[Campaigns-l] Candidate Inclusion

[Janet Hawtin]

On 8/11/06, Jonathan Trenn <jonathan_trenn at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I most definitely want them to participate.  I'm not looking at this as a
> place to bash them.  It doesn't mean it has to be one or the other.  And I'm
> not calling for restrictions against candidate involvement.  My concern is
> that I hope that they end up respecting this for what it is.  So far, from
> what I've seen, many in the political arena haven't.  Which leads me to my
> original point.  We have to be congnizant that a decent amount of people in
> the political arena will not have the purest of motives.
>
> Here's a quick example of abuse, in this case involving YouTube:
> http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2273111&page=1

Fair point. OK so we have to be conscious of the possibility of
astroturf, and to be aware that our perspectives might get restricted
by people with vested interests locking down specific issues. And to
find ways to respond to that so that they are only temporary
blockages. Negotiated opinions are not going to be a cakewalk. In some
cases there are likely to be multiple truths even after we negotiate
for common ground and look at options for forwards.

Figuring out ways to respond when things get bent is probably
something which we need for ourselves as well. It happens informally
as a part of people promoting their own perspectives. Possibly with
more formal entities doing this kind of thing
they stand to run a bigger risk of being discredited as in the above example?
Possibly they are going to be sneakier in future.

Cory Doctorow recently did an interview where he discussed graceful failure
with regard to wikipedia, ie the idea that when something gets bent it
does so in ways which can be recoverable and that distributed media
are better at that kind of response than traditional models. He also
talks about reading intelligently and not taking things at face value.
http://accordionguy.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/8/9/2214150.html

Perhaps as part of the process we will come to understand what a pure
motive looks like and what astroturf looks like and how we determine
which is which
not just from pollies but from all of us. Wikipedia perhaps has had a
more verifiable path to follow. Will be interesting to see how we work
with the same issues on perspective information.

I think there will probably be 'good for schools' posts, but I think
we will find that will have a cost, unlike in other media we can ask
why? For me I am unlikely to go back to a page or be interested in a
voice which has nothing new to offer?
Perhaps the discussion pages and the comments bits on those pages will
become busy until either the person is explicit or until people accept
that 'good for schools' is as far as that person is prepared to
commit, and move on to looking for people who are answering the issues
we want answered, meaningfully.
Perhaps that means we as an audience have to think about whether from
a politician's point of view it is more expensive to be explicit or
more expensive to post a soundbite. Part of that will be about how we
respond to both kinds of posts.
Lets see what happens?

Janet