Voters: Part 1 - Multimedia Tagging Project

I had comes across the Voters Screencast and was gonna use for Screencast of the Week for last week, but I didn't get a chance to publish last week.  (I will shortly ...)  This morning I got an email from my colleagues at NTEN telling me it was an awesome example of tagging.  So, decided to look at from both these angles.  This post takes a quick look at the the Voters project as a tagging project to glean some learnings.

The intent of the project is "By tagging content related to Minnesota's election, more voter s will be heard."

They are using tags to aggregate voter-generated content about Minnesota's 2006 election and politics.  They are encouraging people to tag into del.icio.us, flickr, YouTube, etc. and then aggregating tagged content on their site.   The content aggregation is not moderated.  The next step, of course, is to throw in a little remix and participatory media culture into it!

Let's examine this as a community-driven tagging project.  Here's what I like about it:

• There is excellent documentation on how to use the tags in the wiki and the screencast.  They are also doing in-person training workshops.
• The content is not moderated and it is open, although there is a disclaimer posted about violating civility rules and how they will pull the plug. 
• They are incorporating the use of visual content - flickr and YouTube.  There are 198 photos in the flickr stream.  (My personal favorite photo is here)
• They have a volunteer "tagger" who is tagging materials and they've asked folks to help him. I'd describe it as a "community builder" position.  This ensures that there is a there there until critical mass happens.
• They are highlighting both the tag (input) and agg (publishing)
• Use of different mediums - text, multimedia, visual to get the word out.
• I need to look a little closer, but I think there is already a comunity there - through their forums and other activities.  So, they aren't trying to build a community of taggers from scratch while also trying to build the content.   This brings me back full circle to the discussion I had with Nancy White and some others -- which comes first the people or the tag or rather can a tagging community be successful without a pre-existing community?

Great work Steve!

Comments

[Steven Clift]

Thank you for the review Beth. Andy Carvin did one today as well with different highlights as well: http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2006/10/debate_20_gubenatorial_blogging_as_an_ex.html

We are building from over a decade of online community building. However, most of our "incumbent base" are e-mail list users and "tagging" isn't something that is easily translated.

We do see tagging playing a role in our use of the important open source GroupServer tool: http://e-democracy.org/groupserver
(Their .9 version whihc we are moving to brings tagging into file sharing ... I'd like tags auto-generated from nouns in subject lines of this online group tool.)

The key to getting folks to use the main unique tag "mnpolitics" was using the search and contact features within YouTube, Flickr, and Del.icio.us. We contacted those using the tools independently to encourage them to join us in order to get a critical mass of tagging underway. It worked with the first two services in particular.

Now it is taking on a life of its own and people are asking us how to create accounts on those services so they can add their content.

In part, the effort put into Voter Voices is related to resources for our online Gubernatorial E-Debate - http://e-democracy.org/e-debates - but Voices will have a life well beyond the election. The original idea comes from my appeal encouraging others to tag p2008 for U.S. Presidential election related content:

http://www.e-democracy.org/wiki/Tagging_2008

Cheers,
Steven Clift