Reading Mike Connery's timely post on the demographics of social networking sites (see also the DailyKos diary for some excellent commentary, particularly with user "Molton"), I'm beginning to think that there is a great deal of value in studying social networking sites. That's actually a fairly obvious point, so I'll expand: there's a great deal of value in studying how they are being used by campaigns and other political groups.
Jack Carter, though he looks to be in a pretty tough race, has broken a lot of new ground in the online campaigning world. So has Mark Warner. But are they doing a good job or not? What kind of practices can they borrow from local political groups? What can they contribute?
Social networking sites have a lot of potential, but could easily be a big waste of time. Here's a simple example: my DFA group could create a Facebook account, look for liberals in our area, and email each one of them directly to ask them to join our group. Alternatively, we could strike up "friendships" with other community-group accounts, like the group for people in Cambridge. Which is a more effective use of a volunteer's time? What's the best messaging approach? Etc.
Moreover, these questions spill over into non-political groups and organizations like churches, unions, and media. Is there a good way for them to find people on social networking sites?
This post is more about questions than answers, but someone, I'm sure, is going to have to find the answer to all of this. No doubt the New Politics Institute is working on it for the political point of view, but we may need to expand our horizons and think about how we can use social networking sites to bring people into all sorts of liberal ideological conversion machines.
