Media criticism in context: “Yes, it would be nice if the press spent less time on inanities and more time on how candidates planned to actually run the country. But this view of the media is just too simplistic.” Via Salon.
Henry Copeland of Blogads: “As the social media winter looms, the winners will be the folks with strong relationships, low overheads, a strong commitment on innovation rather than coat-tail riding, and, most of all, a indelible passion for the business. We’re looking forward to seeing you after the bust.”
While you’re waiting for the verdict of the good people of Pennsylvania today, why not check out the beneficial effects of a Googlebomb for a candidate? Go ahead, type “Barack Obama Muslim” or “Obama religion Muslim” into your favorite search engine and see what you get. As former Edwards staffer Tracy Russo mentioned at last week’s Internet Advocacy Roundtable, the first sites you’ll see in the search results debunk the claim that Obama is a secret Muslim Manchurian Candidate. A couple of links claiming the opposite do show up, but they’re well down from skeptical articles from the likes of Snopes, CNN and the Obama campaign itself.
Tracy didn’t go into too much detail about it, but she definitely implied that this distribution of search results was the result of a Googlebomb, which was at least partially encouraged by the Obama campaign behind the scenes. Googlebombing is the deliberate attempt to influence search results through encouraging people across the web to link to certain sites to make them appear authoritative, and it’s been used commercially as well as in the 2006 elections. Lo and behold, here’s a Daily Kos diary piece from March encouraging that very tactic, and note that it mentions that several “yes-he-is-a-Muslim” pieces then appeared much higher in the rankings than they seem to now (not bad results for a month’s work). Andrew Sullivan also reports on various right-wing attempts to bomb Obama over communism and the flag lapel pin, but those seem pretty lame by comparison.
Whether the Obama campaign encouraged or influenced this apparent effort in any way is unclear from the public record, but I would be shocked if their blogger relations people hadn’t been involved in it at some level. It’s another measure of the subtlety of the ways campaigns can interact with the public via the ‘net.
Combine (1) this rule of Digital Omnipresence with (2) the rules of Off-the-Record/On the Record (i.e. — nothing is ever truly, reliably, off-the-record), then you’ve got Bittergate.
What’s the upshot? Campaign managers should consider, on a daily basis, reminding candidates of their Digital Miranda rights — call it the “Macaca Warning”:
“You have the right to be recorded — and should expect you are being videotaped and recorded 24/7. Anything you say can and will be used against you by your opponents. Beware that something that sounds OK in one setting may be a gaffe in another setting…”
Excellent idea! e.politics has been fascinated by the effects of portable video and audio recording on politics from the beginnings of the site in the Antediluvian days of 2006, and I’m damn jealous that Dan thought of that one before I did. Soon, only robots will be clean enough to run for office, and our fate as a species will at long last be sealed.
It’s always fun when dueling campaign emails arrive in the e.politics inbox only minutes apart, particularly when they’re so gently massaging the same issues-of-the-moment. Today’s edition: Obama vs. McCain. The weapons: “bitter” vs. “out of touch.” The immediate stakes: the contents of thousands of wallets. The long-term stakes: the public perception of each man, and ultimately his electoral fate. Today, Barack hit first, fast and jujitsu-style, seeking to define his San Francisco comments as a hymn of love to the great America heartland and his rivals as shady opportunists for trying to take advantage of them:
But our opponents have been spinning the media and peddling fake outrage around the clock. John McCain’s campaign, which will continue the George Bush economic policies that have devastated the middle class, called Barack out of touch and elitist. And Hillary Clinton, who is the candidate who said lobbyists represent real people, didn’t just echo the Republican candidate’s talking points: she actually used the very same words to pile on with more attacks.
Bonus points for the McCain-Clinton combo strike! Four head-spinning minutes later, John McCain went to DefCon One and dropped the E-bomb — the dreaded charge of Democratic Elitism:
If Barack Obama is the Democrat nominee in the general election, the American people will have a clear choice between two different visions - Senator Obama’s liberal, elitist philosophy and John McCain’s faith in the small town values that continue to make America great. John McCain will not forget them or write them off. Neither should Barack Obama.
Who will win this contest of wills, this battle of generational champions, this struggle for the Very Soul of Middle America? Don’t touch that dial…
With the Ames Straw Poll only days away, Republican presidential candidates are seizing the high ground in Iowa, according to Slate’s John Dickerson. For example,
Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Sam Brownback are engaged in a multiround spat over sub-rosa attacks. Both camps have questioned the other’s Christian fiber. Tom Tancredo is being attacked in phone calls and e-mails for changing his position on term limits. In a Web video he accuses Brownback of telling pro-life voters Tancredo is pro-abortion. “We do expect more from people who at least call themselves Christians and have great family values,” says Tancredo, demanding an apology.
Ah, good fun all around — and with only the leadership of the world’s sole superpower at stake. What puts e.politics on the case is this little element:
New technology has made it easier to dish such dirt. You don’t have to slip a flier under a windshield wiper anymore. No more cutting out letters from the newspaper. You can unleash a little havoc with a few keystrokes or by launching a Web page. Slime by keystroke is more effective during the caucuses and primaries than in the general election because your audience is comprised largely of activists who are already known. Many of them are probably on a party e-mail list or supporter list from a previous GOP campaign. Those lists are available to lots of different campaigns.
Excellent — not only does the Internet open up the political process to previously unheard voices, level the playing field, bring low the mighty and lift high the miserable, but it also lets us be a complete bastard to the other guy. Such an improvement over the days of yore, when according to legend, LBJ once tried to spread a rumor that an opponent had had marital relations with a pig “just ’cause I want to hear him deny it.”
Web 3.0: The Future of Video. “The future of video is professional content with a twist. Interactivity. Targeted to niche audiences, by niche additions.”
Estonia Presses Bush for Cyber-Attack Research Center Critical quote: “NATO was designed to counter physical threats and hasn’t yet developed detailed plans for cyber warfare.” Hey kids, how about we get ready to fight the NEXT war instead of the last one?
‘BONG HiTS 4 JESUS’: Nevermind. Hooray! Schools can crack down on speech — thank god, I was afraid we might teach those little bastards to think for themselves, or something.
Take a look at Media Matters today for a glimpse of the potential problems with mixing citizen-generated content and our current political culture — how segments of the mainstream media react when they’re presented with something other than the usual scripted campaign events and talking points. I’m talking about Obamagirl, of course (bless her heart), whose winsome smile and winning figure were all over cable news the past few days.
Was her crush on the candidate a plus for him? A minus? Who knows for sure, but some commentators were happy to fit the moment into a running media theme about Obama — that he’s too young and too pretty to be President of the United States. Obama lacks substance, apparently, despite the dry policy speeches he’s happy to give, and the Obamagirl video fits into the world-view of that part of the political commentariat that doesn’t want to take him seriously.
More Blog Woes For John Edwards. Great idea! Let’s attack those bloggers. You know, the guys with free printing presses and unlimited ink.
Are the Netroots Stalling Out? A serious discussion of the limits of the blogosphere. My question: is Patrick Ruffini secretly controlling the Edwards campaign? Via TechPrez.
Two Hits Too Many: Gay and Lesbian Gangs Terrorize Metro Station. Online tie-in: MySpace was central to their capture. Suggested by a loyal reader (thanks Dad!), who’s still scratching his head over this one.
As Joe Trippi has been making the rounds lately, one thing he’s been talking about is the rise of a culture of authenticity in politics as we move from a broadcast television era to an Internet-dominated era. I heard him make the point at last week’s Connecting with Young Voters event (ably summarized by Kate Phillips in The Caucus), and he said something similar this week to The Guardian (thanks, Josh).
“Before TV, what mattered was how your voice sounded. Then with TV it matters what your candidate looks like … Anybody can fake it on TV: all the Joe Trippis and Alastair Campbells get really good at making sure our guy looks great for the eight seconds that are actually going on the news.
“We are now moving to a medium where authenticity is king, from what things look like to what’s real … You have to be ‘on’ 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
What is this man singing about? What is that bizarre string of numbers and why is it printed on candy hearts? If you haven’t been following the recent saga of the online crusade to distribute the magic code used to crack hi-def video disks, you’ve missed a fascinating example of distributed, uncoordinated citizen action to make a political point. In other words, civil disobedience, Web 2.0-style!
It started back in February, when a someone cracked movie-playing software and extracted the short string of numbers used in the encryption scheme for Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. With this code and the right equipment, you can break into and copy hi-def video disks with wild abandon. The hacker posted the code online, and it quickly spread through tech-oriented blogs and news sites such as Slashdot and Digg. Cease-and-desist letters were sure to follow and did, but Digg faced a reader revolt when it pulled stories featuring the code and made headlines when it backed down before the (unruly, unwashed) mob.
Now, the dam has broken, the genie is out of the bottle, the horses have left the barnyard and the cliches are tripping over each other in their eagerness to describe the significance of what we’ve just seen. The fun part is the vast range of ways people have managed to work the code into online presentations that’ll be quite hard to track down and squash with a Google text search, ranging from the song above (listen for the nice bass part at the end), which has been mashed-up with lots of video presentations, to some interestingly weird still imagery. And, it seems that this initial hack has encouraged the devious to look for other ways to break hi-def’s copy protection, at least one of which may be unbeatable. Power to the people, baby — it’s damn hard for censorship to survive in a world where millions of us have very tall rooftops from which to shout. And, if your business model depends on being able to control the physical copies of a digital file, you might want to think about some other ways to make money off of human creativity.
[Update: More media coverage and some Obama damage control below.]
Micah Sifry posted a fascinating analysis last night of the Obama campaign’s takeover of a formerly volunteer-run MySpace site for the candidate, complete with dueling accusations and a lot of ill will all around. More than two years ago, Barak fan Joe Anthony started a MySpace page in honor of the then-Senator, only to see its friend list balloon to over 160,000 in the frenzy of attention paid to the presidential race over the past few months. Understandably, Obama’s campaign staff became uncomfortable with such a valuable asset being controlled by a volunteer and decided to take it over. Unfortunately, from there things went to hell quickly, leaving the campaign with egg on its face and Anthony labeled (unfairly, to my eyes) a cyber-squatter and money-grubber.
As Micah points out, this exact situation probably won’t play out again, since high-profile campaigns will start their own official MySpace pages and preempt amateurs in the future. But, it says a lot about the power of random political supporters (and by extension, opponents) to build up networks of excited people outside of a campaign’s direct control. As citizen-created media become more common in the political world, questions of direction, power and control will crop up more and more — campaigns are not used to letting other people shape their messages, and more feelings are likely to get bruised in the future. Balancing message discipline and real citizen involvement in politics is going to be a problem for traditionally-minded campaign operatives.
Online Ad Wars continue, as Yahoo buys RightMedia. Google counters by sinking Yahoo’s battleship, considers turning in cards to get extra armies for invasion of Asia via legendary Alaska to Kamchatka route.
How Not to Get Indicted. Note: never ever ever ever ever use email. For anything. Lest this line be written about YOU: “two mid-level account executives carried on a torrid email affair for months in messages that described in explicit detail what they hoped to do to each other once they got out of the office that day. I never knew either of them could write so well…”
Steve Rubel recently pointed to an article from Google’s “Consumer Packaged Goods” blog (a niche most of don’t contemplate regularly) that covers the question of damage control in a crisis, a situation that absolutely never ([cough] Macaca [cough]) arises in the political world. The article is aimed at companies trying to recover from a product recall or similar brand-disaster, but campaigns can learn from it as well. The author’s observations: (more…)
