But I also think that in our discussion in class, we were giving the think tanks less credit than they deserve. A quick search on Twitter showed me at least 10 legitimate CSIS accounts, ranging from CSIS Poni (Project on Nuclear Issues) to CSISAfrica. Although their pages don't have that many followers (meaning between 400 and 1800) they do post a lot of information weekly. Yet CSIS is sort of on the backburner in terms of social media action for think tanks.
The Heritage Foundation has got their social media game together. Their twitter account boasts over 150,000 followers. Their Facebook page has over 360,000 likes. This is significant and important, but not nearly as important as their membership levels. Heritage has more than 710,000 individuals with membership who are willing to donate at least $25 annually. This link gives more details if you are interested. A quick search on the Heritage Foundation website shows that joining is simple and easy. All you have to do is select which level you want to be, ranging from Basic Member ($25 donation) to Founder ($100,000 donation). The benefits reaped from such membership also range. Any member of the Heritage Foundation receives a quarterly newsletter and opinion surveys, whereas the founders get invitations to lots of fancy meetings and issue briefings.
The website states, "By becoming a member of The Heritage Foundation, you will join hundreds of thousands of conservatives around the nation in supporting our work to build an America where freedom, prosperity, opportunity and civil society flourish." Now doesn't that sound enticing?
So maybe we were off a little in class. Maybe some Think Tanks have got it figured out. But I think this just brings up the most important thing about think tanks. They are all so different and so distinct that it is hard to classify them as one single entity. While The Heritage Foundation has done a pretty good job of getting their name out and finding supporters, many think tanks struggle on this front. Like I said in class, I never would have heard of any of the think tanks in this book if I hadn't done Speech and Debate. (On a side note... we cited think tanks right and left even when we were making up the facts. They gave us lots and lots of credibility...). So I conclude that on a whole, think tanks not only need to utilize social media better. Maybe this will help Americans understand who they are and what they do...because at this point, Americans don't seem to have such knowledge.
Dani
Dani you bring up a good point about how social media is beginning to affect partisan think tanks. As history has shown, whenever a new communication technology is invented the politicians who learn the technology and use it the most effectively will be the ones who come into power. It doesn't matter if it's the Protestant reformation and the printing press, the Fascists and the radio, or think tanks and the internet.
ReplyDeleteLike you've noticed, Conservatives have done a better job of online outreach and attracting donations. McGann really captures the essence of this when he says, "Although it appears that right-wing think tanks have won the battle for influence, it would be specious to argue that they have done so simply by enjoying greater financial resources...They have been consistently been pro-active in convincing right-wing foundations and donors of the need for funding their activities"(49)
Although conservatives are typically thought of being older and more out of touch with technology, they have proven themselves to be very tech-savvy in their war with the liberal establishment. However I would not be so quick to write off centrists and progressives attempts to connect with voters and donors. I think they simply just neglected this because they felt more "secure" in their position, until they saw the massive arsenal of ideas conservatives built up. Now that they've realized this I think they've made more attempts to use social media. For example the Center for American progress has launched a campaign to expose the large donations by conservative millionaires (http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/03/18/inside-the-social-media-strategy-of-a-progressive-think-tank/3/). They also have a Facebook account with 21,000 like and a Twitter Following of 13,000. While they are still playing catch up to the conservatives, I would expect to see them to continue this aggressive internet campaign over the next few years.
When it comes to think tanks, I, for the most part, was almost completely unaware of what they were and how they operated until about a week ago, when I had to find out for our class. However, thanks by and large to watching the West Wing from start to finish my senior year of high school, I was aware of the Heritage Foundation.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to see that this organization has become so successful in the social media world. In a class on new media and democracy I took last semester, we learned that the GOP and conservatives in general had become the leaders in social media in the years since Obama's election, but I didn't know that this trend could be continued to conservative think tanks as well.
When it comes to promoting institutional participation through social media, the Heritage Foundation seems to know exactly what it's doing. A key way to make donors feel that they are contributing is to make them feel like they have become insiders once they have donated. The openness the foundation has with "members" through social media helps foster that sense of a "community of smaller donors" that McGann had suggested in our reading.
Perhaps the Heritage Foundation should be seen as a model for how these organizations could increase their appeal to the non-Washington insider. They have found a way to encourage donations and get their research out to a larger audience without compromising their integrity as an organization.
This is a really good blog post, and has a lot of the same opinions and thoughts that I had after our class discussion. Think tanks don’t get the credit that they really deserve, and they have major influences on the policies created, and how we just live life every day. To be honest I didn’t know what Think tanks were before reading this book. No one ever talks about them in the news or anything so they were a mystery to me. To stay updated on what going on in the Think Tanks in this country you really have to go online and do your own research. I found out that they talk a lot about issues that I would have never thought. In my blog I found a video where they just talk about 9/11 theories of what really happen which I found interesting. Think tanks are always going to be around forever, because there just so many world issues to be discussed. They are non-profit organization with very diverse team members. We had a long and interesting debate in class about life and death issues involved with Think tanks. Medicine and just medical research is an issue that has a lot of support. The simple reason why there so much funding for medical research is because it research for illnesses that people die from every day. It would be hard to get regular Americas to help fund research for something like faster trains. First and foremost there just too much mess going on in this country. People are just trying to find simple things like a job. It would be very hard for the normal individual to help fund research of that sort. The Heritage foundation is playing the media game right, and it very cool that they have so much support.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the “sexier” problems attracted more money than boring transportation issues. Social media, like any other type of media, is influenced by the attractiveness of the issue. It needs to be easy to understand, manageable and people need to relate to it. Everyone can understand the need for medical research, defense research and energy research. Energy used to be a neglected field (some may argue it still is) and I believe that changed when stylized imagery and logos were used to represent the problem. A car’s MPG rating began relating to the weight of your wallet as much as being environmentally friendly. I see Think Tanks and other organizations banking on the advertising success of specific issues. On their Facebook, website, Twitter, etc., they advertise the speakers and papers that focus on the issues the majority can relate to, drawing in more followers and more money.
ReplyDeleteThe Think Tanks may have money and support figured out, but this does not mean they are any better at resolving issues that are un-popular. James McGann writes in one of his books about the forgotten policy issues. So much money is reserved for defense, security and energy that every major think tank has a department devoted to these issues. There is so much overlap in those areas that research becomes redundant. I know when researching the Mexican drug cartels, everybody had their own policy pillars. With so many voices proclaiming we should go in different directions, it’s a wonder anything gets done. However, the reverse is also dangerous. Like you said transportation is an important issue with little attention. Those issues are scraps left to the smaller more specialized think tanks to influence policy.
I fully agree with your comments that donating money to think tanks as donating to medical research does. I do not know about you, but I have never had a relative die because a think tank did not have money to hire a new research associate to evaluate the effects of role of space in national security policy. Meanwhile hundreds of families across the nation see a loved one die from cancer each day. The discrepancy exists between medical research donations and think tanks and I am perfectly fine with that. With medical research at least, I know the money is going to work towards a better future for humanity. When someone donates money to a think tank, that person is more or less donating money for someone to advocate for his or her own beliefs.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned that the Heritage Foundation does a good job of finding supporters to donate money and support. At what cost have they gathered all of these supporters though? One of the biggest issues facing the think tank community is the rise of partisan think tanks that only express only one side of the argument. The Heritage Foundation is a notorious conservative think tank dedicated to promoting conservative ideas. If I were writing a research paper on the effects of a tax increase in the United States, I would avoid any publications form the Heritage Foundation. Instead, I would look for research done by bi-partisan think tanks like CSIS and RAND. Those think tanks will at least look at the benefits and disadvantages of a tax increase, while the Heritage Foundation will tell me that tax increases will kill businesses. The Heritage Foundation has built its entire fundraising strategy on gathering conservative support to promote conservative ideas. Now the Heritage Foundation cannot publish an article critical of a conservative position without losing support from its financial donors. It certainly creates a conflict of interest for researchers who could be told not to publish information that would hurt donations.