Page 135 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

P1: GYG/IJD/IBA/IJD
August 14, 2002
18:0
CY101-Bimber
CY101-04
0 521 80067 6
Political Organizations
coalition of labor and civil rights organizations, women’s groups,
and environmentalists, who had in most cases no history of coopera-
tion or even interaction. 19
Even the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC), the
bastion of mass media–based politics, recognized by the late 1990s that
important new possibilities for communication were at hand. As the
main membership organization for traditional political campaign and
advertising professionals, AAPC distributes awards after each election
cycle for a variety of campaign accomplishments. These include awards
for best television advertisements, best radio advertisements, and best
print and direct mail campaigns. By 1998, AAPC acknowledged that its
memberswereincreasinglyinvolvedincommunicationusingnewmedia,
and after the elections that year it gave new awards for best candidate web
site, best organization web site, and best initiative web site. By the 2000
cycle, one in five of its awards went for Internet-based communication
strategies, in the categories of best presidential, statewide, congressional,
legislative, local initiative, and independent expenditure web sites; best
use of the web for fund raising, persuasion, and negative advertising; best
banner ads on web sites; and best overall Internet campaign. According
to Richard Schlackman, president of a direct mail firm in San Francisco
and member of the board of directors of AAPC, the association created
the new awards because “new technology has shown that it is beginning
to work.” 20
By the turn of the century, then, political groups across the spectrum
were exploring new means of communicating and managing political in-
formation. Virtually all established advocacy groups, such as NAM, were
using some form of Internet-based tools. Groups without a presence in
the traditional political landscape were forming and often disappearing
afterapoliticaleventhadrunitscourse,asinthecaseofMoveOnandoth-
ers. These had a new name emphasizing their speed and unpredictabil-
ity: “flash campaigns.” 21 On the surface, many of these cases exhibited
intriguing organizational structures bearing at least some of the mark-
ings of postbureaucracy. Yet, certainly, for each one of these cases there

19
Greg Miller, “Internet Fueled Global Interest in Disruptions,” Los Angeles Times,Dec.
2, 1999, p. A24.
20
Richard Schlackman, Campaign Performance Group; telephone interview with the
author, Dec. 5, 2000.
21
Rebecca Fairley Raney, “Flash Campaigns: Online Activism at Warp Speed,” New York
Times, Cybertimes Edition, June 3, 1999, http://www.politicsonline.com/archives/
usnews/usnews1999.html.
118