This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

Donald Trump is doing something new in Iowa.

The state is home to the first-in-the-nation GOP nomination event, the Iowa caucus, which takes place on Jan. 15, 2024, at 7 p.m. Trump, the former president, holds a resounding lead over his rivals.

What’s new for Trump in this campaign is actually old stuff — a throwback to traditional caucus campaigning. I’ve observed Iowa caucus campaigns over eight cycles, and my 2022 book, “Inside the Bubble,” offers a close-up of the 2020 Democratic contest. Against that backdrop, it’s clear that the former president is taking cues from those who’ve come before him.

The widely accepted path to caucus success — first paved in 1976 by then-unknown Jimmy Carter on his way to the Democratic nomination and eventually the White House – is to “organize, organize, organize,” as many campaign staff will tell you. Since then, it’s been the mantra for candidates of both parties — and this year, that includes Trump.

But such attention to organizing is a shift for the Trump campaign. Today, it looks nothing like the scattershot campaign from 2016, the only other time Trump has waged a nomination battle in the state.

Car rides, phone calls

A caucus in Iowa is a first step in a series of events that will ultimately select delegates to the national convention that formally nominates the presidential candidate. Unlike a primary, in which voters go to a polling place and cast a ballot, a caucus is a political party meeting at which people discuss the candidates and then vote.

Caucuses are held in each of the approximately 1,700 precincts in Iowa. Registered party members can participate in the caucuses, and attendees will signal their support by writing a candidate’s name on a piece of paper.

Organizing isn’t unique to Iowa caucus politics, and it means different things depending on the context. In electoral politics across the U.S., campaigns organize by doling out responsibilities to field staff positioned across a state or electoral district. These staff, then, amass volunteers to get-out-the-vote, either on election day or — in some states — in an early voting window before the election.

A typical organizing effort in caucus politics identifies early supporters of a candidate and asks them to be the foundation for a larger volunteer structure. These volunteers engage in outreach to other potential supporters — sometimes in-person, via door-to-door canvassing or on the phone, and increasingly by sending text messages. They’ll make sure that known supporters get assistance they might need to get to the caucus, such as a car ride.

The personal element of organizing is well-suited to caucus politics, which poses unique challenges to campaigns. Like primaries, caucuses are within political parties, so voters can’t rely on cues like party labels to pick a candidate. Instead, a friend or family member volunteering for a candidate just might be persuasive.

Caucus organizers can help voters navigate a byzantine process.

Unlike primaries, which involve a daylong window for voting, caucuses are scheduled for a specific day at sometimes obscure locations; this year’s Jan. 15 date coincides with Martin Luther King Day. Caucuses always start at 7 p.m., and they last as long as it takes to conclude business, which is likely an hour. This process can be intimidating, and effective organization can educate supporters and help ensure they show up.

Campaign bling

Trump’s nod to organizing is noteworthy and is at odds with his brand, which is more focused on stirring the pot and agitating, rather than painstakingly building an infrastructure.

Back in 2016, reluctant Trump volunteers, unfamiliar with caucus procedures, courted Iowa supporters. And while the headquarters of rival candidates were abuzz with activity, Trump’s was deserted. Trump came in second in that year’s caucus.

Now, Trump’s 2024 field army of some 2,000 caucus captains, many of whom have already gone through formal training, are the front-line recruiters in the lead-up to this year’s caucus. They carry out tasks on behalf of the campaign at events themselves. Lest this all seem overly staid, there’s bling, too — a limited edition white and gold variant of the distinctive MAGA cap for the captains.

Of Trump’s GOP rivals, it’s Vivek Ramaswamy, the young biotech entrepreneur new to politics, who’s working the hardest to meet Republican activists face to face. With a schedule packed with “town hall” appearances, as many as eight or nine daily, Ramaswamy is on the Pizza Ranch circuit, taking advantage of the community rooms in the Iowa-based restaurant chain with a Christian conservative corporate vision.

Caucus 101 lessons

Trump’s caucus events are different. They’re large rallies with hundreds in attendance — and since mid-October, most of them are billed as “Commit to Caucus” events. The events have considerable time devoted to instructing the crowd about how to caucus, which is an unusual use of time at campaign events. It’s also a little perplexing, but potentially conveys some meaning.

The typical rally requires attendees to register and be in place well before the event begins, perhaps 1-2 hours early. Attendees are primed with a playlist and some B-list endorsers. They have included a losing congressional candidate, Trump’s former acting attorney general after he fired Jeff Sessions, and the Iowa attorney general.

Despite Trump’s commanding lead in the polls, local GOP stars — like Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and prominent Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats — are on Team (Ron) DeSantis.

But early in these Trump rallies, the program pivots to a Caucus 101-like presentation — how to find out where to caucus, what to do in advance and what to expect at the caucuses.

The other GOP candidates do this at their events to a much lesser extent, if at all. And in a heavily reported gaffe, Casey DeSantis, the spouse of the Florida governor, actually conveyed incorrect instructions, saying that non-Iowans can participate in the Iowa caucuses.

The how-to-caucus component of Trump campaign events could be nothing more than filler, something to occupy the attention of a confined crowd forced to be in place for hours. It might even be ill-advised, patently naïve because it’s instructing not only Trump supporters, but also Republicans in other candidates’ camps. When Democratic candidates have offered such instruction in the past, it’s been behind closed doors, reserved for known supporters and closer to caucus time.

It’s just possible that there’s more to this, some deeper meaning in the former president signing off on an effort to build an organization. Perhaps he recognizes that celebrity will only take him so far, and that attention to the traditional tools of politics might be in his best interests.

In that spirit, last summer Trump’s campaign scored a big win in California, where it successfully pushed for Trump-friendly processes in that state’s winner-take-all presidential primary. Whether simply finding ways to modify rules to his advantage — or flat-out rigging the system — this new Trump approach is time-honored.

And it just might give Democrats even more cause for concern. A second term might be fueled with a little more political know-how to advance the Trump agenda.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

If a school board member has a social media account, would it be wrong for them to block someone and delete their comments? That’s a question the Supreme Court has decided to take up after public officials, including two school board members, blocked constituents from seeing their accounts or removed critical comments.

At stake is what constitutes state action — or action taken in an official governmental capacity — on social media. Under the First Amendment, officials engaging in state action cannot restrict individuals’ freedom of speech and expression.

A ruling in the case, likely to come in spring or early summer 2024, could have broad implications for American society, where nearly three-fourths of the population use social media in their daily lives. The ruling could also establish whether social media accounts of public officials should be treated as personal or governmental.

In a joint oral argument, the Supreme Court heard two separate cases on the matter, including the one involving school board members, in late October 2023. Interestingly, lower courts reached opposite outcomes, prompting the question of whether a post on a personal social media page can be considered state action.

The school board case

Beginning around 2014, two school board candidates in the Poway Unified School District in San Diego created Facebook and Twitter, now X, pages as part of their campaigns for office. They continued to use them after they were elected to communicate with residents and seek their input.

In 2017, the school board members blocked a couple with children in the district from commenting on their pages. Christopher and Kimberly Garnier repeatedly posted criticism on those pages over such issues as the board members’ handling of race relations in the district and alleged financial wrongdoing by the then-superintendent. The Garniers responded to being blocked by filing a lawsuit.

In the resulting case, O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed that the two school board members violated the Garniers’ First Amendment rights to free speech and expression. The court rejected the board members’ claims that their accounts were private because they were not controlled by their boards and their posts were not directly related to their official duties.

The 9th Circuit judges made three points in ruling that the board members violated the First Amendment. First, the pages identified the board members as government officials and displayed their titles prominently. Second, the social media accounts provided information about school activities. And third, the board members solicited constituent input about school matters on the social media pages in question.

However, the court concluded that the board members were not liable for monetary damages. This is because at the time the school board members blocked the Garniers, no court had yet established whether the First Amendment applies to public officials’ speech in the context of social media. It was — and remains — a new frontier in the law.

Critical comments over COVID-19

Conversely, in a similar case in Port Huron, Michigan, the 6th Circuit made the opposite ruling.

Years before he was appointed city manager in 2014, a man named James Freed created a personal Facebook page that he eventually made public when he reached the limit of “friends” allowed on Facebook. Once in office, he used the page for both personal and professional reasons, posting updates about his family as well as policies he was working to implement. During the pandemic, constituent Kevin Lindke posted on Freed’s page, criticizing his handling of the public health crisis. Freed deleted Lindke’s comments and blocked him from the page. Lindke sued.

In Lindke v. Freed, the 6th Circuit affirmed that Freed did not violate the First Amendment in deleting and blocking Lindke’s comments. And like the 9th Circuit in O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, the court concluded that people’s First Amendment rights to comment on public officials’ social media pages had not yet been established.

The 6th Circuit ruled that Freed posted on his social media page as a private citizen, rather than as a governmental official. The court determined this for three reasons. First, no state law required him to run a social media page. Second, state funds and resources were not used to run the page. And third, the page belonged to Freed as an individual, rather than to the office of city manager — unlike the @POTUS page on X, for example. Therefore, the court concluded that the postings did not constitute state action subject to the First Amendment.

In April 2023, the Supreme Court agreed to intervene in both cases.

The future of the cases

Both cases not only have consequences for citizens’ First Amendment rights but also for social media companies and users. The Court may decide whether social media platforms such as Facebook and X can be liable for allowing a public official to block private citizens from commenting on their accounts.

These cases might also establish rules and standards about how public officials can control their social media accounts and the role of the courts in these disputes.

In a brief supporting the city manager in Lindke v. Freed, the U.S. Department of Justice basically argued that if the government neither owns nor controls the personal social media accounts of public officials, their behavior on the platforms “will rarely be found to be state action.”

The DOJ added that preventing public officials from blocking some messages might make them less willing to speak out about important issues. They warned that this could reduce, rather than enhance, free speech and discourse on matters of public interest, whether in schools or other agencies.

On the other hand, organizations such as the ACLU argue that allowing public officials to restrict comments on social media would be detrimental to democracy by limiting free speech.

“The upshot of the government officials’ argument is that they should have a constitutional blank check to silence or retaliate against their constituents for expressing disfavored viewpoints on social media,” the ACLU wrote about the two cases. “This would give officials a way to short-circuit our most fundamental First Amendment protections.”

Depending on how the court rules, social media may be headed into a new era of who can access and comment on the accounts of public officials.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

The shocking events of Jan. 6, 2021, signaled a major break from the nonviolent rallies that categorized most major protests over the past few decades.

What set Jan. 6 apart was the president of the United States using his cellphone to direct an attack on the Capitol, and those who stormed the Capitol being wired and ready for insurrection.

My co-authors and I, a media and disinformation scholar, call this networked incitement: influential figures inciting large-scale political violence via social media. Networked incitement involves insurgents communicating across multiple platforms to command and coordinate mobilized social movements in the moment of action.

The reason there was not more bloodshed on Jan. 6 emerged through investigation into the Oath Keepers, a vigilante organization composed mostly of former military and police. During their trials for seditious conspiracy, members of the Oath Keepers testified about weapons caches in hotels and vans, stashed near Washington, D.C. As one member described it, “I had not seen that many weapons in one location since I was in the military.”

The Oath Keepers were following Washington law by not carrying the weapons in the district, while waiting for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which gives the president the authority to deploy the military domestically for law enforcement.

The militia was waiting for orders from Trump. That was all that kept U.S. democracy safe from armed warfare that day.

Social media as command and control

What happened in D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, does not easily fit into typical social movement frameworks for describing mobilization. The insurrectionists behaved akin to a networked social movement, with online platforms forming the infrastructure to organize action, but its leaders were politicians and political operatives as opposed to charismatic community leaders. On that day in particular, the insurrectionists, who are closely aligned with MAGA Republicans more broadly, functioned like Trump’s volunteer army rather than a populist movement.

Even with the availability of social media, networked social movements still need mainstream media coverage to legitimize their cause. Typically, community organizers push a particular issue — for example Black Lives Matter and #MeToo — into the media spotlight to get the public to care about their issue. Social movements tend to struggle for exposure and to frame favorable narratives.

The insurrectionists had the advantage of betting on mainstream media coverage for Jan. 6, so they focused on gathering resources and coordinating attendance. As a result, Trump’s supporters did not need to expend much effort to bring attention to the event and, instead, concentrated on organizing ride-shares and splitting hotel costs. As in prior social movements, the networking capacity of social media proved to be an important conduit to bring strangers together for the occasion. What the insurrectionists failed to do was convince key stakeholders, such as mainstream media, Vice President Mike Pence and the U.S. Capitol Police, to join their fight.

Networked incitement is different from the legalistic understanding of incitement, where an inflammatory statement immediately precedes unlawful acts or creates a dangerous situation. The call to action for Jan. 6 came from the president himself in a series of social media posts enticing supporters to come to D.C. for a “wild” time.

Tweets like these from a prominent figure became social media’s equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater.

Mobilizing for violence

My colleagues and I sought data to better understand what motivated everyday folks to storm the Capitol that day under great personal risk. Using the method of qualitative content analysis, we assembled 469 charging and sentencing documents for 417 defendants and coded them for the stated reasons for attending the event. We chose these court documents because they represented the fullest narrative accounts available. The purpose of these documents was to explain the rationales and mental states of the accused, while also offering a defense or explanation for their actions.

We analyzed the documents, looking at the multiple motivations for the insurrectionist mobilization. Overwhelmingly, insurrectionists said they were motivated by a desire to support Trump, which was equally split with a rationale to stop a rigged election. In sum, we concluded that disinformation mobilizes and incites political violence under specific conditions, such as a popular public figure calling for help.

For example, the court documents also directly reference social media posts of the accused. On Dec. 22, 2020, Kelly Meggs, an Oath Keeper who was later convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 12 years in prison, wrote on Facebook:

“Trump said It’s gonna be wild!!!!!!! It’s gonna be wild!!!!!!! He wants us to make it WILD that’s what he’s saying. He called us all to the Capitol and wants us to make it wild!!! Sir Yes Sir!!! Gentlemen we are heading to DC pack your shit!!”

The reference to “it’s gonna be wild” was a rejoinder to the now infamous tweet Trump sent after a reportedly difficult six-hour meeting the president had with staff about how to proceed with the fraud inquiry and undo the election results. Oath Keeper Meggs’ tweet illustrates that even before Jan. 6, militia groups were looking for signs from Trump about how to proceed. An investigation by NPR also illustrated how Trump’s messages emboldened participants and ignited the events of that day.

A dark future

No sitting president before Trump had exploited the capacity of social media to directly reach citizens to command specific actions.

The use of social media for networked incitement foreshadows a dark future for democracies. Rulers could well come to power by manipulating mass social movements via social media, directing a movement’s members to serve as the leaders’ shock troops, online and off.

Clear regulations preventing the malicious weaponization of social media by politicians who use disinformation to incite violence is one way to keep that future at bay.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.