Recently, there's been a lot of chatter about the FISA opposition group on MyBarackObama.com, which today became the single largest networking group on the entire site, claiming 15,000+ members and counting.
Following the initial scoop by TPM's Greg Sargent, a number of national news outlets have since reported on this story, including The Times, The Post, The Nation, and most recently, USA Today. In all the articles, the group is characterized as a truly grassroots effort launched by Obama's core supporters, who have cleverly harnessed Obama's own technology to organize against him.
But is that really true? Does the group's swelling membership really reflect an indigenous movement among Obama's own base - the same people who have previously utilized MyBO to fundraise and organize on Obama's behalf. Or is it actually more of a netroots-driven phenomenon, promoted by various bloggers, and composed of activists whose participation on MyBO begins and ends with this one group?
Interestingly, data from the site itself provides something of an answer to this question. For those who aren't familiar with MyBO, one of the unique features of the site is that each member is awarded "points" based on their level of participation. Points are awarded each time you log on (+1), join a new group (+5), or make a new friend (+5), as well as through fundraising, event planning, etc. The total number of points is displayed on your public profile. In addition, the profile also displays the total number of friends in your personal network. Together, these two figures - the # of points and friends - provide a pretty good measure of a member's commitment to and participation in the site.
I began with a random sample (n=100) of members from the anti-FISA group, and collected data on the total points and friends displayed in each profile. For a point of comparison, I also collected a similar sample from Students for Barack Obama, the 3rd largest group on MyBO, as well as from two smaller groups: the 1500-member statewide North Carolina Action Team, and the 225-member local Raleigh NC for Obama 08.
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Chart 1 shows the average number of points and friends for members of each of the four MyBO groups:
[Note: The Friends variable is scaled x10 for better representation]
As you can see, FISA group members are far less active, on average, than members of the other three groups. The average FISA member has accumulated a mere 131 points and 7 friends during their MyBO tenure. By contrast, members of the similarly-sized Students for Barack Obama average over 1200 points and 18 friends. Members of the smaller statewide and local groups are even more active, averaging 1600/5200 points and 29/97 friends, respectively.
As Chart 2 shows, more than half (53%) of the members in the FISA sample have yet to even activate their accounts (pts=0). They have no friends, no profile, and belong only to one group: FISA. For the other three groups, the % of inactive members is tiny - between 6% and 12% - while the vast majority of members are either active or even "hyperactive" (500+ points).
This isn't to say that the FISA group is entirely unreflective of Obama's online base: 47% of its members are at least somewhat active in the larger MyBO community, albeit less so than members in the other 3 groups (see Chart 1). That said, it would be wrong to characterize the FISA group as some kind of indigenous grassroots phenomenon. It is more a creation of the progressive netroots than the Obama grassroots - closer to an online petition than an organized movement.
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Notes:
Sampling procedure: For the FISA and Student groups, the membership list was sorted chronologically, and data was collected on every 100th observation (1, 101, 201....); for the North Carolina group, this was applied to every 25th observation, and for the Raleigh group, every 5th. The resulting samples, while not perfectly random, are still random enough for our purposes here.
Data: The raw data for each of the 4 groups is available along with the charts on this google spreadsheet. To view the data, simply click on the worksheet tabs at the bottom of the screen.
Happy 4th!