According to Ethan Zuckerman’s “cute cat” theory of activism, the great power of the Interwebs resides in its use as a low-value tool for the masses. The web has a remarkable staying power because we all use it for what are admittedly not the most highbrow, intellectual activities. Sharing pictures and videos of cute animals, for example. Or creating hilarious Tumblr blogs of grad student life. Or, you guessed it, watching porn. All judgment aside, the most popular applications of Web 2.0 tend to be those that allow us to engage in this type of sharing. And so, the logic goes, if a digital platform is popular, it will be difficult to justify shutting it down to clamp down on activists.

Consequently, activists benefit from a degree of immunity and are able to continue using online tools to organize. What’s more, a government’s attempt to limit access to the web can actually backfire by recruiting casual users to the activists’ cause. God help the government that gets between me and my GIFs.

The theory makes sense, but it obviously doesn’t apply in all cases. To me, one of the most important lessons of the post-Arab Spring is that the technology isn’t enough (or it is, but only if “enough” applies to a limited scope). I think we can all agree that social media played a role in the revolutions; the more interesting question is, how? What conditions have to be in place for social media to serve as a positive tool for activists? People much more digitally literate and politically savvy than me have been unpacking this question for the past year and a half, but given our readings this week, I think it’s clear that the appeal of “cute cats” can only keep you safe if the government is playing Web 2.0 catch-up.

MacKinnon goes into detail about the Chinese model, which she refers to as a form of “networked authoritarianism.” The Great Firewall enables the Chinese government to own the online network end-to-end, but the government goes beyond censorship. China has in fact implemented its own, parallel ecosystem of Web 2.0 platforms where Chinese citizens can get their “cute cat” fix without all of that pesky Western dissent and resistance.

Morozov makes the further sinister point that authoritarian governments have much more to gain than lose from the Interwebs. Just as Web 2.0 lowers the barriers for people to self-organize, it also lowers the barriers to propaganda, surveillance, and censorship. In my mind, the “cute cat” theory demonstrates just how easy it is for us to be complacent. We’re satisfied with our low-value activities unless prodded into more substantive online engagement.

As someone who (arguably) does not live in an authoritarian state, my ultimate concern boils down to the tension highlighted by both Zuckerman’s theory and the Arab Spring: the tools designed to entertain us have been appropriated for civic purposes, yet the institutions in charge of these tools are ultimately driven by profit and control. Wael Ghonim does not equal Google. And, unfortunately, there is a tremendous lack of transparency and accountability with respect to tech companies and their dealings with government. The Global Network Initiative is a step in the right direction, but is it enough?

With just three days to go before the 2012 presidential election, it feels like as good a time as any to revisit Obama’s 2008 bid and remember why he resonated with many voters across the U.S. I’m a strong believer in the idea that a message is only as effective as its medium. You can’t mobilize thousands, let alone millions, just by parroting platitudes. The level of civic action we witnessed in 2008 came as a consequence of living and breathing the message from the bottom up.

Zack Exley’s HuffPo piece, “The New Organizers,” clearly proves this point by diving deep into the inner workings of Obama’s 2008 field campaign. Exley reveals how organizers realized the dream of a truly effective netroots campaign. Bound to the motto “Respect. Empower. Include.,” the campaign builders succeeded in synthesizing traditional, disciplined organizing with new technologies that leverage decentralization and self-organization. Obama’s campaign messaging and organizing activities thus integrated seamlessly into a potent mix.

Perhaps one of the most striking insights from Exley’s piece is his observation that the 2008 field campaign achieved what is arguably the most challenging task of persuasion in politics: convincing voters that, together, they can build a better future. Beyond mobilizing volunteers for voter registration drives, canvassing, and GOTV, the campaign didn’t just persuade folks; it fundamentally changed them. Exley relates the story of Jennifer Robinson, a neighborhood team leader, who expresses that she is a different person six weeks into the campaign—through the work, she realizes her passion for organizing in her community. It’s not just her—there’s an entire generation that has come of political age with the Obama campaign. That’s scores of leaders in training who, win or lose, are bought into the transformative power of grassroots organizing.

How did this unprecedented type of campaign succeed? Exley goes into the nitty gritty details around implementation, but for my personal learning purposes, I think Obama 2008 provides a compelling case for the strength of weak ties—what’s more, it demonstrates the incredible power of technology to lower the transaction costs of converting those ties into meaningful action. As someone who is still hopeful that Web 2.0 can help us become more conscious consumers and push businesses to become more socially and environmentally responsible, the overarching message I take from Obama 2008 is that technology alone isn’t a solution. Especially when it comes to advocacy and mobilization, the tech is only as good as your organizational discipline, which is again reinforced by the clarity of purpose communicated in your message.

I’m reminded of Fairtrade International’s campaign earlier this year to mobilize consumers around Fair Trade purchasing. They produced a highly interactive video entitled “A Fair Story,” which they described as “a short film that gives everyone the chance to be part of a global story and connect with people around the world to celebrate fair.” In less than two minutes, an ideal length for Internet distribution, the video invited the viewer to choose to make tomorrow’s stories better than today’s by doing “the right thing” and making Fair Trade “your story as well.” “A Fair Story” played with the idea that Fair Trade begins with a small story that can grow into a big story about “people connecting for a better world.” By joining the movement and amplifying the story, the viewer would be empowered to help create better choices.

Did it work? I don’t know. In my mind, there is a world of difference between talking about Fair Trade and actually making it the rule, not the exception. Does one lead to the other? Not necessarily, Gladwell would say. In fact, this is probably exactly the type of slacktivist application of Web 2.0 that he would bemoan in the context of trying to drive social change. But given the lessons of Obama 2008 (and, more recently, of 350.org), I can imagine how you could develop a real, grassroots campaign to drive Fair Trade purchasing behavior (or recycling, or whatever!) through our social networks in a way that identifies the most promising evangelists or “leaders” at local levels; empowers them with organizing training, tools, and tech; and holds them accountable to mobilizing benchmarks.

This morning, I woke up, reached for my phone, and checked my Twitter and Facebook feeds. Somehow, this has become my morning routine since acquiring a smartphone– I’ve always loved reading in bed, and the device makes it so easy to curl up under the covers while I link up to the world beyond my apartment. I scanned my self-curated Twitter lists and Facebook newsfeed, finding a mix of news about tonight’s presidential debate, food porn, and several links to WKBT News 8 anchor Jennifer Livingston’s response to an email from a man bullying her about her weight.

Welcome to my filter bubble.

In his popular TED talk, Eli Pariser introduces the concept as a unique, personalized information world. He discusses what he sees as a major shift in how information is flowing– thanks to personalization on the web, he argues, we aren’t necessarily seeing what we need to see. And that’s a problem.

In days of yore, Pariser reflects, we had gatekeepers. The almighty newspaper editors who oversaw the heights of American journalistic excellence. Then came the interwebs, sweeping gatekeepers out of the way– except, not really. The gatekeepers, as it turns out, are still there, only now they are algorithms lacking embedded ethics. Companies like Facebook and Google haven’t coded civic responsibility into how they deliver information to users. And it isn’t just that we don’t see what we need to see: we don’t decide what gets in, and we don’t see what gets edited out.

I sympathize with Pariser. I, too, am concerned about not seeing what I need to see. Which is…well, I’m not sure, exactly. I guess, to quote Justice Stewart, “I know it when I see it.”

This is, in my opinion, one of the core problems with Pariser’s argument, also raised by Jonathan Stray at the Nieman Journalism Lab. How, exactly, do you code diversity into an algorithm? Who writes the code? With what criteria? Pariser places the responsibility of ensuring a balanced information diet squarely on the shoulders of the technology/platform. For lack of a better metaphor, this, to me, is akin to making McDonald’s responsible for how I eat.

Okay, so maybe Pariser is right that without the ethical gatekeepers, we are at a great information disadvantage. But again, I question his assessment of pre-interwebs information flows. As Stray asks, were traditional news media really that good at diversity to begin with? Putting aside for a second any normative evaluation of the quality of traditional news media, we should also consider the empirical evidence of institutionalized inequality of global news flows offered by Mark D. Alleyne. I think it’s unrealistic and impractical to expect technology to solve these issues.

So, where does that leave us? Well, I for one am encouraged by the fact that human ingenuity seems to prevail regardless of structural imbalances. Stray hails the advent of curation as a new form or extension of journalism, highlighting folks like Andy Carvin who make it their business to drink from the firehose and deliver information to readers in a transparently digested fashion. I also love Stray’s suggestion to not just filter, but also map the web— using tools like social network analysis, we can create information network maps that are easier to navigate than, say, Amazon’s list of all books on U.S. politics.

Ultimately, I think Pariser neglects an element of personal responsibility in determining how our brains are fed. If anything, I hope to see a push towards holding educational institutions accountable for teaching media literacy and equipping all of us with the tools necessary to manage our new information environment.

Greetings, MPP Digital and anyone else who might be reading. This week, I’ve been charged with blogging about a Wikipedia article of my choosing. Armed with my shiny, new Wikipedia username, I started to poke around the 4,000,000 + online compendium and arrived at the humbling conclusion that there are a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of people who know a lot more than I do about pretty much everything.

The hive mind. Go figure.

After a search for my pre-Fletcher employer, Root Capital, came up short, I decided to focus on one of our peers/competitors instead. Because they happened to be there, and I thought that was interesting.

Acumen Fund was founded just a couple of years after Root Capital, and the two organizations do similar work in the impact investing world (though Root’s portfolio is bigger, and they are focused on somewhat different geographies). So why does one organization have an article while the other does not? I suppose the obvious answer would be, because someone created an article for Acumen Fund (while Root’s had no such luck). The next logical question: who created the Acumen Fund article?

At the very top of the article, Wikipedia astutely points out that it “appears to be written like an advertisement” and “needs additional citations for verification.” While that makes my job of evaluating the article a bit easier, I’d like to go beyond content analysis and conclude by considering the implications of this type of article from a marketing and communications perspective.

The article’s content is structured in a fairly comprehensive manner: there are six sections, which include history, investments, goals, fellows program, and chapters of Acumen Fund. I was, however, surprised by two things: 1) the article makes no mention of impact investing (and, consequently, it forgoes the opportunity to discuss its leadership role in the space, e.g. contributions to the Global Impact Investing Network‘s Impact Reporting and Investment Standards taxonomy), and 2) the section on its investments is essentially Acumen Fund marketing copy. Building on this last point, four out of the article’s eight cited sources are Acumen Fund’s website. High quality? Yes. Neutral? Debatable. Granted, the article does link to estimable sources such as The New York Times, but I’m reminded of what the Talking Heads have to say about facts: “Facts all come with points of view / Facts don’t do what I want them to.” I’m slightly uncomfortable with sourcing that’s weighted in the organization’s sales pitch. Especially when there *are* other sources. Forbes profiled Acumen Fund’s Founder Jacqueline Novogratz just last year, and the organization recently co-authored a study with the Monitor Group on the case for philanthropy in impact investing. Neither of these meaningful “hits” appears under references.

Despite its questionable neutrality, the Acumen Fund article is readable and well written (no doubt thanks, in large part, to the organization’s fantastic communications team). The formatting all appears in the Wikipedia style, and the article also includes Acumen Fund’s logo.

So where does that leave us? Ultimately, we’ll never know who created Acumen Fund’s article on Wikipedia. Parts of it read like self-promotion, though in reality any user with access to the organization’s website could have copied and pasted material, thinking they were doing us all a favor by adding to the compendium. The “who,” as it turns out, is irrelevant– what matters it that the article exists, and that it is both self-promoting (like an “advertisement,” says Wikipedia) and incomplete. Wikipedia is many things, including a communications platform. Acumen Fund neglects its article at its peril.