You probably recall that during the 2008 election, the
Democratics gloated about how much the Internet had aided the defeat of Hillary
and then McCain in the general election.
Although I hadn’t paid much attention then to what kind of organizing
can be done online, the notion was intriguing and I decided to look into
it.
The introduction of Windows XP in 2003, soon followed about
2005 by wider access to broadband for the masses released the enormous creative
power of millions of very intelligent people.
And after 20-years of software development for PCs, compatibility of a
large number of applications became a reality, especially for non-techies.
The technology knowledge had been known within large
corporations for several years before the masses began to avail themselves of
it. So, growth and experimentation was
sporadic. As I recall it, the
Republicans were largely absent from the cyber world in 2008. They’ve begun to correct the disparity in
this 2012 cycle.
However, the Democratics and their constituencies still show
a remarkable devotion to making use of the online environment for a lot of
their efforts. By fairly loosely
“friending” people in Facebook, I’ve encountered a few kooks who usually show
themselves in a political conversation.
Some of them can quickly come off whatever is passing for their rails. Dealing with them until they blew me off for
not agreeing with their ranting was useful as a means of learning a bit of what
makes them tick and gets them motivated.
A couple of sites they liked to use for their kick-off
discussion topics for a thread were Truthout and Common Dreams. Any attempt I might try to have a rational
exchange with them invariably fell into a flood of childish twaddle and bad
language I wouldn’t dream of using in this environment.
If you haven’t paid much attention to this stuff, as I haven’t,
you may be surprised how much work has been going into the left’s “occupation”
of cyberspace. Note the image at right that
shows a grid of 12 boxes, each containing about 10-12 links to other urls. Ultimately, the links lead to about 400 (apparently)
different web sites. Some of them are
probably substantial, some of them may be run from the same office, others may
be a guy in a basement somewhere. It’s
difficult to tell, as you know. This
particular grid come from a site called, “Common Dreams.”
The following 4-pages are the names of the sites that are
pointed to by the above grid…about 400 of them.
The logos shown at right are from a page calling for help with
the Wisconsin recall effort. Note all the interlinking. And the list at left of links accompanied some other kind of
protest during some of the “occupy” protests a few months back. The thing to keep in mind is that a web site
or blog can be constructed and posted in a very short period of time by someone
who knows what they’re doing, so it’s possible that a number of these sites
lack substance…others could be quite large in terms of funding and staff.
Conservatives are belatedly beginning to link their sites
together, but appear to be pretty far behind.
It appears that the conservatives prefer to stand alone to this point in
time.
And finally, here is a program to help keep the various site
clearly identified, should you start seeing odd references to supposedly sound
sources. Good luck.
