Four years ago, I picked the hometown favorite for the Democratic primaries, albeit very late in the game, long after he was all but crowned as the presumptive nominee.
Building/Consensus
From politics to governance (no endorsement here)
by Jon Garfunkel on February 5, 2008. Politics Building/ConsensusHow anti-social networking software could be used
by Jon Garfunkel on January 28, 2008. Social Networking Building/ConsensusA bunch of merry pranksters have had some fun with the phrase anti-social networking over the last few years. (“You can use Nemester to: Find out the enemies of your enemies and conspire with them Denounce your enemies… Make new enemies… Help your enemies meet their demise…”; Introvertster is an online community that prevents stupid people and friends from harassing you online.”)
Online Influence and Buzz
by Jon Garfunkel on November 2, 2007. Media Building/ConsensusThe thrust of this series has been about online influence. Do we even have a good understanding of it? This short concluding piece will raise some new questions for further research.
I'm indebted to Philip Meyer, one of the pioneers of statistical journalism research. In his work on the Quality Project at the University of North Carolina, he has developed the Societal Influence Model. It's a very basic model; the data in his latest book, The Vanishing Newspaper, validates the connections. Societal influence (as opposed to commercial influence, which newspapers also sell) is associated with circulation and credibility. They tend to go up, and down, together. More circulation leads to more profitability, which leads to more spending on staff, which leads to more credibility.
Whipster – who supports what
by Jon Garfunkel on March 31, 2007. Governance Building/ConsensusThe Congress Votes Database from the Washington Post tells you how Senators and Representatives have voted.
But wouldn't it be useful to know what their positions are on issues coming up?
In politics, it's the whip who counts the supports before a vote. Hence: Whipster.
Take a look at the amount of effort undertaken by Talking Points Memo and by Porkbusters last August — incidentally, not regarding a specific vote, but regarding finding out who was the Senator who placed the "secret hold" on a bill (which would have created a public, searchable database on federal grants contracts).
Incivilities: Finally, a place to dump those letters to the editor
by Jon Garfunkel on June 27, 2006. Media Building/Consensus
Constructive Activism, Part V: Mashup Petitions
by Jon Garfunkel on May 26, 2006. Politics Building/ConsensusConstructive Media: Policy Management
by Jon Garfunkel on May 15, 2006. Commerce Building/ConsensusThis describes an exercise in building a constructive media process.
Let’s begin by saying that an organization has policies, bylaws, guidelines, position papers which govern the behavior of its members; for this exercise we will use “policies” as the generic term covering all of them. The organization has two main responsibilities: publish the policies, and understand how they are actually being employed by members.
Code of Conversations: managing online news comments
by Jon Garfunkel on January 26, 2006. Internet Building/Consensus[This post is a response to a thread on the ONA discussion list. It got too long to email.]
When talking about the best use of technology for uses like computer-mediated communications, a skeptical philopsophy is invariably voiced along the lines of "technology can't solve all problems; humans can." This is sensible, but the statement is problematic due to a different understandings of what exactly "technology" means in this sense.
Comments/ViewPoints update and plan
by Jon Garfunkel on December 27, 2005. Drupal Building/ConsensusAnyways, you get the idea. Coding takes solid concentration, and I have to manufacture some time over the last several weeks to get this done. Perhaps a dozen articles have been on hold in the ensuing time. But we’ve got comments once again. For some reason it’s no longer preserving line breaks. But I have made several key improvements over the 2004:
Notes from the Massachusetts BlogLeft conference
by Jon Garfunkel on December 12, 2005. Politics Building/Consensus Massachusetts
Give me props: Handshakes, salutes, or applause?
by Jon Garfunkel on October 19, 2005. Internet Building/ConsensusOk, you’ve written a really good, original, article on your blog or webzine or civ or whatever. Your next step is to promote the heck out of it: not just get people to read it, but get people to reference it later, and recognize you as the smart person behind that idea.
Seeking Good Christians to Talk About God
by Jon Garfunkel on February 23, 2005. Building/Consensus Culture2020 Democrats: Principles for a New Generation
by Jon Garfunkel on February 21, 2005. Politics Building/Consensus United StatesI wasn’t there then, but it’s possible that the perception leads reality. Wherever one looks on the Internet, there is activism, though the physical evidence, and quantifiable acheivements, are harder to discern (Zinn did not admit to much web-surfing, let along blog-reading, other than reading his email).
Shoot the Press: Responding to the Eason Jordan Controversy
by Jon Garfunkel on February 14, 2005. Media Building/Consensus InternationalJudging the Character of one’s Content on MLK Day
by Jon Garfunkel on January 17, 2005. Building/Consensus CultureIs it necessary for journalists to reveal their personal biases?
by Jon Garfunkel on January 17, 2005. Media Building/ConsensusTheories of the Bulge: The Timeline
by Jon Garfunkel on January 9, 2005. Media Building/Consensus United StatesFor Theories of the Bulge, I needed to come up with a timeline of when theories were developed. I researched through the core websites, and had a look at a few more that were linked. Afterwards, I gave this a bit of structure by splitting it up into weeks. And then I thought, what else was going on in the news that week? This was quite a busy month– and it didn't help that four debates were cramed into the first half of it. If the debates were spached out by a week or two over a longer period of time, it perhaps would have allowed the country to spend more time on the issues covered– as well as the meta-issues like this.
Is an uncoordinated Presidential campaign in our best interest?
by Jon Garfunkel on November 21, 2004. Election 2004 Building/ConsensusFirst, some background. A couple of weeks before Election Day, the Republican party obtained a hard copy of the Democrats’ 46-page “Victory 2004 Florida Coordinated Campaign” and posted it online (in PDF format). The GOP claimed that this document, which had a page for signatures from the Kerry-Edwards campaign, the state party, and union groups, proved that the Democrats were engaged in illegal coordination betwe. The Democrats responded that the coordinating committee was in fact an independent entity allowed by the law, the Florida the Republicans were engaged in the same. The Republicans said they’d file suit with the FEC.
Brookline Town Meeting 2004: Getting buried & tossed in the trash
by Jon Garfunkel on November 17, 2004. Politics Building/Consensus Brookline
Brookline Town Meeting 2004: Discussion of the Warrant Articles
by Jon Garfunkel on November 16, 2004. Politics Building/Consensus BrooklineGoing Canvassing: How to Prepare
by Jon Garfunkel on November 14, 2004. Election 2004 Building/ConsensusCanvassing in God’s Country: Assessing the Religious Divide
by Jon Garfunkel on November 10, 2004. Election 2004 Building/Consensus
Palm Beach County, Florida would not ordinarily be confused with “God’s Country”, a phrase which typically connotes a wide open spance of nature unspoiled by civilization. On the other hand, to take the term at its literal meaning, it might indicate a place of extraordinary religiosity. Who knew that Palm Beach was ranked second among Florida counties in the proportion of residents who regularly attend houses of worship? (anyone who read this 2002 newspaper story “Keeping the Faith in Florida” did). With growing numbers hispanic Catholic and elderly Jewish populations, its 56% ranked above the Panhandle counties. Granted, while may be God’s County in Florida, it would rank 12th in Massachusetts and 66th in Kansas. To paraphrase Harry Golden, the most famous Southern Jew a half century ago, people in Florida talk to God, so Operation Bubbe went down to Florida to talk to them.
I hate when liberals tell lies
by Jon Garfunkel on August 16, 2004. Politics Building/ConsensusThis worries me now because of the desperate times the liberals are in. For three years the Republican Party controls the White House and both houses of Congress; this is the most conservative (in every aspect but fiscal) that the government has been in modern times. One solution, guided by the Air America radio network, is to compete with the likes of Rush and O’Reilly on the partisan airwaves. But to do that best, one might embrace generalizations, innuendo, and then finds themself down the path of falsehood.
Distributed Media Monitoring
by Jon Garfunkel on August 13, 2004. Broadcast Building/ConsensusEscaping the convention
by Jon Garfunkel on July 27, 2004. Election 2004 Building/Consensus Greater BostonGod and the Single-Issue Voter
by Jon Garfunkel on June 25, 2004. Election 2004 Building/ConsensusBreaking News breeds Broken Discourse
by Jon Garfunkel on June 21, 2004. Internet Building/ConsensusA tale of two Internet community sites
by Jon Garfunkel on June 8, 2004. Internet Building/ConsensusMy helpers were the C-SPAN Community, where some members picked up on an erroneous statement I had writtin an article that the national public access network was funded by cable companies, but also “mandated by the government.” The article in question was “When it comes to cable reform, the Cato Institute fears the free market”, which I have republished with the correction. I aim to correct any falsehoods and also encourage users to post. Still, I only found out about the complaint by checking the referring URL’s in my server logs. (Later that evening, someone did email me directly, but didn’t mention the C-SPAN site).
In Defense of Internet Polls
by Jon Garfunkel on May 24, 2004. Internet Building/ConsensusVoting patterns of the Mories at Vote.com
by Jon Garfunkel on May 21, 2004. Politics Building/Consensus
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