I found over the course of the last two weeks that the Obama emails have slowed to a trickle. After his election victory, there certainly has not been a lack of news to report or reason to let his carefully constructed netroots go by the wayside.
In many ways, this period as president-elect is vital for Obama to live up to the promise that change on the way – that the way elected officials, yes even presidents, communicate with their grassroots will be conducted with greater transparency.
Justin Boland writing for the html times provides a great analysis of the way Obama used his netroots with on-the-ground strategy to carry him to victory. Even more, Boland suggests that the same information sharing and organzing Obama supporters did on behalf of their candidate has to continue in a constructive manner if the campaign promises Obama made are to be lived up to.
So far, this hasn’t happened. Case in point, the emails we all receive from David Plouffe have been a day late and a dollar short. It’s almost as if the very online communications tactics that were used so effectively during the campaign have been forgotten.
The office of the president-elect could have tipped off his netroots supporters during the passed two weeks of Obama’s cabinet selections and economic team. Fact sheets, like those created during the campaign, could have been compiled to make the case to his supporters and then used by his supporters to make the case to their own social networks. This hasn’t happened and it worries me that the great promise of Obama’s online communications strategies will not be realized now that he is elected.
In this disappointment, there is a huge opportunity for Obama’s supporters to communicate back to their leadership and demand the same sort of transparency that existed in the campaign continue into the White House. Boland points to online public affairs successes like OpenSecrets and Visualizing Earmarks as models by the public to keep elected officials in check. That same sort organizing must continue. Hopefully, it will also wake up the transition team to again communicate the strategies and policies of the Obama office.
