Matt Stempeck

July 2012

  • You’re More Powerful as a Customer than as a Citizen (and that’s bad)

    If you’re an early adopter, you likely sign up for a wide range of new products and services. A number of these startups inevitably fold, and then you receive their closing-shop emails. The correspondence making up this genre tends to be fairly upbeat and concise, painting over what are surely far more lurid tales of unrealized dreams and blown investments. The email I received announcing the demise of Moxy Vote broke with this pattern and offered an unusually candid, clear explanation of how and why they failed. And their failure points to a strategic problem today’s would-be social changemakers face.

    If you’re frustrated by the state of our country and the world, and have been thinking about the need to operate a wider range society’s levers to create social change, Moxy Vote was for you. It was one of those ideas so brilliant, you end up evangelizing it despite having no ties whatsoever to the effort. Something like a third of all publicly traded shares are owned by your average retail (armchair) investors. Because each of our 401ks represents such a small percentage of a major corporation, we ignore our shareholder voting privileges even more than we ignore our citizen voting privileges. Moxy Vote was based on the premise that if we were to get together in any meaningful numbers, we could begin to have real sway with the powerful corporations that we are, at the end of the day, investing our earnings in. They sought to allow retail shareholders to vote online, and even automatically vote in support of positions taken by personally trusted nonprofit groups (e.g. environmental organizations). This shareholder organizing successfully pressured a number of corporations to make decisions that were better for board diversity, division of power, animal rights, and the environment, among other victories.

    Shareholder rights is an avenue of activism that has received significant attention because of the disastrous Citizens United decision that opened the floodgates for corporate spending in our elections. If our voice as a citizen is completely drowned out by SuperPACs, the thought goes, perhaps our voice as a consumer can still resonate. Fittingly enough, Moxy Vote’s tagline was “Let your voice be heard.” Today, fulfilling that promise requires stock ownership.

    We’re seeing this strategy play out on a number of fronts. Corporate lobbyists have successfully filed down the teeth of most government regulations, but many consumer-facing companies are still quite sensitive to their brand reputation. In today’s world, we’re more likely to convince a company to do the right thing with our Twitter accounts than with our federal government. Advocacy groups like Greenpeace have realized this twist of fate and adjusted accordingly, shifting their attention to consumer-driven brand campaigns, from Apple to Barbie to Shell. Change.org, for its part, enables a long tail of citizen-driven public pressure campaigns and regularly helps petitioners adjust their sights towards still-sensitive targets (think movie studio press offices rather than congressional committee chairs).

    The institutions we trust to run our society are broken (See: SEC oversight, congressional inaction, etc.). We’ve adjusted by shifting our energy from our increasingly symbolic civic powers to our still relevant consumer powers. Campaigns like Bank Transfer Day focus on specific, concrete financial actions that consumers can take to create impact with or without the permission of co-opted public offices. Billions of dollars were transferred to local credit unions as part of Bank Transfer Day. Nearly 200,000 people signed up for the (admittedly wonky) Moxy Vote service.

    Yet Moxy Vote’s demise highlights the limits of this approach to activism. First, our agency as citizens in a democracy should outweigh our capabilities as customers in a market. But more immediately, the significant changes we need still require going through our slow and probably corrupted public institutions. Moxy Vote was a brilliant idea to allow us to create change through our capitalist identities rather than our democratic selves, but at the end of the day, they ran into the same bank-controlled quagmire that controls the rest of our economy:

    1. Individual shareholders have no legal grounds to compel their brokers to deliver ballots electronically to internet voting platforms. And, unfortunately, many brokerage firms have stated clearly to us that they will send them only when required to do so by regulators.
    2. Proxy distribution/collection agents are presently charging significant fees to internet voting platforms for vote collection – a fee that should be paid by public companies and one that proves substantially more burdensome to individual voters than institutional voters.

    In the face of institutional inaction, we naturally pivot into the areas where we still wield some power. While these efforts are exciting and lately, the only approach that seems to work, this cannot be our ultimate strategy.

  • Technology to Improve the Speaker-Audience Relationship

    Liveblog of Drew Harry‘s (@drewwww) MIT Media Lab thesis defense (with readers Wanda Orlikowski, Judith Donath, and Chris Schmandt).

    Drew’s thesis presentation covers a range of projects that tell a broader story about complementary communications systems and how people use them. A complementary communication system is simply how a group talks about their shared experience together. From the whisper to the written word, communication’s been around forever, but technology has changed who we reach and how we behave. We sit in rooms with technology interwoven in our presence: our laptops open and projectors whirring.

    There are a multiplicity of communication systems, with official front channels and informal back channels of conversation. Anyone who’s ever had to speak in front of a Twitter stream understands the difference between these channels. Drew reframes the relationship as main stages and side stages on which we project our identities. Stages are more intimate than channels, and there’s a stronger feedback loop between the front stage and side stage. The backchannel can be covert and counterproductive, as seen in the tweeted uproar during Sarah Lacy’s interview of Mark Zuckerberg at SXSW 2008, or it can be incorporated into the main stage.

    Designers of communications systems have long sought to conquer distance with technology. Replicating face-to-face communication is a huge goal and area of investment, from CISCO’s telepresence strategy to Apple Facetime. But Drew argues that technology can also improve upon the face-to-face experience. Face-to-face is a very difficult medium to compete with; we drop our technology when we can simply experience the rich interactions of face-to-face contact.

    But there are downsides: not everyone is equally comfortable participating. Simultaneous speaking is viewed as impolite, so larger groups only sustain a single speaker, leaving out others’ voices. Lastly, you’re stuck with the identity you were born with, which can hinder your ability to be heard.

    Drew reviews the checkered history of virtual spaces like SecondLife. Anyone following technology in 2006-7 will remember the hype behind it. And yet the promise of the limitless virtual world often resulted in replications of our existing worlds:

    “We can do anything!”

    “What should we do?”

    “Build virtual houses and offices to live in!”

    Drew built new environments in SecondLife where your physical location in the virtual space could signal your feelings. A football field with two endzones marked AGREE and DISAGREE allows individuals to vote with their virtual feet. There was friction in this interface, though. People were used to the real world models of coming into a room and sitting down in one place.

    Backchan.nl was a project in 2009 to reconfigure the relationship between a conference speaker and the audience. The project sought to improve on the inefficient social contract that puts us all at the mercy of the first person at the Q&A microphone. Backchan.nl allowed anonymous identities and crowd up-voting of questions, with questions deteriorating over time.

    The tool was put online, where it was used for 791 events, from conferences to classrooms to business meetings. The MIT Admissions office used it for their information sessions with remote applicants.

    A key consideration in designing these tools is managing attention. We’re all competing with screens, but Drew argues that there are a million ways to ignore the main stage, from sitting in the back of the room to staring at the speaker but zoning out inside your head. People see relevant side stages as a way to keep themselves engaged with the main stage of communication. Additionally, the existence of a backchannel on which to raise concerns and otherwise be heard provides audience members with a sense of agency and control, and a path to improve the conversation, all of which mitigate the traditional attention problem. Allowing the audience to surface shared problems, whether it’s a broken microphone or an overactive air conditioning system, creates awkward moments that force those on the main stage to address the backchannel.

    Tin Can is an iPad app to support the flow of attention and participation in more intimate classroom discussions. Students are told that the app keeps track of time, ideas, and topics that come up in the discussions. But its designers were also interested in student engagement, participation in discussion, and awareness of their fellow students. The app shows a roundtable of conversation participants and lists of topics and ideas. Students felt rewarded when their app content made it into the actual conversation, and overactive minds were OK when not every idea they submitted made it to the main stage. The professor brought it all together by promoting individual quotes and ideas from students without necessarily focusing the entire class’s attention on a shy contributor. Students who don’t participate turned out to be very self-aware of their lack of verbal contribution, and appreciated their ability to contribute and interact with the professor without becoming the center of the group’s attention.

    The app raised the question of defining the main stage itself. The main stage might be a boring Powerpoint slideshow, while the Tin Can app hosted a more compelling conversation. Drew sees the app as training wheels for the classroom environment, where it can pick up the slack when the main stage’s communication fails the audience, but it can clearly also be a distraction.

    ROAR blows up the scale of the online audience to stadium-level proportions. There are two levels of interaction in a stadium, Drew says: the small group of people you came with, and the much larger crowd around you. Drew sought to determine the broader activity levels across the larger crowd: What are they interested in? What are the immediate trending topics and reactions across the large audience? The Pulse feature scans the realtime chat for keywords and highlights them in the fluid stream.

    Drew compares and contrasts the key variables across these tools. Is the main stage mediated? Is the side stage publicly displayed, or is it private? How frequently is the side stage expected to be used? And what’s the scale of the audience?

    Abstract: 

    We have long assumed that being face-to-face is the best environment for social interaction. But is “being there” the best we can aspire to? One common approach to improving face-to-face contexts is to add new communication channels — a strategy often described as creating “backchannels.” In my work, I use a series of novel complementary communication systems to show both how adding communication platforms to collaborative situations can be useful while also arguing for a new conceptual model of side stages (in the Goffman sense) that contrasts with the traditional model of backchannels. I will describe a series of projects that embody this approach and explore its limits. This will include work on virtual world meetings and presentations, an audience interaction tool for large groups (backchan.nl), a tablet-based system for small group discussions (Tin Can), and a platform for connecting huge distributed audiences (ROAR). In each of these projects I will trace my three major research themes: understanding how conversational grounding operates in these environments, how non-verbal actions complement text-based interaction, and how people make decisions about how to manage their attention in environments with multiple simultaneous communication channels.

  • I’m at the GlobalVoices Citizen Media Summit in Kenya

    I’m in Nairobi for a few weeks, primarily for the GlobalVoices Citizen Media Summit, a biannual conference with many of the network’s top bloggers, translators, and editors, who hail from all over the planet. Here are a few liveblog posts I wrote the last couple of days to give you a taste of what we’re talking about:

    More to follow, mehopes.

  • The Internet Exposes Tensions and Opportunity Between Nations and their Diasporas

    Liveblog from the Global Voices Summit (#gv2012) here in Nairobi.

    Diasporic communities can now take virtually full part in national political and civic life in their countries of origin, thanks to new media. From the academic and activist perspectives, what are the consequences?

    Inside/Outside: Diaspora Influence #GV2012

    Left to right: Gershom Ndhlovu (Zambia), Elaine Diaz (Cuba), Susan Benesch (American University, School of International Service), Nanjira Sambuli (Kenya), Fred Petrossian (Iran)

    In addition to teaching at American University, Susan Benesch is a human rights lawyer and journalist in the US. She argues that the issue of diasporic voices are the story of the 21st century. It is the story of migration, and many of the Global Voices bloggers here this week are migrants themselves, living and writing in new countries. It is the modern human experience to travel to a new country, temporarily or permanently, and live in a different culture while still thinking and dreaming and remembering another country, culture, set of songs, language, and politics. Those of us whose grandparents or great-grandparents migrated in earlier centuries might recall that they almost never went back. If they had communication with people in their former countries, it was by letter, and this is where we see letters that speak of streets paved with gold. Gradually over time, 3 enormous technological changes have affected how diasporic communities stay in touch with the people and culture in their countries of origin:

    1. Cheaper airfare, so people could physically return
    2. Cheaper telephone communications, so could people could talk
    3. Technology and social media, which radically changed how people who have moved can communicate with those in the country of origin

    We have on the panel members of the diaspora as well as people who still live in their countries of origin, where they feel the impact of diasporic communications.

    Fred Petrossian (@fredpetrossian | bio) is an editor at Global Voices and from Iran, as well as a professional journalist based in Prague working with Radio Free Europe. He sees many Iranians forced into political exile by waves of political repression and mass executions. Not all Iranians left for political reasons, but a significant percentage of the diaspora is outside of the country because of political beliefs.

    Fred has seen examples of how a diaspora can successfully help those still in the country, but also how it can hinder local movements. The internet in Iran is very slow, by government design. The diaspora plays a very important role in amplifying the message. Demonstrations after abductions or executions, or to save a dying lake, pass through the diaspora, where the word travels quickly on social networks. This is very helpful, and in some cases even a matter of life and death.

    But sometimes the diaspora is trapped in its own bubble, and their knowledge of what is occurring is influenced by the media they are consuming in their new country. They sometimes have to rely on television and radio to understand what’s taking place in Iran. When they look at Facebook, they see an overwhelming revolution bringing about the regime’s last day. But the security forces have access to social networks, too.

    Diasporas can talk online and spread messages quickly, but the heart and the soul of the country must be involved or nothing will happen. Fred sees a slacktivist aspect of diasporic involvement online, creating a disconnection and a gap with those still living in Iran. But diaspora do play a critical role in putting international attention on cases of political persecution, thus protecting activists.

    Nanjira Sambuli (@NiNanjira | bio) introduces us to the Kenyan diaspora’s “Call Washington” mentality. Local consulates have information about the home country for those living in the diaspora, but this information is only periodically updated, and technology moves quickly.

    The Kenyan diaspora online is segmented based on where they are. The online communities often started as email listservs, and grew from there. Following the election and subsequent violence, though, divides between tribes had a severe impact on the online diaspora, and killed discussion in many fora. The diaspora has blogs, but rarely have people in Kenya been involved with them, and vice versa.

    Last week saw a “love protest” in Nairobi by Boniface Mwangi, bringing people out into the streets to unify and call for an end to the nation’s culture of impunity. For the first time in 45 years, the diaspora was able to see the events unfold in real-time on Facebook and elsewhere online without calling Washington for information. They actually participated, in at least a minimal way.

    There’s sometimes alienation between those who left and moved upwards economically, and those still here. It’s important that the diaspora bring money home to invest, and continue talking to people here so their information is accurate. The “Call Washington” mentality, at least, is fading away.

    Elaine Diaz (@elainediaz2003 | bio | blog) speaks to us in Spanish, with Susan translating. As a professor at the University of Havana, and as a blogger, she has a unique perspective on the role of the diaspora online. In order to understand the relationship between Cuba and its diaspora online, you must understand the same relationship offline. It’s a very difficult relationship. Large numbers of Cubans migrated to the US following Fidel Castro’s rise to power, particularly Miami.

    Only 14% of the Cuban population has access to the internet, so it can seem that even talking about the relationship between Cuba and its diaspora online is a dream. Of that 14%, most are only using email. So it might seem like a dream to talk about a relationship between Cuba and its diaspora online. But that’s not the case. There are many Cubans using new technologies to communicate, inside and outside Cuba. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and open source blogging on WordPress are popular means of communication and ways to talk about the harsh realities of the Cuban experience.

    The online space for Cubans is a battlefield between the diaspora and those still living in Cuba. The #cuba hashtag is an open political battle between government sympathizers and opposition.

    A younger generation of Cubans online are looking for new spaces to communicate with one another. There are some common points of agreement, particularly around immigration reform within the Cuban government. In spite of political differences, everyone agrees it’s necessary to eliminate the exit permit the Cuban government currently requires, among other migration-related issues. Another interesting point of agreement is around access to the internet and the sorry state of internet penetration in the country. Cuban civil society is demanding access to the internet not only for commercial services like email, but also for public participation in society. They seek the ability to debate, but also a role in decisionmaking. As a scholar of the Cuban blogosphere, Elaine finds this consensus meaningful. Although we don’t live in Cuba, we can assist. We can watch it unfold online.

    Gershom Ndhlovu (@GNdhlovu | bio) is a Zambian living in the United Kingdom, with firsthand experience of life in the diaspora. In the last 20 years, Zambia has changed presidents four times. The Zambian diaspora understands what’s going on at home. Those Zambians working in the media understand local events up to the very minute. Many are fighting for dual citizenship. Most of the Zambians who have migrated in the last 20-30 years have gained dual citizenship in their new countries of residence. Unlike the other panelists thus far, Zambians migrate primarily for economic, rather than political, reasons.

    Zambia is currently rewriting their constitution, and the diaspora is seeking inclusion of a clause about dual citizenship. Much of the government sympathizes, but the new president who took power ten months ago opposes the provision. Last year’s constitution included the clause, but was defeated in Parliament. With that decision, the dream of dual citizenship went with it. Diasporic Zambians are also seeking a right to vote and be directly involved in the political process. “Ours is a straightforward case.”

    Q&A

    Markos: If online communications facilitates contact between exiles and the home country, does it make it easier for journalists and others to leave the country in the first place? And how would you define good journalism conducted from exile? What advantages and disadvantages does being outside of the country pose?

    Fred responds that he monitors local Zambian news websites, and runs an online news station where they interview Zambians still in the country. They’ve reached the point where Zambian newspapers actually monitor their show for news, indicating a level of trust despite their physical location outside of the country. They have built credibility.

    Kenyans on Twitter (#kot) are trying to change the rest of the world’s perception of Africa, and of Kenya in particular.

    What happens when a particular person in the diaspora becomes a voice representing the home community? When the international media seek them out to speak for others? In effect, how does the diaspora community deal with representation?

    Elaine says it would be extremely difficult for Cubans living on the island to accept a representative voice in the diaspora as legitimate, because they are the ones living their lives in Cuba. When she found herself at a conference in Rio de Janeiro for a couple of weeks, she found herself having nothing to write about Cuba on her blog. She argues that being physically present in a place is mandatory to forming an authentic opinion about events there. You can really only know what’s going on in Cuba when you’re there, when you get a feel for what’s really going on on the ground. Susan points to Yoani Sanchez’s Generation Y as another example of a blogger who no longer claims to represent Cuba, having left the country.

    Nanjira says that Kenyans in the diaspora have a duty to communicate about the country to the rest of the world. The real story gets oversimplified. For example, there are several advisories against traveling in Kenya right now due to recent grenade attacks, and that’s what gets international press. But there’s also the Global Voices Summit taking place this week. Journalists and others in the diaspora need to tell that story to the world, and counter mainstream media organizations like CNN, whose coverage is sometimes completely inaccurate, or at best incomplete.

    Nanjira warns that anyone in the diaspora who takes a preachy, condescending approach when talking about the home country is not very highly regarded at home. People in the diaspora write op-eds for foreign newspapers, but these individuals rarely engage online. Kenyans still in the country try to get in touch with them, but they never hear back. There’s little conversation that continues, such as in the comments sections on online newspaper op/eds.

    Overall, new media is having a huge effect: the diaspora goes to new sources for breaking news and information (e.g. the Red Cross for on-the-ground news from grenade attacks) on the same online platforms on which they are engaging.

    Nanjiru responds to comment from a Kenyan (who’s lived in the country and in the diaspora) about generalizing others’ experiences: How do you bridge the gaps in the current engagement between those here and abroad? It starts with the dialogue, and social media can help. She says Kenyans are very divided as a people, both here and abroad. We need to have a “think tank”, to have that dialogue as a people and unify.

  • When you meet a giraffe

    I went to the Giraffe Center in Nairobi today. They’ve successfully brought an endangered species of giraffe back from the edge of extinction. But also, they let you feed the giraffes. This is what that looks like: