Quick Hits

A quick roundup of stories related to digital politics and online advocacy.

Quick Hits — November 19, 2006

Think piece edition! The New World, the Rise of the New Culture of Participation. Futurist Jamais Cascio examines the potential of social media and other open source and participatory technologies to leverage the collective intelligence of the...

Quick Hits — November 14, 2006

Post-election, back-to-our-normal-lives edition. Two events this week: Idealware is hosting an online seminar tomorrow to compare open source content management systems Joomla, Drupal, and Plone (nerd alert!), and Alan Rosenblatt’s Internet...

Quick Hits — November 6, 2006

Gaming the Search Engine, in a Political Season. The Times takes on Google-bombing. Both the Times and the Post have articles looking at political uses of online video, with the Times focusing more on home-made video and the power of viral spread...

Quick Hits — November 1, 2006

Media Turning to Blogs for Election Night Reaction. CNN will host an election-night blogger party — let’s hope they provide a nice snack tray. Voters Beware: Internet Gives Free Rein To Jabs. Wikipedia wars! Rude comments galore! Nice...

Quick Hits — October 27, 2006

Liberal Bloggers Try To Google-bomb Republicans. Chris Bowers of MyDD enlists the blogosphere to try to ensure that the “proper” articles about Republican candidates show up high in search results. Suggested by a loyal reader (thanks...

Quick Hits — October 15, 2006

Quick Hits goes local! Candidates go online for young voters. Staten Island Advance looks at candidate MySpace profiles in races in Brooklyn and Staten Island. Social networking, den of sin and lair of iniquity: the article notes that “a...

Quick Hits — October 10, 2006

‘Puppets’ Emerge as Internet’s Effective, and Deceptive, Salesmen. Beware the meat puppets! Excellent article by Frank Ahrens in the Post about astroturfing social networking sites, i.e., setting up fake profiles to sell a product...

Quick Hits — September 25, 2006

Few Watch Drug PSAs On YouTube. The Office of National Drug Control Policy finds that viral marketing is hard if your audience doesn’t want to take its medicine. Political advertisers take note — YouTubers will watch what THEY want to...

Quick Hits — August 27, 2006

Nicco Mele Taking a Leave of Absence from EchoDitto. His support for John McCain seems to have raised concerns about the firm’s commitment to progressive causes and clients. He’s a damn sharp (and genuinely nice) guy, and that has to be...

Quick Hits — August 23, 2006

Post: Burns Burned by Video Clips. His opponent is distributing clips to the press via old-school videotape, but at least one has shown up on YouTube. AdAge: The Reach Most Marketers Crave Still Comes From TV, Print and Internet Ads, not from blogs...