Since 2008, President Obama has been essentially crowned the king of political technology. From his use of social media in the campaign to his transition team, the President was deeply engaged with technology. I think we all recall the fight over his blackberry.
This year for the annual State of the Union address, the President has again engaged the use of technology by offering advanced information to those who use digital technology. For instance, you could have gone to YouTube and uploaded a question that he could answer on Thursday or you can visit the White House website during the speech to see annotated statistics and graphs illustrating how the White house came to the conclusions drawn in the speech. Or you can do what I’m doing and participate in a nationwide poll that could gauge the reactions of hundreds of thousands of citizens, right from the comfort of your smartphone.
If you ever watched The West Wing, you may have seen this clip where, during a State of the Union the White House is collecting polling numbers based on live-reactions to the speech. If you don’t salivate over polling data like I do, then give this clip a watch for a quick understanding of what I am talking about.
This year for the annual State of the Union address, the President has again engaged the use of technology by offering advanced information to those who use digital technology. For instance, you could have gone to YouTube and uploaded a question that he could answer on Thursday or you can visit the White House website during the speech to see annotated statistics and graphs illustrating how the White house came to the conclusions drawn in the speech. Or you can do what I’m doing and participate in a nationwide poll that could gauge the reactions of hundreds of thousands of citizens, right from the comfort of your smartphone.
If you ever watched The West Wing, you may have seen this clip where, during a State of the Union the White House is collecting polling numbers based on live-reactions to the speech. If you don’t salivate over polling data like I do, then give this clip a watch for a quick understanding of what I am talking about.
Last year MoveOn.org ran an approach with similar “dial-in” live reporting amongst its members. You had to sign in and the results were, by the nature of MoveOn.org, rather partisan. They then presented the results of the survey with little to no reference data as to what it meant. This year a group called SurveySwipe has put together an iPhone app that lets users dial in their reactions to the State of the Union. While not a scientific survey, this approach may provide the largest number of respondents to the President Obama’s speech. Blackberry and Android users can still download the app and answer polling questions, but will not be able to provide live dial-in reactions. SurveySwipe has guaranteed that the results of this survey will be released under a Creative Commons BY 3.0 license meaning that as long as users attribute SurveySwipe as the source, anyone regardless of party can use this data.
While this app is being sponsored by partisan or ideological groups, we find this use of technology innovative and interesting because it will provide a unique snapshot of our nation’s reactions to President Obama’s State of the Union address regardless of which groups help fund the project.
While this app is being sponsored by partisan or ideological groups, we find this use of technology innovative and interesting because it will provide a unique snapshot of our nation’s reactions to President Obama’s State of the Union address regardless of which groups help fund the project.
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