Digital Politics

Since Herman Cain dropped out of the presidential race, Mitt Romney has added 500,000 Facebook fans. This brings him to a total of 1,644,358 page likes, most from his 2008 presidential campaign. Meanwhile, Barack Obama has 26,138,136 page likes. What does this mean for the campaigns? The key ... Read More

Advocacy groups, political campaigns, and news media are all trying to sort out the most effective way to use Twitter. Among the questions being wrestled are: Should we follow everyone who follows us? Should we engage in conversation with our audience? Should our staff be allowed to tweet about ... Read More

Guest post from Beth Becker... Social media has always been a fast moving field.  What’s new and exciting one day quickly gets tossed aside for the next shiny new toy.  Lately I’ve been getting a lot of questions about what I think are some of the trends not just for the next month or two but ... Read More

When Facebook allowed page administrators to interact on Facebook as the page, I was elated. But I am increasingly finding that other changes in Facebook are making it much less appealing for advocacy and organizing. Leaving aside recent reports indicating that only about 10% of your friends ... Read More

I have assembled a catalogue of 85 tools to help you run a more effective social media program for your campaign, organization, or business. Most of these are free. A lot are for Twitter. Many help you leverage Facebook and other social media too. Some help you find the best content to share via ... Read More

Kyle Stoneman of OwlBee.com put it best when he said, "We used to live in a world where the producers of content determined the channels of distribution. We now live in a world where the consumers of content determine the channels of distribution." I found this observation extremely profound. As ... Read More

--- By Victoria Bassetti, David Norton and Alan Rosenblatt Now that Mitt Romney can claim two wins in the Republican primaries/caucuses, where do his rivals go?  We know physically: South Carolina and Florida.  (And seriously who wouldn’t want to be there in January?) But for Rick Santorum ... Read More

Who owns the Twitter followers you accumulate while working for an employer? This is the question under consideration in new lawsuit filed by Phonedog.com against former employee Noah Kravitz. Whether the courts will rule correctly on this question remains to be seen. But in my mind, with rare ... Read More

Never before has the poor been so well-armed. Not with guns, but with the weapons of the digital age. In civil societies, where democracies prevail, political succession and policy-making is conducted at the end of a pen, not a sword. Well, maybe not so much a pen anymore, but certainly by some ... Read More

Candidates recognize the importance of creating videos for YouTube. A good video can go a long way towards marketing the campaign and building name recognition. But with this amazing opportunity comes risk. Of course we all know about the risk engendered by Senator George Allen when he went on his ... Read More

{EAV:e47b9f8ac33e6b9b}Last summer I was invited to President Obama's Twitter Townhall at the White House along with 139 other characters. Despite the grandiose setting and President Obama opening the event with a tweet (pictured here), I was thoroughly disappointed. Why? Because it wasn't really a ... Read More

Rumor has it that 80% of Newt Gingrich's Twitter followers were purchased and as a result are fake and/or useless. This may be an exaggeration, but the evidence is clear that a sizable chunk of his 1.3 million Twitter followers are fake, inactive, or for-hire followers. Why does this matter ... Read More

Two of my favorite things are corned beef and hashtags. Corned beef is obvious... it's in my blood (seriously... my doctor calls it cholesterol). As for hashtags, anyone who has followed my exploits on Twitter (@DrDigipol) or heard me speak on the topic knows I am a big advocate for the strategic ... Read More

Often forgotten among our First Amendment rights are our rights to petition the government for a redress of grievances. And while the right, in principle, refers to an individual, well as a group voicing their grievances to both elected and executive government officials, it is the word "petition ... Read More

President Obama is asking his supporters to tweet at Congress to pass his jobs proposal. His campaign website has a tool that matches your ZIP code to your Members of Congress and provides a ready to tweet message directed at those Members. Just click and tweet. Obama's Tweet Congress tool is ... Read More