The Thicket at State Legislatures

The Thicket Turns 5

by Karl Kurtz

Happy (belated) birthday to us! The Thicket went public on May 15, 2006. We're pleased, and mildly surprised, that we're still in business. We're not one of the big guys among blogs, but in our quiet niche, "by and for legislative junkies," we have lots of loyal readers. Our beat has consistently been the practice of representative democracy, the legislative institution and state elections and politics--with a few podcasts on policy issues thrown in.

Over our 5-year history there have been 431,376 pageviews of The Thicket (compared to 1 mill. per day for Politico). In the last year, 65,000 different people visited The Thicket 75,000 times. 92 percent of our visitors are from the United States. The distribution of readers among the states is approximately proportional to state population, except that Colorado and the District of Columbia--the homes of NCSL's two offices, rank second and third in visitors behind California. 

We have also had readers from 150 other countries during the last year, led by the English speaking countries of Canada, UK, Australia and India. For some unknown reason, Venezuelans have made the largest number of visits from non-English speaking countries.

We've posted 1,240 items in our history. That's about four per week--our goal when we set out on this venture. We wish we could post more frequently, but all of our writers have other jobs to do at NCSL. The top 5 most viewed posts in the last year were:

• Peggy Kerns' classic Sept. 2009 "Movies about Ethical Dilemmas"
• Tim Storey's post-2010 state legislative election wrapup reporting on historic Republican gains
• "Legislative Walkouts are Nothing New" in the middle of the Wisconsin and Indiana legislative controversies this spring
• "Fire Alarms and Police Patrols: Two Approaches to Legislative Oversight" from Oct. 2009
• "An Expert's Favorite Filibuster: Rhode Island Senate in 1923-24," another walkout related story.

Thanks to all of our readers! Our best stories often come from your suggestions. Keep those ideas--and your thoughts and comments on The Thicket--coming.

Worth Reading: The Monkey Cage

by Karl Kurtz

The Monkey Cage, a blog that links political science research to current issues and events, recently was named blog of the year by The Week. It deals more with national politics than it does state government, but if you like The Thicket's occasional ventures into political science, you'll like The Monkey Cage. Its name is cleverly drawn from the H.L. Mencken quote, "Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage." The Week cited The Monkey Cage for "injecting the wisdom of the academy into everyday political discourse."

An interesting recent post in The Monkey Cage reports on Catie Ballard's field experiments in Tanzania and Bosnia to determine the effect of Internet exposure on citizens' attitudes toward government. She found that people who were given access to the Internet became more knowledgeable and critical of current affairs in their countries but that that did not necessarily contribute to greater engagement and democratization:

Thus, at first glance the Internet’s capacity to make citizens more critical of a poor-performing government seems a boon for transparency and accountability—integral components for building a robust democracy.   But rather than encourage individuals to press their government to adhere to higher democratic standards, in this case disaffected individuals became increasingly willing to consider alternative forms of governance.  This suggests that exposure to the Internet may prove a double-edged sword for democracy and democratization.

In other words, more knowledge about government and politics through the Internet can lead to greater distrust and cynicism--something that we have found in the United States as well.

Proud but Blushing

The Thicket was pink with pleasure when we read a recent issue of the B and G Report by Governing magazine columnists Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene:

We don't want to make other bloggers jealous. There are lots of really good ones out there, but we think our favorite may be The Thicket, from the National Conference of State Legislatures. Regular readers of the B&G Report will likely know this, based on the frequency with which we pass along items we've found there. 

Here are a couple of interesting tidbits from their most recent issue:

Mark Twain is the source for our favorite quote of the last couple of weeks: "Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable."

Public Civility Corner. Here's some advice we received from a Florida city councilwoman that seemed like a good approach to dealing with citizens who go into attack mode: "I learned quickly that the only thing I can control in these situations is myself. I remind myself that these citizens would be yelling at whoever was sitting in the seat. I also believe that if they met me standing in line at the grocery store, they would think I was a nice lady. I listen, repeat their concerns back to them to make sure I have a complete understanding of the situation. I then work hard to 'promise little and deliver big.' Many times just letting citizens 'dump their bucket' towards me gets the stress off of them. If I am able to get the situation resolved to their satisfaction, then and only then do I say something that they should call me in the future before it gets so stressful. There have been times I haven't been able to resolve it to their satisfaction, due to city policy or cost. I have had citizens angry that I couldn't do what they wanted and they left angry. Just like sports, you can't win them all."

Barrett and Greene also write a very useful "Implementation of the Recovery Act Blog" for the IBM Center for the Business of Government.

A rose from The Thicket to Katherine and Richard.

1,000 Posts in The Thicket

by Karl Kurtz

The most recent post on women in state legislatures is the 1,000th article in The Thicket since its inception in March 2006. That's an average of about 4 postings per week, which is the goal we set for ourselves when we started this venture.  We have received 779 comments on those postings.  According to our blog software provider, Typepad, we have had 306,907 pageviews over the slightly less than 4 years we have been in business, or an average of 218 per day.

We know that those numbers don't begin to compare to the big guys in the blogosphere, but for our small niche market--by and for legislative junkies--we're pleased and satisfied.  We know there aren't many folks out there who live and breathe legislative life, as we do, so we are pleased that at least some of you have found our efforts interesting and useful.

One of the most interesting statistics that we get from various blog-tracking services is that the single largest portion (38 percent) of visits to The Thicket come from search engines.  Google "how many women governors" (our most frequently viewed article over time), for example, and The Thicket's article on this topic pops up near the top.  This suggests that many people who come to our blog are looking for information and that we are providing a service through our work.

During 2009, 33,518 unique visitors from 137 countries made 52,492 visits to The Thicket and viewed 79,941 pages.  We posted 224 items during the year for an average of 4.3 per week.  The 5 most viewed stories were Morgan Cullen’s and my article about religious affiliations of legislators, the perennial favorite “How Many Women Governors?”, Jan Goehring’s posting on state sovereignty resolutions, Peggy Kerns’ “Movies about Ethical Dilemmas”, and Meagan Dorsch’s podcast about rising state unemployment rates.

We welcome reader's suggestions for improving The Thicket, and we love it when you feed us story ideas!

Virtual Doodling at Legislative Summit

by Pam Greenberg

Each year at NCSL’s Legislative Summit, the various staff sections and committees independently select  the topics that will be covered in the sessions they sponsor. Lately, it seems the technology-related sessions run in three’s. One year there were three sessions about e-mail and public records. This year it’s social media. Technology, of course, intersects with many different subject areas—criminal justice, health  care, education—just to name a few. But technology now is also part of every session: our audience members  have laptops, Blackberries, and smart devices.  They are emailing, blogging and Facebooking and Twittering…during the sessions.

As someone who was brought up to listen politely and never interrupt, I’ve always been slightly uncomfortable when audience members talk during someone’s presentation, when someone gets up and walks out in the middle, or when a cell phone rings (and I’ve been guilty of each of these!). So I found danah boyd’s latest blog entry about how she uses various digital devices at conferences particularly interesting to read during the Legislative Summit.

danah boyd, a researcher at Microsoft Research New England  and a Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, is one of the most interesting people writing about social networks.  She is outspoken and can be controversial, but if you are interested in social networking, read her dissertation, Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics, some of her papers, and her notes from talks she’s given, like this one about the "The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online."

And as you attend Legislative Summit sessions, whether in person, via Twitter or by listening to audio and video recordings back home, go ahead and check your Blackberry…or maybe just doodle.

Legislative Websites Branching Out

by Pam Greenberg

The New York Senate earlier this month launched a new website with the goals of transparency, openness and participation. It includes a blog, YouTube videos, news feeds, and links (with a popup disclaimer) to Facebook and Twitter for the Senate and for individual senators.  The site is a leap forward for New York state government online information services and compares favorably with innovations in legislative websites around the country. 

One of the more interesting features of the site is its Legislation Markup section, which allows the public to comment on selected bills under consideration.  This feature is similar to the Nevada Legislature's Online Opinion Poll, which allows citizens to submit comments about, vote for or against all bills being considered, and view others' comments anonymously.

Another initiative of the New York Senate Site is the use of crowdsourcing tools:

Crowdsourcing tools leverage the "wisdom of crowds." By creating a forum where large numbers of people can submit ideas and vote on them, a crowdsourcing application can gather new ideas from beyond the walls of the Capitol to make the Senate a more effective lawmaking body. Crowdsourcing will be used by the Senate's Policy group to tap into the public to generate ideas and feedback on certain legislation. By doing so, the Senate will encourage citizen participation in the legislative process.  The Senate's first crowdsourcing topic is about property taxes. 

Social Networking Legislators

by Karl Kurtz

At a session on "Social Networking 101" at NCSL's Spring Forum earlier today, Arkansas House Majority Leader Steve Harrelson made his presentation about how he uses a blog, Facebook, and Twitter to communicate with constituents by posting his presentation under the title, "Liveblogging the NCSL Spring Forum," in his blog and projecting the post on the screen:

I'm sitting on a panel to discuss legislative technology and new media, and I've been given 15 minutes to provide a compelling argument as to why public officials should use the Internet to connect to their constituents and provide a running commentary on facing us all. Given the tight schedule, I'm going to hit the highlights and list three main points...

He went on to talk about immediacy, no filters and transparency as the key advantages of social networking for legislators.  It was an excellent presentation.  You can read it for yourself.

Rep. Harrelson's web site/blog, Under the Dome, is one of the most sophisticated ones for a state legislator that I have seen, integrating policy and political news, his Twitter feeds, and a public opinion poll, and making great use of photos (sometimes in fun, as with this photo) and maps.

Rep. Harrelson also featured Arkansas Speaker Robbie Wills' blog, which includes a weekly webcast, this week from the Spring Forum in Washington, D.C.  Speaker Wills also publishes his Twitter feeds on his blog.

Rep. Harrelson said that in addition to providing an effective means of communication with constituents, bypassing the media, other legislators, news media and lobbyists track his and the speaker's social network sites to find out what is going on at the capitol.

Touchdown for Tweets!

by Meagan Dorsch

Right before kickoff of the Super Bowl game on Sunday, I logged onto NCSL's Twitter account to quickly check our messages. It took me one second to notice that people were already talking about the big game, predicting the score and taunting fans of the opposite team. Very similar to what I saw on election night! But several Twitter postings caught my eye regarding a map at The New York Times.

Before I talk about this map, let me explain Twitter. It's a micro-blogging site that is the latest social media craze. You get 140 characters per "tweet", or post, which is very similar to a text message. You can also follow other people, organizations, government agencies, legislatures and businesses on Twitter. Your tweets get posted on-line or can be synced up with your cell phone. According to Search Engine Guide.com, there are over 6 million users on Twitter. We have seen this social media site become a hub of communication during big events such as the Presidential debates, election night and the Super Bowl.

Now, back to the map. You can relive the magic and coolness that many of us found on Sunday! Here is a link to the NY Times map that shows the location and frequency of commonly used words in Super Bowl related messages. I hope we can see this same type of technology used during the next round of political coverage, especially when it comes to state legislative elections and ballot measures.