2009 dw

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April 22, 2009

Transparency of zombies

I really like the fact that when Left 4 Dead (the great cooperative zombie killing game) introduced a new type of gameplay, one of the developers explained the math behind the balancing of the waves of incoming undead.

[Tags: games left_4_dead zombies transparency blogging expertise ]

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Categories: blogs Tagged with: blogging • blogs • entertainment • expertise • games • transparency • zombies Date: April 22nd, 2009 dw

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March 17, 2009

A coup without media

Ethan Zuckerman has pointed us at the coverage of the military coup in Madagascar, a country of 20+ million folks with almost not mainstream media on the ground. The news coming out is getting here via Twitter (#madagascar) and blogs. GlobalVoices is one good source.

[Tags: madagascar blogging media twitter journalism ethan_zuckerman ]

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Categories: Uncategorized Tagged with: blogging • journalism • madagascar • media • twitter Date: March 17th, 2009 dw

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March 11, 2009

Berkman MediaCloud tracks feeds ‘n’ memes

The Berkman Center has launched one of its most exciting projects. MediaCloud is subscribing to hundreds of RSS feeds, including many from the mainstream media, is automagically performing topic analysis (actually, entity extraction using Reuter’s OpenCalais) on it, and is building a gigantic database so researchers can see how ideas and information move through and across the Net.

Here’s what the announcement says:

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to announce the launch of Media Cloud, a new project that seeks to track news content comprehensively — providing free, open, and flexible research tools:

http://www.mediacloud.org

Researching the nature of news, and media information flows, has always faced a difficult challenge: there is so much produced by so many outlets that it is hard to monitor it all. Researchers have used painstaking manual content analysis to understand mass media. On the web, the explosion of citizen media makes such an approach far more difficult and less comprehensive. By automatically downloading, processing, and querying the full text of thousands of outlets, Media Cloud will allow unprecedented quantitative analysis of media trends.

Today’s launch allows a first view into some of what is possible on the Media Cloud platform. At http://www.mediacloud.org you can generate simple charts of media coverage across sources and countries. The actual capabilities of the system are much greater, and the Media Cloud team is actively looking for other researchers who will bring their own questions as the tools are further developed. Ultimately, Media Cloud will provide open APIs that can support a variety of lines of inquiry.

Visit the Media Cloud site, try the visualizations, share your research ideas with the team, and sign up for the Media Cloud mailing list to hear about functionality enhancements and other project developments.

The Berkman Center is proud to be incubating the project in its initial phases and is now seeking partners to help Media Cloud realize its full research potential….

[Tags: berkman mediacloud media memes journalism blogging ]

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Categories: blogs Tagged with: berkman • blogging • blogs • everythingIsMiscellaneous • journalism • media • mediacloud • memes Date: March 11th, 2009 dw

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February 28, 2009

Whitehouse blog shows signs of life

The Friday post at Whitehouse.gov is a little livelier — a little more voice, a little more air. Heck, it’s even got a broken link! (The link to the Energy-Housing partnership is a bridge to nowhere.) The post points to an OMB post that I thought was terrific, explaining and defending the reduction in charitable deductions for the 5% wealthiest Americans. It features a photo of Gaza (promoting State’s question of the week) that isn’t all about happy Israelis and holding hands with happy Gazans. (THat’s why we have Photoshop, people.) And the post points to the ever-lively TSA blog, one of the voicier government blogs around.

The next step I’d take if President Obama made me Blog Czar — I keep writing to him and asking! — is having the people who actually write the blog sign their posts. Baby steps, but that’s how you learn to walk. Next, no press releases! Then, invite in a sequence of non-WH bloggers to blog for a week at a time. Eventually, carefully open up the comments. Then start a flame war with, say, the Belgians, and we will have arrived.

[Tags: whitehouse blogging obama egov e-gov ]

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Categories: Uncategorized Tagged with: blogging • digital culture • e-gov • egov • obama • whitehouse Date: February 28th, 2009 dw

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January 30, 2009

Pew Excellence in Journalism now watching blogs

Pew’s Research Center for Excellence in Journalism has now added a weekly new media report on what the ol’ blogosphere is blathering on about. That’s you and me, sister. Or what most people indexed by Technorati and Icerocket are talking about, anyway. For example, we seem to have focused a lot on Obama’s inauguration. (Wasn’t that three months ago? Time doesn’t fly when the Republicans are insisting on their old partisan ways.)

And here’s a hasty conclusion from the first week’s report: We bloggers really need to be reading Global Voices in order to get our gazes up from our American innie navels.

[Tags: pew blogging new_media citizen_journalism ]

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Categories: blogs Tagged with: blogging • blogs • bridgeblog • media • pew Date: January 30th, 2009 dw

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January 13, 2009

Inaugural legal guide for citizen media

Berkman’s Citizen Media Law Project has published a guide for bloggers, twitterers, and other citizen media folks on the rights and restrictions of those documenting the inauguration.

[Tags: citizen_media journalism blogging inauguration berkman ]

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Categories: blogs Tagged with: berkman • blogging • blogs • inauguration • journalism • media Date: January 13th, 2009 dw

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December 18, 2008

Media Re:Public from Berkman

The Berkman Center’s Media Re:Public project assessing the state of the media (old school and citizen/participatory) is now out. (The papers are here.)

The report points to six issues, which I’m paraphrasing rather crudely:

1. Traditional media are scaling back their reporting because they’re going broke.

2. Their webby equivalents are not replacing all their functions.

3. Online news sources are not uniformly reliable, and not everyone knows that.

4. Not everyone is online anyway.

5. Some of the functions not being replaced online are really important, but we don’t yet have good business models for them.

6. We don’t have good data about what’s really going on.

This status report tries to bring some empiricism to the cheerleading (guilt as charged). It also pairs up nicely with a 2005 report about a Berkman conference that brought bloggers and mainstream journalists together for 1.5 days of frank discussions.

[Tags: berkman media citizen_journalism blogging news newspapers participatory_journalism persephone_miel ]

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Categories: blogs Tagged with: berkman • blogging • blogs • digital culture • everythingIsMiscellaneous • media • news • newspapers Date: December 18th, 2008 dw

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