Dear [first_name],

I hope you enjoy this month's topics. This is your newsletter, so if you like or don't like something about it, please email us at newsletter@bullmoosemarketing.com and we will adapt. Like everything in politics and everything on the Web, we too at Bull Moose Marketing need to be flexible...

Thanks for reading,
Nick Ellinger
CEO, Bull Moose Marketing, LLC.


In this issue...

Case Study: Uzbekistan - Opposition Parties in an Authoritarian Government

Some have been critical of the US war on terror, saying that it has had the unintended consequence of propping up dictatorships through Central Asia, most notably in Pakistan and Uzbekistan. However, even unintended consequences have unintended consequences. The authoritarian head of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, abuses civil rights, shut down the media, and limits debate. In order to create the current US-Uzbekistani alliance, Karimov eased his grip on NGOs and allowed a referendum on both extending his rule and on a bicameral parliament (these elections were not free in the traditional sense, in that they singled out people who wanted to vote no). The interesting outcome of this is that by making Karimov feel more secure, the US has allows him to loosen the reins slightly. Featured Sites

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are where to go if you need to find anything from about human rights abuses around the world. It just so happens that HRW just released a report condemning religious persecution in Uzbekistan (which you can read here).


Which brings us to the subject of this article--the behavior of opposition groups on the Web. Most forms of expression have been limited, but Web sites are relatively unfettered. One of the strongest points to note is intended audience. Consider the new big thing in the United States' party and candidate sites--having the site in two languages (usually English and Spanish). About three-quarters of Uzbekistanis speak Uzbek and another 15% speak Russian. Logically, then sites would be in Uzbek with some more sophisticated sites in both Uzbek and Russian. However, the Birlik Party site is in Uzbek and is translatable into English, Turkish, and Russian and the Erk Party site (Birlik and Erk are the two major opposition parties) is in Uzbek and is translatable into English, French, German, Turkish, and Russian. From this, we can conclude that a primary audience is not fellow citizens, but countries that can bring diplomatic pressure to bear on Uzbekistan.

This conclusion is further supported by the content of the site (here, we refer to the English language content, as no-one in our office can speak Uzbek). Most of the content is not pages designed to mobilize or inform citizens about the policies of the party; rather, the content aims to educate the outside world about the situation in Uzbekistan. Of the 20 links on the Birlik site, all but two or three speak directly to political repression in Uzbekistan. The Erk site is similar in content.

An additional point of interest is a heavy use of coproduction (see below for a definition). The Erk site links to reports from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, Reuters and AP articles, The Washington Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, NPR, and more mixed in equal quantities to party statements and Uzbek news sources. The Birlik site has a similar mix. One unique point is that these sites reprint the articles to their servers rather than link directly to the articles (perhaps to avoid dead links). This high amount of coproduction allows the sites to have very low overhead; the sites can serve as clearinghouses of various information on the Uzbeki situation without having to create reports themselves.

One recommendation for these sites is the inclusion of message boards, where Uzbekis can describe their situation to the outside world. This level of coproduction would be low-cost and would help put a human face on the autocratic repression. The Birlik site apparently had such a feature, but doesn't any longer. The only significant cost would be that of translation, which seems not to be a large problem for these sites.

What lessons can we draw from this?
  • Identify your audience. The Uzbeki opposition parties knew that the best chance to achieve change is not from within, but from without. Thus, they focused their resources on making sites that appeal to non-Uzbeki citizens, specifically those in a position to exert influence.
  • Make do with what you have. Production value on these sites can't be considered high; however, the information they contain is. This was achieved through a high level of coproduction that lowered entry costs.
  • Use authoritative sources. To avoid the appearance of partisanship or hysteria, these sites both used third-party reports as a means of bolstering their claims.
  • Be useful. Flair and games are nice, but these sites have a very serious purpose and achieve it with no frills. One of their goals must be to get journalists to bookmark these sites as strong resources from which to get information about the country. A few significant articles could increase their visibility significantly.
If you need help with your site, request a free consulting report from Bull Moose Marketing.

Sources:

Birlik Popular Movement of Uzbekistan home page. http://www.birlik.net/

CIA World Factbook 2001. Uzbekistan. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/.

Erk Democratic Party home page. http://www.uzbekistanerk.org/

Newberg, Paula. The Los Angeles Times. "Uzbekistan; Democracy Sprouts From Autocracy." 2002, July 14, M2.

RFE/RL Central Asia Report. http://www.rferl.org/centralasia/2002/01/5-310102.asp, 2002, January 31, Volume 2, Number 5.

Do you have any hints for our readers? Any questions, comments, or death threats? Please send them to newsletter@bullmoosemarketing.com.


From the Journals: The Internet in Election 2000 - Evolutionary or Revolutionary?

Back in the heady tulip-mania days of dot-com fever, the Internet was changing every thing, politics included. Now, in reaction mode, modern discourse tends to discount the revolutionary aspects of Internet politics. This month's From the Journals article swings the pendulum back, saying that there are three rapidly changing systems of online political action--coproduction, carnival, and mobilization. They examine all three, as will we.

Coproduction is defined as different actors producing digital materials separately that combine to create a coherent whole. There are four distinct types of coproduction:
  • Coproducing site features. For example, ABC News had a campaign watchdog feature that asked individuals to submit misleading marketing or claims. They then researched these and posted the results on their site.
  • Coproducing sites. Web White & Blue is perhaps the best example of this, wherein presidential candidates and nonprofit organizations debated the issues of the day and news organizations supplied their stories all updated daily. This is perhaps the most novel of coproduction methods, because it featured competing news organizations, political organizations, and campaigns coproducing a site.
  • Coproducing across Internet applications. Many different groups supplemented their own resources by partnering with experts in other technical areas. This is most common with Web pages posting to chat, bulletin boards, and e-mail lists that share their views.
  • Linking. A good example of this is listed below in the Uzbekistan article. Closer to home, many candidate sites linked to third-party news articles and advocacy papers.
While much of this seems rather mundane (linking is an inherent part of the Web), this type of coproduction is not often found in political campaigns off of the Web--the closest approximate is campaign materials quoting outside scores. Thus, coproduction has helped change the way campaigns are run.

The second type of changing system of political action is carnival, or, the breaking of established norms as a form of political action. Most carnival forms are not on official sites; for example, some sites broke norms against violence by allowing you to digitally slap major candidates. The Doonesbury site ran Duke, a cartoon character for president, with a site that rivaled the features of some real sites. However, some mainstream organizations broke norms through carnival sites as well; the DNC created a site called iknowwhatyoudidintexas.com (no longer exists) that discussed then-Gov. Bush's environment record in Texas.

While carnival could just be an extension of traditional political organization, digital media allows these citizens to reframe speeches and events. For example, Zach Exley, creator of the GWBush.com parody site, took quotes and video clips of Bush saying things like "There ought to be limits to freedom." and used them to parody Bush's views. This site mobilized protests to the election on November 11, the first large-scale attempt to organization via the Web alone. For the first time, parody efforts organized more people than more traditional advocacy groups could.

Mobilization is already well known from offline efforts--persuading someone to persuade others to act a certain way. There are four obvious types of mobilization:
  • Civic promotion: Those who wish only to promote voter education or voter numbers
  • Issue promotion: Asking visitors to vote on the basis of a particular issue
  • Candidate promotion: Asking visitors to vote for or against a certain candidate
  • Protest: Like it says
There is one non-obvious form of mobilization--vote swapping. The goal was to persuade Nader supporters in close states to vote for Gore, in return for a Gore supporter in an already decided state for vote for Nader (so that Nader could get federal matching funds). This type of mobilization could hardly have existed without the Web.

In summary, coproduction options increase the ways citizens can participate in campaigns and decrease costs of participation. Carnival actions can harness creative energies and mobilize people inexpensively. Online mobilization has lower costs in time and money than offline action. Thus, if online campaigning is not a revolutionary mode of communication, it is at least a significant step forward in evolution.

Quick Clicks

The quick clicks for August 2002:
  • Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonist Index. Look at editorial cartoons from literally around the world. Now you can get that daily outrage or it's-funny-because-it's true fix from more that your local newspaper.
  • Bruce Clay's Search Engine Chart. Must have Adobe Acrobat Reader to open. This charts the relationships among various search engines and is a valuable tool in your search engine optimization efforts.
If you have a site you would think should be a quick click, send it to newsletter@bullmoosemarketing.com.

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Source: 2002 Bull Moose Marketing; www.bullmoosemarketing.com/politics