Table Of ContentThe Social Media President
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The Social Media President
Barack Obama and the Politics of
Digital Engagement
J E. K , M B , A J
AMES ATZ ICHAEL ARRIS AND NSHUL AIN
ISBN 978-1-137-38084-5 ISBN 978-1-137-37835-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137378354
THE SOCIAL MEDIA PRESIDENT
Copyright © James E. Katz, Michael Barris, and Anshul Jain, 2013.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-38085-2
All rights reserved.
First published in 2013 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978–1–137–38085–2 (hc)
ISBN: 978–1–137–38084–5 (pbk)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the
Library of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: December 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Part I Framing the Issue
1. Introduction and Overview 3
“Let Them Determine Its Course” 3
The Promise and Its Appeal 3
Models of American Government 4
Lines of Inquiry 6
Outline of the Book 9
2. Situating Social Media and Citizen Participation in the Obama Era 11
Definitions: Digital Engagement, Social Media, and the Social Media
President 11
From One-way to Multi-way Communication: A Gateway to Becoming
a Social Media President 14
Structures of Usage of the Public’s Voice in White House Social Media
Exercises 15
Three Modalities of Social Media Interaction between Government and
Citizens 16
Topical Focus and Case Study Selection 18
3. Digital Media and Electoral Politics: An Abbreviated History 21
Elections and Governance as Digital Media Emerges 22
Digital Media and the Presidency: The Challenge of Governance 37
Part II The Obama Presidency
4 . F raming the “People’s White House”: Crowdsourcing and
the Citizen’s Briefing Book 41
Expectations of Changing the Way Washington Works 41
Crowdsourcing in the Obama Administration Agenda: The Citizen’s
Briefing Book 44
Results of the Exercise 46
Impact of Report 49
Conclusion 50
vi CONTENTS
5. White House Online Town Hall 51
Seeking to Engage the American Public via Social Media 51
Critics Evaluate the Online Town Hall 53
Questions of Control and Predictability in Open Forums 54
The Pattern Continues 56
Ideologies of Engagement and Nonengagement 58
Conclusion 61
6. Grand Challenges: Crowdsourcing a Vision for Science and
Technology 63
“Fully Open Government” Grand Challenge 63
New Crowdsourcing Tool 65
Disconnection between Crowdsourcing and Policy Innovations 67
Conclusion 71
7. The Supreme Court Vacancies and the Healthcare Debate 73
Supreme Court Vacancies: Why Was Social Media Voting Not Used? 73
Social Media to Combat Opposition to Healthcare 78
Assessments of Healthcare Initiatives and Social Media 81
Conclusion 83
8. Social Media Modalities: Examples and Patterns from the
Obama White House 85
Three Modalities of Social Media for Government Policy 85
The “We the People” Campaign 90
Other Efforts to Gain Engagement 95
Free Moral Labor: Engaged Citizens as Propagators of Presidential
Viewpoints 103
Conclusion 108
9. Propagation of Social Media Modalities in the Federal Government 109
Resonance and Limits within the Administration 110
Implementation and Bureaucracy: Putting the Federal Data Sharing/
Transparency Directive into Action 113
Broader Operational Goals and Transparency 116
Progress in the Early Obama Administration 117
Interbranch Realities: A Changed Landscape 119
Democracy Watchdogs Review President Obama’s Early Social
Media Strategy 120
Assessment of Progress in the Early Years across the Three Modalities 1 21
Recent Progress 123
Glass Suggestion Boxes, Domestic and International 125
Conclusion 126
Part III Perspectives and Outlook on the Social
Media President
10. Analytical Perspectives 129
Sincere Motivations in a Constrained Landscape 129
Operational Shortcomings 135
Strategic Manipulation 140
CONTENTS vii
The Nonfeasibility of Direct Mass Engagement 141
An Absence of Design 143
Additional Considerations 143
Top-Down Leadership and Pronouncements about Social Media 146
Social Media and Citizen Imagination: Bringing the President Close 1 47
Sustaining the Engagement 148
Conclusion: The Road Not Taken 151
11. Conclusions and Implications 153
Broader Patterns of Social Media Realities 153
Digital Divide and Fundamental Inequalities of Digital Engagement 157
Strengthening Bureaucracies in Surprising Ways 158
Blowback of Disappointed Supporters 160
Misplaced Faith in the Wisdom of the People, as Reflected in
Plebiscites and Low-Interest Issues 160
Social Media Models of Behavior: “Economic Actor” Vis-à-vis
“Technocratic Citizen” 161
Civic Culture and Empowerment 164
Covert Activities and Hidden Consequences 165
Is There a Future for Presidential Social Media? 165
Closing Remarks 166
Implications for Future Directions 167
Perils of Social Media Steering 168
Appendix: Scholarship of Digital Media and the American Political Landscape 1 71
The Democratizing Potential of Information and Communication Technologies 171
Practical Limitations to Deliberative Democracy 173
Political Communication Scholarship 1 73
Presidential Scholarship 1 75
Media and Public Opinion Scholarship 1 76
Civic Engagement Scholarship 1 78
Digital Media and Transparency 178
Tapping the Organizing Power of Social Media 179
Notes 181
Index 203
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Acknowledgments
A s with any scholarly project, authors incur a deep debt from many
quarters. Here my coauthors and I have a chance to express appreciation to some of
the many people who have shared generously of their time and insights. When I was
at Rutgers University, the late Irving Louis Horowitz pressed me to initiate the pro-
ject and Dean Jorge Schement gave encouragement once it was launched. Rutgers
students Lora Appel and Daniel Halpern provided fascinating empirical backdrops
to citizen participation in federal social media offerings that have done much to
inform our thinking on the subject. Gratitude also goes to the Rutgers students who
participated in my seminars on media and culture, especially Rhaman Johnson,
Michelle Riley, and Marianne Stewart Titus. David G. Robinson and Ed Felten of
the Princeton University Center for Information Technology and Policy provided a
stimulating milieu in which to work. In 2012, I moved to Boston University where
the intellectual leadership of Dean Tom Fiedler of the College of Communication has
played an instrumental role in facilitating the book’s completion. During the work’s
development, John T. Carey contributed thoughtful ideas about public involvement
in policy via media as did Edward Tenner and Ron Rice concerning ideologies and
historical antecedents. Beth Noveck generously shared her time and insights. Nancy
Baym, James Shanahan, Kristóf Nyíri, András Benedek, Richard John, André
Caron, Craig Calhoun, Michael Schudson, Barry Wellman, Fred Turner, Anne-
Marie Slaughter, Eszter Hargittai, Joachim Höflich, Leopoldina Fortunati, Rich
Ling, Jack Harris, Jeffrey Boase, Zeynep Tufekci, Aaron Shaw, Paul DiMaggio,
Letizia Caronia, Paul Starr, Joe Turow, Scott Campbell, Andy Chadwick, David
Greenberg, John Pavlik, Matt Weber, Jack Bratich, Dino Christenson, Douglas
Kriner, Gianpietro Mazzoleni, Fausto Colombo, Peppino Ortoleva, and Aram
Sinnreich offered valuable perspectives. Amanda McGarry and Allison Keir played
vital roles at the infrastructural level, as did Allison DeAngelis. Joyce Walsh offered
discerning advice concerning cover design. I benefited from the advice of editors
Vicky Cullen, Scarlet Neath, and Brian O’Connor.
M anuel Castells was incisive and discerning in his advice at an early stage; Matt
Hindman, Phil Howard, Dave Karpf, and Daniel Kreiss were extraordinarily helpful
at the project’s closing stages. The highly talented Liz Crocker, who joined my team
in 2013, rendered invaluable assistance in conducting interviews, tracking down
important leads, and at many junctures incisively contributed to the manuscript.
