peer production

Let’s take a glimpse at the evolution of the role of technology and so-called “new media” in politics. In the early years, there were “Web” departments — for example, my colleague Patrick Ruffini served as the “webmaster” for Bush-Cheney ‘04. The new jargon for this role has become “new media,” which typically serves as an umbrella for all forms of “new” communication, such as the Internet and mobile technology. The problem lies in the fact that we are still using the adjective new, which inherently distinguishes it from other forms of traditional media (i.e. TV, radio, and so forth). Accordingly, the people who oversee new media are called “New Media Directors” and work in “New Media,” while the people who oversee traditional media are given the title of “Communications Director” and work in “Communications” or something along those lines. The bottom line is that not only is “new” media no longer new, but even more importantly, “new” media is rapidly replacing “traditional” media. If the right is going to become the side on the cutting edge, then right-of-center campaigns and organizations must ensure that the separation of traditional and new media comes to an end.

The decline of traditional media becomes clear when you look at recent polling trends. For example, a substantially increasing percentage of Americans turn to the Internet for their news. Moreover, a poll taken in 2008 indicates that nearly 70% of Americans consider traditional journalism to be “out of touch,” and as a result the plethora of respondents use the Internet as their primary source of news and information. Twice as many Americans said they “regularly learn[ed] something about the [2008] campaign from the internet” as they did in 2004. And of course, millennial voters almost universally turned to the Internet as their primary source for 2008 election news.

In addition, there were two Presidential campaigns whose profoud impacts demonstrate the importance of integrating all forms of media. It goes without saying that President Obama ran an incredible web-based campaign, raising two-thirds of its money online and peer-producing 200,000 offline events, 400,000 blog posts, and 3 million phone calls. Likewise, Ron Paul’s campaign was almost entirely organized and built around the Internet, using existing tools like Meetup.com to build an incredible yet extremely low-cost national infrastructure. What was the differentiator between these two campaigns and most of the others from the past cycle? They didn’t separate “new media” from their other operations; instead, they allowed it to serve as a sort of circulatory system that fed and empowered every other part of their organization. “New media” wasn’t a part of their campaign; it was their campaign.

The line between traditional and new media is disintegrating, and therefore, separating the two puts the right at a disadvantage. So let’s embrace this change. “New media” must become “media,” and must be embraced as the heart and soul of our campaigns and organizations.

Crossposted at NextGenGOP.

Yesterday, I expressed concern about the fact that newly elected RNC Chairman Michael Steele has yet to make “any significant new effort to win over millennials.” Today, however, I want to recognize Steele for something he has done exceedingly well.

This letter was written as a follow-up to some points I raised about idea creation for the GOP in an earlier blog post.

To the future chairman of the Republican National Committee,

We face a tough road over the coming days, months, and years as we work to transform the Republican Party into the party of the future so that we can recover from this year’s devastating losses in the House, Senate, and ultimately, White House. The path ahead will be a challenging one, but I am convinced that we are up to the challenge and that ultimately we will prevail.

In order to do this, however, we must recognize as a party that many of the ways of the past are no longer the way of the future. For example, Barack Obama has proven that new media and the Internet are essential to winning elections. Similarly, we now see that we must be able to raise a large percentage of money and build a powerful infrastructure online.

Following this logic, we also need to realize that peer production is the way of the future – not just in politics or business, but in all walks of life. At a macro level, this means that we must democratize the Republican Party by opening it to mass collaboration. If the Republican Party wants to be the party of the future, it must adopt this sort of collaboration driven, peer production based model.

Indeed, peer production has proven enormously and unequivocally successful as a business model. Corporations are scrambling to replicate the impeccable successes of companies like Goldcorp, Inc., who in 1999 was on the verge of bankruptcy because it was unable to locate sources of gold on its property. Out of desperation, CEO Rob McEwen issued the “Goldcorp Challenge,” inviting anyone and everyone to help the company locate gold on its campus. The success was astounding: due to peer production, Goldcorp went from being an underperforming $100 million company to a $9 billion juggernaut. Many other leading companies, including IBM, Boeing, and Procter & Gamble have adopted peer production as a central component of their business model to similarly resounding success. Although political trends tend to lag behind business trends, peer production is clearly one trend in which we cannot afford to fall behind.

In fact, Barack Obama’s electoral success was not really due to his use of the Internet. Rather, the Internet only served as the medium through which Obama’s volunteers and supporters could peer produce. In the end, it was the Obama campaign’s understanding of the necessity of utilizing peer production and its ability to do so that fueled his victory. MyBarackObama.com was immensely successful in doing this, resulting in his supporters peer producing 200,000 offline events, 400,000 blog posts, 3 million phone calls, and $500 million. Everything at MyBarackObama made it unambiguously clear: “This campaign is about you.”

Democrats, following in the footsteps of countless successful corporations, are going to continue to use this model in 2010 and beyond because it is a proven winner. Accordingly, this begs the question: are we going to do the same? Please, Mr. Chairman, let the answer be an unmistakable, “Yes!”

(promoted by Soren)

Patrick Ruffini recently wrote a piece arguing that the GOP needs an “ideas czar”, while Soren Dayton disagrees, insisting that, “The beltway is the disease not the cure.” Regardless of where you stand on this argument, both Patrick and Soren raise a critical, underlying point: the Republican Party needs a way to bring new, innovative ideas to the table if it wants to find its identity and ultimately achieve electoral success.

Ruffini founded the site RebuildTheParty.com, which specifically states that the Internet must be our #1 priority over the next four years. I fully agree with this, and in this vein I think we need to utilize the Internet – and specifically, the concept of peer production, which “describes what happens when masses of people … collaborate openly to drive innovation and growth” – to accomplish our goal. Peer production is what creates content for Wikipedia and empowers websites like Digg.

Indeed, in today’s new Age of Participation, having an elite person or group of people making policy decisions and generating new ideas is a recipe for death. Although I have an enormous amount of respect for Patrick, his idea of establishing a GOP ideas czar is tantamount to maintaining the status quo in that our ideas will continue to come from the party’s established elite. An institution consisting of “politicians, academics, business leaders, think tankers, and interest groups” as Soren describes is slightly better, but ultimately it is still an exclusive group of elites.

Instead, we need to establish an open forum in which all ideas from all walks of life are welcome and taken into consideration. Everyone’s opinion is valuable as we fight to rebuild the Republican Party. Patrick has taken the first step toward this with ideas.rebuildtheparty.com, where anyone can make suggestions to enhance the RebuildTheParty.com platform, but unfortunately it’s only a baby step. In the end, the be all and end all of the Republican Party – the Republican National Committee – is not reviewing, considering, and responding to this feedback.

If we really want to create new ideas and transform the Republican Party, we cannot continue to allow a small, elite group to be the source of our ideas and policy. If we continue to do so, we risk digging a hole so deep that we may never be able to climb out. Instead, we must permanently open the Republican Party’s ideas and platforms to mass collaboration. In doing so, we can truly become the party of the people, and in turn we can take a huge step toward becoming the party of the future.

Crossposted at NextGenGOP.