Staying On Message...Or Not

Mark Frederickson commented on my recent post about Michael Stein's interview with Michael Gilbert:

I think I have to weigh in on the Gilbert side of this debate, and for one simple reason: message. Email allows for better control of what you are saying and to whom. I believe the thought of allowing anyone the opportunity to add, change or diffuse an organization's message is scary (to me at least).

I come from an electoral background, where message manipulation is the primary focus of the campaign. I've seen campaigns burned by allowing anyone to use their websites as a soap box. In a similar vein, remember MoveOn.org's "Bush = Hitler" ad fiasco?

(I apologize in advance for linking to a Washington Times article - I would have found something better but I'm in a hurry ;-).

With email, an organization does not need to worry any (even well meaning) person hijacking the message.

My $0.02

Thanks for the comment, Mark.  As I noted in my post, I agree with Gilbert's underlying philosophy, but I also think that the combined proliferation of (on the one hand) self-publishing tools and (on the other) spam are working to move dialogue out of the Inbox and onto more public online spaces.

And for related reasons, I disagree with the idea that nonprofits should be focused on delivering a honed message (and on preventing anyone from altering that message.)  I'm sure you didn't intend it to sound this way, but that idea strikes me as patronizing, suggesting that "we" (i.e. the organization) have the right answer, and our job is to deliver a compelling message that will convince "them" (i.e. activists, donors, etc.) that we're right and motivate them to act accordingly.

Instead, I think that nonprofits should be focused on engaging their constituents in an active dialogue that's about listening and learning as much as anything else.  The idea that the people at the center--the organizational professionals--have all the answers just isn't true.  No matter what issues you're involved with, there are vast networks of people out there with a great deal of expertise and plenty of creative ideas. 

These people are your audience, and they want to get involved.  But they don't want to be told what to think.  They want to tell you what they think.  They're willing to listen, to be educated, and to be recruited to your cause as well, but treating them like passive recipients of your message is a sure way to turn them off and drive them away.

In recent years there's been a steady progression toward greater interactivity and responsiveness on the part of all institutions (except where they exercise monopoly control).  Nonprofits, schools, political campaigns, and businesses in every industry are increasingly engaged in conversations with their markets (see Cluetrain).

Email is great for broadcasting messages, broadcasting will continue to be important for most institutions, and email isn't going away any anytime soon.  But blogs and other public, visible, searchable and archivable web tools provide a much better platform for ongoing dialogues between an institution and its constituents.  Continuing to prioritize email over these other tools is a mistake and a missed opportunity for any institution.

cluetrain

Comments

[Mark Fredrickson]

Wow, I generated a front page post. Let's develop this a little more.

What concerns me is not a two-way exchange of information - I think that is an excellent idea. What worries me is multi-way communication that does not have any moderation, or oversight.

Let's look at some examples:
Usenet: In theory, this should be a great, free exchange of ideas, but forum after forum is destroyed by predatory spammers. The signal gets lost in the noise.

LA Times Editorial Wiki: A more recent example can be found in the recent LA Times "wikitorial" project. While it would have been nice to see what others wrote/added/deleted from the editorial, it quickly degenerated into (yet another) opportunity for spammers and porn peddlers.

Where's the balance between stiffling important, new ideas and allowing the crazies to run amok the message your organization has worked hard to hone? I don't have a good answer to this question, but I think one needs to be found.

[Ed]

Hey, this stuff is front-page news! :-)

But you do raise a great point, Mark--how to encourage participation in these forums while preventing trolls from destroying them.

Note that my support for open, public dialogue between institutions and their constituents on blogs, wikis and other collaborative spaces doesn't mean that institutions should just hand over the keys to these spaces and hope that they don't get ruined.

There's a happy medium to be found. If you're hosting a space where dialogue with your constituents can take place (and you should be), you have the right to impose some constraints to preserve its value, both for you and for your constituents.

I don't think Usenet is particularly instructive here. Plenty of forums have been overrun by spammers, but plenty are thriving as well. More importantly, it's not as if Usenet was going to be this huge thing and spammers killed it. Usenet never took off the way blogs have because it's not public, visible, or discoverable in the way that blogs are. It's a hidden resource for the initiated who want to have conversations among themselves--interesting if you're already among the initiated, but not if you're trying to reach a broader audience.

The LA Times wikitorial is a much more interesting case. Rather than simply writing it off as a failure, I think they gave up too early. Wikipedia is subject to the same type of abuse, but the site has such a large and active audience that any wiki-vandalism is almost immediately undone. It's a self-policing system. I think if the Times had tried some different things (parallel wikis, for the pro and con sides of contentious issues, for example), and had dedicated some more staff time to policing the site until their audience grew to a self-policing size, they might have been quite successful.