Tag: Campaigns

Thoughts on the election

Obama gets a lot of  blame for the economy – which is the main argument/premise. None the less. Bush was in office when the stock market crashed and the GOP controlled both the senate and house the majority of the time leading up to the crash. It wasn’t just the US that went through crisis – every nation did no matter what type of government they ran – communist, socialist, free market (many eastern EU states).
 Both parties voted for the bail outs. And fortunately we are improving.
My thinking is I’m not convinced a government or anyone for that matter really has that much control over any of it.. Other wise why did it happen in the first place?
Obama is not socialist. Go to Germany, Greece, Denmark or  the Richest country on earth – Norway, if you want to see what that really is..It can be a good and bad thing. I run a US company that deals a lot in Europe and have done a decent amount of business. I must state that I do not feel the “crushing burden of socialism”  as I’ve heard from those in the USA – and who probably have  less complex legal/tax issues that are inherently involved with doing international business. If you want to see what real problems are, come to Belgium and try and start a company dealing with their BS admin procedures ( something I get to avoid because I have a US company).
Why every Romney supporter feels Obama is the worst person in the world:
In the last four years communications have increased ten fold and created a perception of us and them. This in turn physically effects our brains frame – which is directly how you view the world and political positions. For example you think you are 100% right and the issue is 100% clear, but a democrat feels just as correct about believing the exact opposite.
While you feel divided, different and apart from a liberal or conservative, the fact is you agree on 95% of things – you can both love dogs, like sports, think people should not kill or steal from each other… Now a Political strategist job is to make you think the 5% of things you don’t agree on are the biggest fucking problems in the world.
In actuality we have never been more aligned politically, while feeling further apart. This polarization is  both good and bad. And a heavily debated topic among political scientist. For one it get’s people to understand complicated  issues (good). Two it brings people to the polls (good). The big “what if”,  is grid lock and the tipping point between facts and perceptions. At some point policy does have consequence – both good and bad, and some are better than others.
Romney or Obama. Not much would have changed. But as I say, who wins deserves it. In this case the Obama campaign was smarter and better than Romney’s. And that’s exactly who I want to lead the country.
Any how historically the next election should go to a Republican.
– CT

Analytics and the Global Political Environment

In the global political environment a holistic view is needed.

The standard for message delivery is high in the modern media environments. It’s vital to create communications that people identify and empathize with. The threshold to get attention, and to get people to retain your information, is even higher. Politics now competes with Pepsi, Nike and Apple. No one will take time to care about your views or propositions. Firms must be proactive in both controlling and framing language, as well as marginalizing their communication and political strategy for efficiency.

The problem: There are many variables to consider when developing productive communication and political strategies. Further, basing decisions on just educated guessing, even for the most highly skilled and experienced  professional, does not meet the standards of modern business practices, which use analytics to make decisions.

The Solution: Online media provides an immense amount of information which can be monitored. The data can be used  to track political and policy instances qualitatively, as well as forecast.

To do this, we must synthesize research in cognitive linguistics and Natural Language Processing (NLP). In the last few years these technologies have evolved to the point where pragmatics can be quantified accurately. And further, because of the amount of data an average person creates in a day, we have and endless amount of information to drill down into for examining political and cultural phenomenon.

I’m currently looking at the French elections. There will be more on that and this in a bit.

Active Communications

The idea of “Active Communications”  is based heavily on media monitoring listening data AND proper framing, which is a bit of an art (unless you have first class AI/NPL skills) . To work efficiently, a multi-channel infrastructure that allows for real-time content is paramount.

Important concepts to take away:

  • Timing and message coherency, to create a critical mass.
  • Trust the data for real time decision making.
  • Location based targeting with Fundamental,Technical and Sentiment analysis, per channel/medium.

Perhaps the biggest aspect is willingness to abandon prior methods after the data is received. You might be more comfortable with Twitter or another channel, but for the specific campaign it could be a  waste of time. Don’t fight up stream.

NLP: Value Greater than just Positive and Negative Sentiment.

Positive (P) and negative (N) sentiment are just transmitting two results based on many other variables. This in itself contains little knowledge. For creating strategy, it can only bench mark after the fact.

Inherently the use of data is to make better decisions for the future. Production is expensive and time consuming. So is deductive reasoning.  The main goals should be to move away from adjusting to the end reaction and migrate to a predictive model. Look at the context in higher resolution i.e. control for  variables which lead to PN sentiment.

Here are some suggestions

  • Time of day
  • Medium (Twitter,Facebook ,Blogs, Mainstream news)
  • Comments PN sentiment
  • New dissemination to comment count (time, PN)

If you are advanced, use NLP tools that allow for custom taxonomies – within the NLP,  to create rules on varibels like types of framing. On a medium level this is very good at prediction, but more on that later.

Ciao

EU Political On-line Trend Graph From the 2011 Summer

I thought that I would post a trend chart that I found. It is from the 2011 summer of rebellion. Please ask questions:

 

 

Heuristics, Algorithms and Communications: Quick Thoughts

The use of heuristic and taxonomy algorithms for identifying cognitive bias in  communications is a game changer.  According to SAS,  companies that invest in analytics out perform the S&P500 by 64%. I imagine the margin for communication/marketing firms is greater. The market is not anywhere close to mature, and is lopsided to a few in the know. The rest toil in mediocracy via old connections/business that will surely run ground soon.
Today’s great business’s – for the most part, are data driven. Communications is perceived  to be educated guessing.. The use of programming for bias is important because bias cannot be out run. Think of this much like “Inception” and Moneyball combined.

Thanks to social networks we have the largest focus group in history. Analysts can see what people are using to explain how they feel and think – during  specific situations or events. This can also tell  how people interact within context of syntax or an instances. Very powerful and cheap information in contrast to polling or focus groups.

There are patterns/norms with how people engage on each medium. In addition to what type of syntax they use to convey a certain type of  thought. This is all programmed in the mind for the most part. Linguist like Lakoff and Chomsky suggest that brains are hard wired to favor certain patterns that convey meaning. This plays out accurately on-line consistently.

Just a random Sunday thought…Now looking forward to watching the NFL playoffs.

Ciao

Critical Mass

This trend is looking at analytics of political instances of media saturation. I call it Critical Mass. Despite consistent media we only see exponential gains on key events (Voting Day,Debates). This means we need to have the media infrastructure/network in place before we need it.
Possible reasons for this is:
  • Humans outsourcing knowledge to calendars, social sites and other mediums. We only know a vague amount of information and rely on our knowledge to access it as a substitute for remembering.
  • In a 24/7 multimedia cycle humans compartmentalizing knowledge to avoid over load.