They do a lot of Facebooking, tweeting, sharing, liking, retweeting, etc., on the social media.
Some do Thunderclapping and Twitter storming to augment communications effect.
The "reach" of these social media communications by campaign finance reformers may be gauged.
That "reach" is probably hundreds of thousands of persons who are recipients of social media communications made by campaign finance reformers.
To evaluate how these social media communications may contribute to success in achieving campaign finance reform goals, one should consider the extent to which the communications are received primarily by persons who are like minded and who already have greater than average awareness of campaign finance reform efforts and are supportive of the same. This will be the case largely due to people selecting for themselves which social media circles they want to be part of, and this results in conventional social media communications being received to a very large extent by like minded persons.
Coming at it from the other side, think about all the people who have virtually no awareness of campaign finance reformers but who might be persuaded to have an interest and be supportive if they knew more. There are also persons who have awareness but who do not place top priority on campaign finance reform goals. In all these cases, some effect can result merely from seeing that someone else has had sufficient interest to send a communication.
Consider people who evidence an interest in politics such as Twitter followers of political candidates, office holders, and political parties. There are many, many millions of such persons with such interest, but relatively few will be recipients of social media communications made by campaign finance reformers.
As an example, Donald Trump has more than five million followers on Twitter. There is messaging that campaign finance reformers should want to make to those followers, but very few will be recipients of social media communications made by campaign finance reformers because of the "like mindedness" phenomenon in social media circles.
I have been urging campaign finance reformers to find ways, in the social media, to break through the limitations of like mindedness in social media circles.
Most recently, I have been communicating with Democracy Spring about this.
I set forth below our email correspondence with individual identification deleted. I don't know whether Democracy Spring will support my ideas for how to "break out of the confine of like minded social media circles." I hope it is supportive.
I have been urging other campaign reform organizations to take this up, and I will continue to do so.
The central question for all concerned would seem to be whether "breaking out of the confine of like minded social media circles" will make the social media communications of campaign finance reformers more effective and increase the chances for success.
UPDATE 2/27
See Breaking out, Part II.
[Email correspondence with Democracy Spring]
From: Rob Shattuck <rdshattuck@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 5:36 AM
Subject: Example of technique
To: __________
_________,
At this moment, I am using the #DemDebate hashtag to send individual tweets to persons whose tweets are in that hashtag stream. My tweet to them says
Does your Prez candidate believe in citizens' #DeclareForDemocracyeffort? http:// 2016candidatesdeclarations. blogspot.com/2015/11/2016- congressional-candidate- declaration.html
In about 20 minutes of doing this, there have been 59 pages views of the link and 5 Twitter notifications back to me.
In the Presidential debate hashtag streams, there is a broad spectrum of tweeters using the hashtags, and my tweets right now are going to a broad spectrum.
I think this is a good example of my technique "breaking through the confine of social media circles of like minded people."
Sincerely,
Rob
Date: Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 5:14 PM
Subject: Re: Breaking out of confine of like minded social media circles
To: _________
Thanks again for your replying, ________.
To start, I wish to reiterate how well I think #DemocracySpring and #DeclareForDemocracy meld, with the former focused more on the April action and the latter more focused on the Congressional races. See link. Publicizing and mobilizing regarding both can be mutually supportive and be done jointly if desired. The two efforts could even be merged into one.
As to other organizations, I think publicizing and mobilizing about all their respective activities is mutually supporting, subject only to time that is spent doing something specific to the agenda of one organization is not available to be spent on the agenda of another organization. Take MoveToAmend as an example. Publicizing and mobilizing relative to Democracy Spring also helps MoveToAmend's goal, and vice versa, I believe.
You know better than I, but does not the status of Democracy Spring sponsoring organizations bespeak that those organizations would be supportive of their respective members and followers helping out on the Democracy Spring effort? I am sure Democracy Spring wants to think so and will be suggestive to the sponsoring organizations to encourage their members and followers to lend a hand on the Democracy Spring front.
I have endeavored to draw out the organizations and will continue to do that. On all the various organizations, I say, let what comes, come.
Before stating my advice, let me indicate the reaction I am seeking from Democracy Spring. I would like something of this tenor:
Democracy Spring understands how, via Twitter, you are trying "to break through the confine of communications limited to social media circles of like minded people and to achieve broader messaging to persons who are outside such social media circles and who are potentially receptive to information about the cause and may be persuaded to help the cause." Democracy Spring encourages you in your Twutter efforts and encourages others to join in with you in such Twitter efforts. You may say publicly that Democracy Spring is encouraging of your efforts and of others joining in on your efforts.
With such a reaction of Democracy Spring, I would proceed to try to recruit volunteer tweeters with tweets. such as "Be a volunteer tweeter for Democracy Spring. http://
My advice and suggested technique are indicated in my blog entry Tactics. That is the starting structure for the effort I initiated and will be subject to developing, revising and adapting. It is readily adaptable for #DemocracySpring.
On the matter of hashtags, I can envision tweets with no hashtags, with #DemocracySpring and/or #DeclareForDemocracy, and with possible other hashtags depending on the particular tweeting context and the targets of the particular tweeting.
I am up and running with #DeclareForDemocracy and can get going right away for #DemocracySpring if Democracy Spring approves.
If you have any questions, or want to discuss, just let me know.
I hope DemocracySpring goes with this.
Sincerely,
Rob
On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 1:24 PM, __________ wrote:
You make an excellent point. Reaching people outside of like-minded circles is a challenge. I have tried making connections between the goals of our campaign and the goals of other organizations. For example, big money corruption in politics affects every issue to some extent. So there's a common ground there. However, getting folks to stand together on that ground isn't easy. Specifically on Twitter, hashtags can be used in an attempt to reach a broader audience and unite around common goals. What are your thoughts? Are there any techniques or advice that you would offer?Thank youOn Dec 19, 2015 11:58 AM, "Rob Shattuck" <rdshattuck@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear ________,
I would like to elaborate on the reference in my previous email to whether Thunderclap and TwitterStorm have limitations in getting messaging out.While Thunderclap and TwitterStorm may reach large numbers of people, a preponderance of those people are likely to be already like minded and already generally aware of the information being communicated. Further those large numbers of people are a very, very small percentage of all voters and citizens, and you could almost say 99% lay totally outside the reach of the messaging being done.DemocracySpring should be cognizant of the foregoing and should strive for ways to break through the confine of communications limited to social media circles of like minded people and should seek to achieve much broader messaging to persons in the 99% who are outside such social media circles, but who may nonetheless be open to information about the cause and be persuaded to support the cause.I have been endeavoring for almost two years to break through this confine in question and advocate to others in the movement that they seek to break through the confine.I first tried to do this in the realm of email. There is a similar social media circle confine if emails are limited to social media circles in the form of email lists of like minded persons.. You may read about how I tried to break out of the confine in the email realm in these blog entries of mine from 2014:After I gained familiarity with Twitter, I decided Twitter was more amenable for seeking to break through the confine of like minded social media circles, and I have been focused almost exclusively in trying to do that on Twitter for the past 18 months.I hope this is helpful explanation to DemocracySpring concerning what I am seeking, and I am very much interested in what you and others involved with DemocracySpring think about 'breaking out of the confine of social media circles of like minded persons."Thank you very much.Sincerely,Rob Shattuck
From: Rob Shattuck <rdshattuck@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 3:42 PM
Subject: Re: Democracy Spring
To: __________
Thank you, ________.
Can we discuss what the nature of Thunderclap and TwitterStorm are, what their limitations are in pushing messaging out to the public, and what the nature is of the tweeting campaigns I am advocating and how they may work to push messaging out to the public that Thunderclap and TwitterStorm may not accomplish?
Sincerely,
Rob
On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 3:26 PM, __________ wrote:
Hello Rob,Thanks for reaching out. We recently conducted a Thunderclap campaign and organized a TwitterStorm around its release date and time. I would love to work with you on future social media efforts. Look forward to hearing from you and connecting on Twitter!
On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 10:19 AM, Rob Shattuck <rdshattuck@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Sir,
I would like to participate in designing and implementing a tweeting campaign for DemocracySpring. Please see http://2016candidatesdeclarations. blogspot.com/2015/12/tweeting- tweeting-tweeting.html Thank you.
Rob Shattuck
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