May 3rd, 2007
Barak Obama's "volunteer" should cost his campaign $39,000? I don't think so.
Social media is a double-edged sword for politicians and companies. Consider Barak Obama's MySpace page, which wasn't run by Barak Obama. Created in 2004 by Joe Anthony, it recently became the center of a small PR storm when the campaign asked for and was denied more control of the content.
Anthony revoked the campaign's access to the site and asked for $39,000 in exchange for the site, ostensibly to compensate him for his efforts. When the campaign refused and askedThere is a limit to what someone volunteering for a campaign or any project should expect in return. MySpace to hand over the page, folks got upset because the campaign had somehow dissed the volunteers who built its momentum. Duncan Black of Atrios.blogspot.com writes: "…I really don't understand the tendency to treat volunteers as disposable. 50 grand is chump change."
What does Mr. Black believe the word "volunteer" denotes? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a volunteer is a person who freely agrees to participate in an enterprise or undertake a task—without pay. One is not "disposable" when demanding $39,000 (or "50 grand"), they are a nuisance with a price tag.
There is a limit to what someone volunteering for a campaign or any project should expect in return. In this case, Mr. Anthony wanted to retain final control of what went on the Obama MySpace page, something that no one would accept if they had a MySpace page featuring their pictures and personal data that was in the hands of someone else. Volunteers should be heard and counted in a democracy, but they don't earn control of a national political campaign simply by volunteering their time and effort in one small sector of the campaign.
It was unconscionable to demand money for the Obama MySpace page. That's the same thing as hijacking someone's identity and demanding money to return it to them. Yes, some companies will buy a domain name for a brand they neglected to acquire, because it is cheaper than going to court. But in the case of a political volunteer, it's ridiculous to claim the high ground when holding a candidate's identity hostage.
Companies and politicians need to respect the people who undertake to promote them on the Web out of pure passion for the brand or cause, At the same time, people need to respect the rights of the organizations they engage with, such as the right to set their own agenda even when it disagrees in the particulars with what the volunteer believes.
If we want to hold politicians accountable, then let them set their agenda and live with the consequences. Same for the people who circulate DRM-cracking codes on Digg—it's their battle, not Digg's. A consistent ethics requires that everyone own their own words, that we allow candidates to own their own name wherever it appears, and that carriage not be confused with collaboration or endorsement of what people want to communicate to one another.
In the end, that means that volunteers are just giving time and energy on established terms: for free, to be revoked if they come into disagreement with the campaign, at which time they forfeit their previous work. Mr. Anthony should have quit and started a "not Barak Obama" MySpace page to see if he could show Obama was less popular than him. That would be clean politics, but he went for a pay-off and lost his credibility as a volunteer.
Mitch Ratcliffe is a veteran journalist, media executive and entrepreneur. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 05/03/07
