Are the buttons too big? Is the type too small? Should it be bolded? Is there enough contrast in the color? Is it high enough resolution? As I waited in line to early vote yesterday and watched voters punch at the touchscreen, bend over to get a closer look at [...]

Mike Allen shares in interesting report in this morning’s Politico Playbook from the Emerging Media Research Council analyzing social media usage in US Senate elections specifically looking at the Florida Senate race. The draft report outlines three winning social media strategies (which seem pretty much like common sense to me). [...]

First we had Please Rob Me outlining the best time to burgle your friend’s house from foursquare information.  Now we have the IRS and the Justice Department training their agents on how to use social media to collect useful information about you. I know this sounds conspiracy theorist, but it’s [...]

I built a new web site over the weekend and launched it this morning– CampaignTwit. The site aggregates tweets from Arkansas politicians into a feed and page based on race.  Every race gets a page with all the most recent tweets from each candidate displayed on the page. The site [...]

Columbia Journalism Review has a great article on an interesting practice from their failed campaign: bullying reporters into covering things their way. Not suprisingly, it didn’t work, but their lead attack dog Michael Goldfarb explains their reasoning.

The Arkansas legislature convened yesterday and it’s apparent the digital revolution is chasing them down at full speed.  Last time around you could tune into the Arkansas Times Arkansas Blog for an overview or Steve Harrellson’s Under the Dome for the details, but you only got their distinct opinion on [...]

Today, January 1, 2009, Popeye the Sailor falls into public domain in Britian 70 years after it’s creators death because of an EU law that restricts the rights of authors to 70 years after their death. Falling into the public domain means anyone can print and sell posters, T-shirts and [...]

The PolySigh blog takes a look at what all reporters and editors know to be the hatchet they carry around in their back pocket– quoting their source verbatim and making them sound like an idiot. It’s common for reporters to clean up quotes by correcting grammar and removing verbal pauses [...]

I’m not an expert in polling research methodology at all, but I’ve recognize a couple flaws in the polls we constantly see touted in front of us. Sampling methods are flawed and don’t pull from a complete census. Tracking polls work for following trends, but not to predict what’s going [...]

It’s about that time in the Presidential election cycle for the media polls to start meaning absolutely nothing.  This always happens right about the same time the media really starts hyping the spread between the candidates in the poll. There are two issues with looking at nationwide polling data. First, [...]