Democratic Underground
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Democratic Underground, also known as DU, describes itself as an "online community for Democrats and other progressives." According to its web page, its membership is restricted by policy to those who are "generally supportive of progressive ideals," and who "support Democratic candidates for political office."[1] However, the scope of discussion is wide and members represent a broad spectrum of liberal beliefs and backgrounds. DU was established on January 20, 2001, the day George W. Bush was inaugurated President.
According to Democratic Underground in October 2006, over 96,493 username registrations have occurred and over 25 million messages have been posted.[2] There is no indication as to how many of these registrations are active or how many of these registrations represent unique persons. There is no cost for membership and participation. Voluntary donations are solicited quarterly, and some services are available only to donating members. DU publishes articles six days a week and has an online store, a directory of links, and forums where members may post on various topics of interest.
While Democratic Underground members are sincere in their beliefs, many feel that they are a rich source of unintended humor with most of the posting focusing on fringe activitys, virulent hatred of George Bush, and serious entertainment of even the most outlandish conspiracy stories - especially those concerning 9/11 or Karl Roves influence.
Features of Democratic Underground
Columns
DU has several regular columns, and on any given day may have a number of guest columns sent in from contributors.
- Mondays: Top Ten Conservative Idiots, a rundown of what is thought of by DU administrators to be the most outrageous right-wing activities in the past week.
- Wednesdays: The Plaid Adder writes her column.
- Thursdays: Ask Auntie Pinko, an 'advice' column.
- Fridays: Equal Time with Bob Boudelang, a satirical column supposedly written by a Republican Team Leader.
- Occasionally, DU will feature a Hate Mailbag of hate mail.
Bernard Weiner and Ernest Partridge of The Crisis Papers[3] are frequent guests.
Forums
The DU Forums are a highly active scene for political discussions by "Democrats and other progressives". On September 6 2006, the number of individual posts in these forums exceeded 25,000,000. The main forums on DU have been re-arranged since the close of the 2004 US election season. They now include:[4]
- The Big Forums
- A significant fraction of the site's posts reside in the Big Forums. Latest Breaking News, General Discussion, and General Discussion: Politics (which superseded "General Discussion: Campaign 2004") are the largest and fastest moving forums on DU. The Big Forums also include The Lounge, which is a friendly forum for general non-political discussion, Editorials and Other Articles for op-eds written by forum users, a Wiki-like Research forum, and the Video forum which contains link to Youtube.
- Topic Forums
- This section contains single-topic issue forums. Popular forums under this heading include Election Reform, Guns, the Israeli/Palestine conflict, Political Campaigns, and September 11th. Other topics include Education, Homeland Security, and Drug Policy. Some of the most popular forums under this topic are also some of the most controversial, and therefore the most closely moderated. (see below)
- State & Country Forums
- These provide a specific forum for each U.S. state, where state-wide and local issues are addressed. Residents and others with an interest in localized issues, such as congressional primaries and gubernatorial races, are encouraged to post questions in the state forums. Threads covering local news or events can be found in the state forums, and informal meetings of DU members are often coordinated from them. These "meet-ups" or "meets" include social gatherings, protest events, and political fundraisers. DU also provides forums for posters residing in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, as well as a catch-all "Democrats Abroad" forum. These serve a similar function to the U.S. state forums.
- DU Groups
- Groups of users may charter discussion forums for topics of mutual interest such as hobbies, fan clubs, and potential 2008 presidential candidates. Many of these forums cover non-political topics, such books, sports, and cooking, as well as political issues surrounding ethnicity and religion. These forums are generally not as fast moving as the "Big Forums".
An "Ask the Administrators" forum was maintained until April 26, 2005; this forum allowed users to pose questions to the board administrators. This forum has now been shut down by the administrators. A "Rules" page, a "Frequently Asked Questions" page, and a "Contact the Administrators" page showing the email addresses of the administrators have been substituted.
Two of the most controversial forums are frequently scenes of hot debate between posters:
- The Gun board, used for discussing gun issues and commonly referred to as the "Gun Dungeon" or "Gungeon"; and
- The Israel-Palestinian affairs board, sometimes referred to as the "Basement."
Influencing polls
Media websites (including newspapers, television networks, and America Online) run occasional "polls" that do not use the sampling methods of formal opinion polls, but instead invite everyone to respond. Some DU forum messages, usually captioned "DU this poll", urge DU members to vote 'en masse' in these polls. The goal is to influence polls to reflect the aggregrate votes of DU members. After voting, members report back to thread, usually simply writing "Done" or "Done and kicked" ("kicked" meaning the message thread is being moved to the top of the forum page by the new message so that other members will see it).
Member avatars
Registered members can select an avatar that will be displayed along with each of their forum postings. For donating members, this avatar can be a custom image that they have supplied; non-donating members can choose from a set of standard images that include popular symbols, images of political figures or popular culture figures, and state outlines, state flags, and a few national flags. These avatars allow users to show some of their personality with each posting.
When a user is banned from the site by the moderators, their member avatar is changed into an image of a tombstone. This has lead to the term "tombstoned" being used to describe banned users.
An online community
Through frequent contact in the forums (including special topic groups) and online private messages, members come to know one another. Discussions range beyond politics to include such diverse subjects as pets, pet peeves, and pop culture. Occasionally, members organize face-to-face get-togethers.
Like any other community, DU has its in-jokes. New members are often confused by DU vocabulary, usually referencing pop culture ("this thread needs more cowbell"), deficient spelling skills (such as "cazy," "moran," and "noble jesters"), or long-running threads that have worked their way into DU lore ("dupe," "the kudzu thread").
Some common terms are:
- Meets
- Social or activist events held by members. Also called "meet-ups".
- Tombstoned
- To be banned from posting.
- Repug
- Short for 'repugnant'. It is a pejorative meaning Republican or conservative.
- Freeper
- A term specifically for a member of the Free Republic website. Sometimes turned into the pejorative "FreepTard".
- Kick
- To post to a thread to send it to the top of the forum.
- Gungeon
- The Guns Discussion board under Topic Forums. From "Gun Dungeon".
- The Basement
- Refers to the Israeli/Palestinian affairs Topic Forum.
- Milestone
- The occasion when a members post total reaches a certain number. Milestones are celebrated in the Lounge. (See below)
More complete of lexicons of DU terminology can be found at Democratic Underground's Demopedia entry for Glossary.
Administrators tombstone (ban) users for violating site policies. This includes trolls, conservatives, individuals who habitually accuse others of being conservatives, individuals that lack thick skin, and long-time posters who refuse to abide by the wishes of the moderators.
When a new user posts a message, the message header shows the total number of posts that user has made. This identification helps members spot trolls. The 1,000 post mark is an important milestone, because the total number of posts are no longer shown in the message header. The total number of posts a user has made can be found in their profile. The more posts a user has, generally the more reliable the poster is considered, and some prolific members have written many thousands of posts.
Campaign Underground
DU has an online campaign headquarters named "Campaign Underground." The site, which was put together with help from DU members, features a database of information about campaigns, voting trends, and media. A "media blaster" feature provides the ability to email local media outlets in many U.S. cities. Eventually DU hopes to have other features, such as integrated local news from the forums, a local event calendar, and other issues specific to states and locals.
Demopedia
On December 7, 2004, DU launched the beta version of Demopedia, a wiki based collaborative project aimed at presenting the Democratic and progressive opinion and outlook, and at collating and preserving some of the information generated on the forums. During the beta, only users who had registered at DU before December 7 were able to contribute. It uses the MediaWiki software.
Ideology
Although DU restricts its postings to people on the political left, members have many internal disagreements over a wide range of issues, as well as disagreements over tactics of opposition to the Bush Administration. Nearly all members oppose the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but some DU members favor only a gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, while other members favor an immediate and total pullout. Some members favor the death penalty, while a majority do not. Another such issue is gun politics; DU participants include supporters and opponents of further restrictions on gun ownership.
While supporters of Ralph Nader are a minority at DU, many posts criticize the Democratic Party from the left. Democrats such as Joe Lieberman and Dianne Feinstein, who are more inclined toward compromise and conciliation with the Bush Administration, are regularly attacked at DU, while Democrats such as John Conyers and Barbara Boxer, who favor a more confrontational approach, are more highly regarded.
As on many other political forums, the conflict between Israel and Palestine is a contentious issue. Supporters of both Israel and Palestine are present on the site, but there is a designated forum for the Israel-Palestine conflict and no discussion of the matter is allowed outside of this particular forum. Users who express overly critical viewpoints of either side may find themselves ostracised, or even blocked.
Relationship to Free Republic
DU has a longstanding rivalry with the conservative website Free Republic. Significant cross-membership exists, as members of both sites (who often refer to each other as "Freepers" and "DUmmies", respectively) watch the competitors' message boards. Members frequently post or link to posts on the opposing message boards to point out what they consider incorrect or outrageous posts, or to keep watch on which polls are are influenced in the competitors' favor (see Influencing polls, above).
Some members argue against these practices, saying that they give the competitors an advantage by driving up the Alexa rating and Google PageRank of the other site. Allegations are occasionally made that 'rabble-rousing' members from one forum post extreme or shocking bulletins on the other in order to made the competitors look overly radical or inappropriate, but these claims are not substantiable.
Activism
DUers are active in U.S. politics in many ways. Many of them attend political protests and rallies, volunteer for campaigns, and write letters to editors of newspapers and members of Congress. Some are among the members of the Democratic Party infrastructure, serving as precinct chairs. Others actually work within the confines of various legislative and congressional bodies as staff. Many active posters at Democratic Underground have worked for various causes in both paid and unpaid positions, in campaigns and for special interest groups such as the AFL-CIO and SEIU. Others are members of the DLC, Progressive Democrats of America, MoveOn, and Democracy for America.
Activist Corps
One of the newest ways in which DUers are involved is called the DU Activist Corps. Founded on July 1, 2005, the Activist Corps is a group of over 1,000 DUers who are committed to taking action on a certain issue whenever an official Activist Corps activity is posted.
The first Activist Corps action was posted on July 12; members wrote letters to the editors of local newspapers regarding Karl Rove's role in the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's name. More than 70 letters were published in newspapers throughout the country. Other Corps activities have included signing onlinepetitions to U.S. Senators asking them to reject Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, and to write letters of support Cindy Sheehan.
Political candidates
Some DUers have run for, and have even been elected to, political offices as high as Congress. Examples of these include:
- Carl Sheeler who is running for the Democratic Nomination to run for the US Senate from Rhode Island in 2006.[5][6][7]
Debate over which candidates deserve support from DU members occurs frequently.
Owners
The website is owned by Democratic Underground, LLC (a limited liability company), and run by David Allen, who posts under the screen name "Skinner"[8] while on the boards and handles most of the issues relating to the forums. The other two administrators, "EarlG" (of Washington, D.C.) and "elad" (of Portland, OR), handle the articles and technical issues, respectively.
Criticism
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Democratic Underground has been criticized for censorship directed against both the political left and the right. From the left, critics say that administrators and moderators unfairly ban ("tombstone") or censor posters who consider themselves to be to the political left of John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee for the US presidency, and claim that DU is not truly liberal or progressive, but rather centrist, and adheres too strongly to the politics of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Forum administrators and most users support same-sex marriage, abortion rights and universal healthcare, which would put them squarely to the left of the DLC[citation needed]. Joseph Lieberman, a member of the DLC, is routinely attacked by users and administrators. One group of these critics were affiliated with the People for Change forums founded by Howard Dean supporters who felt alienated from Democratic Underground during the primary season, and many of them had been banned or were later banned from the Democratic Underground forums. Other DU members claim that the moderators of the Israel-Palestinian forums enforce an anti-Palestinian bias.
The administrators have directed the moderators to remove any attempts by members to discuss the site on the site[citation needed] and this is routinely done, occasionally resulting in the banning of members. Controversy has also arisen over allegations that the owners of Democratic Underground often favor their largest cash contributors during debates in the message forums.[citation needed] Critics point to the dominance of several member block constituencies that appear to wield undue influence on the direction DU's moderators take in resolving member disputes.
Although the TOS that all members agree to clearly states that Democratic Underground is for meant for 'Democrats and other progressives' who are 'supportive of progressive ideals' conservatives and libertarians who join routinely complain of censorship when they are banned.
Citing unusual comments
Discussions at DU sometimes lead to surprising contributions and unusual comments. One example of this was the dialog about the 2004 tsunami disaster, in which a few posts explored the possibility of "earthquake weapons". The posts were reported by The New York Times and Fox News. The DU administrators deleted these posts and the threads were locked. They officially disavowed what they called "kooky tsunami conspiracy theories". They added, "One wonders why the author [of the Times article] did not spend five minutes over at Free Republic and instead write an article about how conservatives think the tsunami was some sort of retribution from God, or how Muslims deserved it." [9] Another example is the conspiracy theories revolving around the August 2006 terror plot to blow up airliners between the UK and the US, which received mention in USA Today.[10] Some posters felt that the American government's push to step-up the announcement of the plot[11] was a conspiracy to bump Joe Lieberman's primary loss out of the news cycle.
Privacy policy
Democratic Underground requires contact information, name and a verifiable email address, in order to post. By default, DU may use this contact information to send its own mailings, or share this information with other companies or organizaitons. However users are given an option to opt-out of such contacts.[12] In October 2006, DU was asked by the Secret Service for personally identifying information on two former (banned) posters; however, DU declined to reveal the personal information without a subpoena.[13]
See also
- Fitzmas
- Free Republic - Conservative rival of DU
External links
- Democratic Underground homepage
- John Kerry and the Lost Kos - Wired article mentions Democratic Underground.
Other
- Conservative Underground - Conservative message board with one section devoted to criticism of DU.
- Neutral Underground - Message board for progressive and conservative discussion for both sides.
- Liberal Underground - Liberal message board which monitors DU; allows conservatives to post.
- DUmmie FUnnies - Blog which criticizes DU and its forum activities.
