Bonuses, Bailouts, Social Media and Anger

President Obama's communications people are making the argument that the AIG bonuses issue is an obsession for the Beltway chattering class but little more than a distraction for the rest of us. So just for kicks, I went over to Blogpulse to track mentions of "AIG" in the blogosphere over the past six months - as well as mentions of AIG and "bailout" together and AIG and "bonuses" together. Here's what I saw:



Not surprisingly, online chatter about AIG spiked when news broke about the company's "retention bonuses." The smaller blue spikes coincide generally with news about more taxpayer dollars going to bail out the company, as the yellow lines tend to show. But since the blogosphere tends to extend beyond Washington DC, I'm thinking it's a fairly major topic of discussion these days. Nearly one percent of all blog posts Blogpulse monitors mentioned AIG on a single day.

Looking at the chart it's easy to assume, though perhaps not conclude, that people are not necessarily angry about AIG getting bailed out, but they're angry about AIG getting bailed out and AIG employees making large sums of money in the process.

But there's more to it than that. To me, the anger is so strong because people feel this information has been intentionally hidden for so long, and because people don't feel they have any ability to correct a mindnumbingly obvious problem. And more importantly, developments in both mainstream and social media over the past few years have given people the expectation of more access and control.

The development of the 24-hour news cycle by cable networks such as CNN conditioned consumers to expect news as it happened. As other networks and news outlets were forced to compete, consumers were literally inundated with information. They remain so to this day.

As social media technologies developed and matured, consumers began to share their own voices and created a new set of expectations. Consumers often want news to fit their own world view, so they go to the outlets that suit their ideology or interests. They helped shape the news by providing faster and more powerful feedback. Finally, consumers started reporting the news themselves - we hear about earthquakes and terrorist attacks via twitter before any news network can even get the sattelite truck in place.

These developments have created a cultural shift and have altered our expectations for information. While it's never really been acceptable to cover up injustice, it's easy to argue the frustration is amplified today.

This cultural shift remains at odds with some of America's most venerable and powerful institutions. Wall Street, certainly. Many corporate board rooms. The halls of Congress. And yes, at times, the traditional media.

The AIG situation is just the latest example. Look at the relatively slow pace information has been released and the questions that remain unanswered - who are the 11 people who received "retention bonuses" but are no longer with the company? Who negotiated the bonus agreements? Who rejected the Senate provisions capping executive pay in the bailout legislation?

To be fair, I think it's understandable at times to want to resist providing this kind of information. But this isn't one of those times, and there's been a profound cultural disconnect between the Washington-Wall Street axis and the rest of the country - and that disconnect has played itself out through social media channels.

Bloggers call you out when you call a cap of $500,000 on annual executive pay "draconian." Or when you call struggling homeowners "losers." Or when you ask for only half of the bonuses back. People see the hypocrisy of railing against "socialist" healthcare or insisting on "merit pay" for people like schoolteachers - all while threatening armageddon if trillions in public funds aren't handed over to banks without strings, and then given away in annual bonuses for an underperforming derivatives trader worth more than a schoolteacher will see in several lifetimes.

But what really sets people off is when you try to hide it or, when discovered, spin it. Some advice: bottom line, the public is going to find this out eventually. Don't prolong the agony - come clean, say you're sorry, and show how you won't do it again. Subpoena-driven drip, drip, drip stories like this one will kill you. Further, don't insist that the people who caused the problem are the only people who can fix it. It's just not true.

In my career in politics and communications, I've heard the same refrain from corporate execs, lobbyists, and politicians more times than I can count - "it's not our ideas or our actions that are the problem - we're just not explaining them very well."

In this case, actually, the people understand you just fine. The solutions are obvious. That's why they're so mad.

The Purple Tunnel of Doom

Seems it's not always smooth when you try to get together with two million of your closest friends. It's interesting then, that the disgruntled masses have started a Facebook group. Also interesting is the support group.

Welcome to political protest in 2009. Five gets you ten the White House will address this, in some way, through the social media channels that people are using.

South Ossetia: Social Media Tells the Rest of the Story

I must be signed up to the wrong email alerts. Over Friday and the weekend I had plenty of information sent directly to my inbox about John Edwards, Bernie Mac and Issac Hayes - but nothing about South Ossetia, where for a while there it looked like the cold war was beginning again.

For those of you who get your news from western television, Georgia (the country, not the state) became an independent country right after the fall of the Soviet Union. Georgia's territory included enclaves (like South Ossetia and Abkhazia) that border Russia and in which a majority of the people feel more loyal to Russia than Georgia. South Ossetia is separated from North Ossetia in Russia by a mountain range. Many people in South Ossetia carry Russian passports. Virtually all countries and international organizations consider South Ossetia to be part of Georgia, but the people there have declared independence and set up a de facto government. Georgia has worked to install an autonomous provincial government there, but as recent events show it hasn't gone smoothly. Last week Georgia sent troops into South Ossetia's capital, Tskhinvlali, to surround the sepratist government there. Russia responded quickly by calling Georgia's movements criminal, even genocidal, and quickly occupied the territory by force. Some reports indicate the Georgian military is attempting to withdraw and call a cease-fire, though the Russians dispute this.

News junkies like me have scurried to the interwebs to find as much information as possible. I immediately bypassed US coverage (which to be candid hasn't been terrible but clearly hasn't been great either) and used BBC as my starting point. They've put together a reasonably useful tick-tock of the crisis, but they've also rushed to put up a "lessons learned" piece that is more than a bit presumptous.

Not surprisingly, the US media has focused on the US-Russia dynamic, particularly at the UN Security Council. This isn't without justification; the Russian media suggests the United States actually orchestrated Georgia's initial move into South Ossetia. This has produced a tense (and some would argue embarrassing) public exchange at the Security Council meeting between US and Russian diplomats. Associated Press also ran a story about how Georgia is moving its 1000 troops from Iraq to make them available for the conflict in its own borders - but since it's an AP story I don't want to get into trouble for linking to it.

I confess it's been hard to find comprehensive Georgian media coverage in English, though I did find The Messenger, which includes headlines like "The World Supports Georgia" and Yes, It's War With Russia." The Messenger has been providing updates via its (rather sparse but still informative) blog. Not surprisingly, the most commented post was one about the safety and location of its journalists.

Of course, I'm relying on social media channels to fill out the narrative and get the most complete story. As expected, wikipedians quickly assembled a list of international reactions to the events in South Ossetia that I haven't been able to find anywhere else. The big-thinkers have shared their big thoughts on blogs like Globalsecurity.org, Open Democracy and Whirled View. I've assembled a bunch of links on my del.icio.us page with the tag Ossetia.

The best source of information is, once again, Global Voices Online. They've set up a special section on the conflict that includes everything you could ask for - background, links to posts from individual bloggers on the ground (I was struck by this post from a pair of Peace Corps Volunteers in the Tblisi area) as well as experts across the globe, a South Ossetia flickr stream, and links to other mainstream media sources. GVO is doing a great job assembling the overwhelming about of content and pushing it through a smart, balanced human filter. I've said it before - if you want to see the future of journalism, and how journalists will cover a crisis in the future, look at GVO today.

BRITS r cmn! - paul

Sara Rich at Worldchanging is talking about how smart mobs are having a measurable impact on government decisions in China, at least at the local level:

In Xiamen, on the southeastern coast of China, a petrochemical corporation has been constructing a $1.4 million factory to produce p-Xylene, a highly toxic petrochemical used to make polyester for fiber and plastic packaging. Public concern in the city over the health risks posed by the factory's presence has been stirring dissent for some time, but opponents face the powerful joint force of a corporation and the government. Then several weeks ago, someone sent a text message. It said:

Once this extremely poisonous chemical is produced, it means an atomic bomb will have been placed in Xiamen. The people of Xiamen will have to live with leukemia and deformed babies. We want our lives and health!

Danwei provides many more details on the overwhelming local opposition to the project and how the media has covered the controversy.

It's very easy to assume that technology is the pivot point that changed everything in this situation - without the high-tech solutions that enable targeted communication to move at breakneck speed, these activists would never be able to outsmart a determined and government-backed corporation in China.

Frankly, I don't think such a notion would do the organizers justice. The tool wasn't the factor -- the creative and strategic application of the available technology was.

Text messaging isn't exactly cutting-edge anymore. Danwei shows there were more advanced technological options available - but they were also well-established and the government was shutting them down before messaging could propagate effectively in those channels. This effort was relatively low-tech, but definitely high-concept. It involved a strategy that identified opinion leaders, attracted self-selecting communities, and implemented a suite of evolving and mobile communications tactics.

This wasn't a mob, it was a campaign.

In fact, the concept of the smart mob is nothing new -- only the name is. Paul Revere roused the Minutemen using nothing more than a lantern in a church tower, a horse, and his voice. But even Revere's plans depended on a network of volunteers who knew to wait for a signal and would be ready to move in a minute. That took weeks, even months, to plan - and it relied on the creativity and daring of determined people.

I realize this may sound like blasphemy to the technophiles who stop by here, but I think the success of protestes in Xiamen shows us that tools don't have to be sophisticated as long as the people who use them are strategic and creative.