In this class we looked at the similarities and differences in how Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are structured; how they burst onto the American political scene; the role of mainstream media in affecting their growth; and the challenges that come with open and networked political movements.

The slides are here; the pencast audio is here; and the simple audio is here.

We took a deep dive into the history and development of Meetup.org in this class, with the help of Scott Heiferman, the company’s founder and CEO. Meetup is best known for its use by the Howard Dean campaign in 2003-4, but in fact the site is much bigger now and mostly serving people with interests far beyond political campaigns.

Here’s the audio pencast of the discussion, and here’s an audio file.

In this class, we looked at how the 2008 Barack Obama campaign made use of technology, and discussed who was most empowered by it, the campaign’s managers or its supporters.

The slides for the class are here. The pencast is here. The audio by itself is here.

In this class, we looked at the role of the Internet in Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign, and began to look at the 2008 Obama campaign as well. In particular, we looked closely at how the Dean campaign harnessed and benefited from network effects, and then began to explore the role of outside “free agents” in the 2008 race, notably Phil de Vellis and Joe Anthony.

The slides are here. The pencast audio of the class is here. And the downloadable audio is here.

In this class we delved into the work of Clay Shirky (Here Comes Everybody) and Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom (The Starfish and the Spider), and looked at the rise of “starfish” organizations that are taking advantage of the Internet’s affordances. We closed the class with a discussion of Mark Pesce’s work on “hyperpolitics” and “hyperempowerment.”

The class slides are here. The audio and notes from the class discussion are here. And the plain old audio file is here.

In this class, we studied the work of Beth Kanter and Allison Fine, using their book The Networked Nonprofit, as well as David Weinberger’s chapter in the Cluetrain Manifesto on how hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. In addition we looked at Ivan Boothe’s writings on the evolution of the Genocide Intervention Network as an example of a networked nonprofit in action.

The slides are here. The pencast is here (audio and my notes). The audio alone is here.