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The Internet, Media and Politics
Several people submitted an interesting column on Davenet about the differences in methodologies of the Dean campaign and other primary campaigns. Of course, the analogy doesn't have to be strictly Dean - it can apply to any candidate who breaks from the traditional norms of campaigning. and while I think people have been saying since 1996 that this is the year of the Internet in politics, for me this is the first *real* use of the Internet in a meaningful way. In any case, the question of productization in politics is a very real one, and should be discussed.
It seems to me that Dean's Internet Angle really gave him the lead at first. It helped me to notice him, root for him etc. (Couldn't vote for him where I am though). Now it seems that Kerry etc. are returning to the traditional means as the race advances? Any views on this? Thanks! J
Those who used to research candidates before can now hit their website and get a quick summary instead of digging through newspapers and mass mailers.
Those who never really cared, pretty much still don't care, even if all they have to do is click on a website and read.
The biggest affect has been that communication within groups of like-minded individuals has been greatly increased. Between sites like meetup.com for live meetings and email discussion lists for ongoing meetings online, if you care about an issue or set of issues, you can coordinate with others who feel the same way.
It's gotten to the point where non-internet enabled members of political organizations are starting to feel left out because they miss 90% of what goes on in their group.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
for me this is the first *real* use of the Internet in a meaningful way.
Not to get too off-topic here -- but I consider communicating with friends and family to be at least as important as political activism.
The coolest voice ever.
me this is the first *real* use of the Internet in a meaningful way
Well the Blair Witch Project, back in 1999 used an internet-based marketing approach to rack up 140 million dollars. Not only that, it set the standard for how movies are marketed online.
Just because this is about entertainment and art and not politics doesn't make it less real. There's a lot of money in movies.
Before everyone starts jumping up and down claiming that "productization" of politics is a bad thing-- please realize it`s been happening since the inception of the US republic: the tracts coming out of Boston (Common Sense, Federalist Papers) were all "productization" of one form or another-- the idea that you must package a message in palpable and swallowable formats for the masses to recieve and understand that message.
Poets, Priests and Politicians use words for your submission. The Internet thrives on disseminating text. It's just taken a while for the campaigns to figure out the most effective ways of doing that. Looking back, it makes sense that this would only happen _after_ the hypsters of the dot-com era faded away. Now that all the Flash intros, goofy graphics and image maps have all evaporated, the Internet is (hopefully) getting back to what it does best: disseminate text and solicit commentary. Wikipedia, Slashdot, Fark, and Google all understand this.
davejenkins.com |
Looking at a candidate's website is a good way to see what THEY think is important.
I would agree that you should also plug their name into a decent search engine and see what else is out there. If there is anything significant out there, it will likely be online. Everything from ratings by various organizations to statements of their opponents.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Oh, and as a sort-of side note, that's the first time I've ever read Dave Winer's blog. Is his writing always that bad and his arguements that disconnected? I've been living in a non-English-speaking country for a few years, and I felt the English he used was as bad as mine is sometimes. What's his excuse?
I must agree with one point in the article, at least. The way to use the 'net in politics is to use it to the hilt, and assume that the traditional implements of power will act against you. Using it as just a nontraditional means of fundraising and then trying to spend the money with the people you just bypassed is not too bright.
Instead, go *completely* nontraditional. Don't buy into the claim that you have to spend big to win big. For very little money a candidate can now have what amounts to his own publishing empire, one that's very difficult for the entrenched interests to silence or drown out. Point out that the other guys are spending $100 million to win a job that pays $0.5 million a year, and ask if that seems fiscally responsible, or even sane. Publish *detailed analyses* instead of meaningless sound bites and vague strokes, for people who want to read 'em, and make a point of the fact that *your* thinking is always available for study while *they* seem to want to hide all their details. Dredge up the news that's important to you, and become known as a place where people can find the stuff that's kept out of the daily papers. Don't try to outspend 'em; try to out-write 'em.
Close, but fascism is a product of socialist (left) philosophy . I got your point though, the extremes do tend to start resembling each other.
Just wait until they start spamming us.
This is not funny, this is insightful in its foresight. Remember, political calls are exempt from the US national do-not-call list. The poster is correct, as politicians adapt themselves to the internet, they will adopt the marketing techniques of the environment and that includes spam.
I've finally got around to changing my sig
Hundreds of thousands of us protested, you know. People were harrassed, even arrested for speaking their mind
Don't spread the myth. The only ones who were harassed or arrested were the ones who engaged in violence, criminal trespass, or other actions which went beyond speaking their minds.
Yes, there were some innocent people caught up in the dragnets and mass arrests. However, they were harassed/arrested for being unlucky enough to be caught in a riot situation caused by violent protesters. Again, they were not being harassed for speaking their minds.
No, looking at a candidate's website is a good way to see what they want you to think they think is important.
0 83 5.asp
4 01 261431.asp
Take a look at John Kerry - http://www.johnkerry.com/about/
His dad was a volunteer, he was a volunteer, but he was in the wrong war! Then he went on to be a senate stud.
But that's not accurate, not really, and I think it's important to look around the web to learn what is important.
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york20040122
"The publication Congressional Quarterly examined 119 recorded votes held in 2003 in which the president had taken a position. CQ found that Kerry was present for just 28 percent of those votes. In contrast, Kerry's colleague from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, was present for 97 percent of the votes."
As for his voting for war, he voted against the First Gulf War, then voted for the Second Gulf War, but he claims he didn't really understand what power that vote was going to give the President. And in the 1990s he called for an end to the Iraqi government as it was.
http://www.nationalreview.com/document/kerry200
Speech by John Kerry, delivered on the Senate floor on Nov. 9, 1997, as recorded in the Congressional Record.
"Plainly and simply, Saddam Hussein cannot be permitted to get away with his antics, or with this latest excuse for avoidance of international responsibility."
"We must recognize that there is no indication that Saddam Hussein has any intention of relenting. So we have an obligation of enormous consequence, an obligation to guarantee that Saddam Hussein cannot ignore the United Nations. He cannot be permitted to go unobserved and unimpeded toward his horrific objective of amassing a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. This is not a matter about which there should be any debate whatsoever in the Security Council, or, certainly, in this Nation. If he remains obdurate, I believe that the United Nations must take, and should authorize immediately, whatever steps are necessary to force him to relent -- and that the United States should support and participate in those steps."
This is just a single example and I used a single source for my rebuttals. The point of this is, if you use the canidate's sites and ther suporters and organizer's sites, you won't learn anything real about the canidate.
A popular cliche, but completely wrong. Politics is multi-dimensional; the left/right (labor/capital) axis is orthogonal to the the authoritarian/libertarian one. Facismism is authoritarian capitalism (Yes, the Nazis had "socialist" in their name, they lied, big surprise. Socialists don't supply slave labor to corporations. (Slave labor to the state, maybe.))
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Its really sad to see americans treat the word liberal like its a four letter word, I pity dean not, american I weep for.
I remember reading an article by Moore, right after the 9-11 attacks, in which he supported the attacks as justice: a justifiable reaction against the U.S. by the downtrodden poor peoples of the world.
His explanation was quite lengthy, listing a bunch of countries that the USSR trashed during the Cold War days, and falsely blaming things on the U.S.
It never occured to him that the actual 9-11 perps were quite rich (not downtrodden at all), and actually DID hate the U.S. for its freedom (they want the world under Islamic law, and resent the U.S.'s favoring of religious freedom).
Yes, I'm sure all those scientists connected around the world were doing anything but advancing the knowledge of mankind. Much more imortant to campaign for leadership of what is admittedly the most influential country in the world...
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Fox News vs CNN This gives the news networks the appearance of political in-fighting, just like several of the democratic presidential candidates.
No exhaustive analysis to see here! Move along!
The second article quotes CBS pres Andrew Heyward, "Cable thrives on repetition and, let's be kind, exhaustive analysis, which has to constantly be freshened." Saying ANY of the news networks engage in "exhaustive analysis" is indeed charitable. They replay and replay without ever showing much success in giving context to the newsworthy items they cover. Almost any clip can be made to look wonderful or ridiculous if taken out of context.
The value of the Internet as news media is you can get the context you need to make sense of the news clips. Good print media is also useful for that, but it's often frustrating to wait for your weekly delivery of the Economist.
ANY media gains an advantage when the editors can help provide unbiased reporting AND context for the events they cover. The trick is finding editors you can trust.
Until we can swing a big enough monetary stick around in a guided fashion, the corporate interests will continue to control US policies.
Thinking outside my Head
Dean's principal problem was not the hostile media. The media is hostile to all candidates--after all, when was the last time you heard a Campaign talk about how happy they are with the coverage of their candidate? Dean's problem was he got stuck in a feedback loop with his base--while his base loved everything he said, the rest of the electorate didn't, and the base was all that Dean's campaign managers listened to. The internet makes it much easier to for minorities to organize and be far more vocal than in the past, but a vocal minority is still a minority. The organization capabilities of the internet made it far easier for Dean to get crowds to his speeches, which made it appear his support was far broader than it was. It used to be three hundred people at a speech early in the campaign was indicative of far greater support, but in Dean's case is simply meant that there were three hundred people in that area who supported him.
All the things about Dean that his base loved--his irreverence, his red-faced speeches, his jokes--many other voters found annoying and un-Presidential. Some of Dean's policy proposals just made him look silly (like the campaign finance reform proposal where you give $100 to a candidate, the candidate gets "matching" funds of $500 from the Federal campaign funds, and you get to take a $100 credit against your next income tax bill. Net result: $600 flows to the candidate from the Federal coffers, and you don't lose a dime). It didn't help matters that his base could literally see no wrong with their candidate. I read the Dean Campaign blogs for a while, and they were a scary place. When a campaign becomes incapable of criticizing their candidate, a bad ending is almost ensured. Dean's decline in the polls came not so much from voters deserting him, but from all of the "undecided" voters who made up their minds right before the election all choosing other candidates, mainly Kerry.
I suspect Dean's die-hard supporters will find comfort in the "media assassination" and "Democratic Establishment was scared of us" theories to explain the collapse of their candidate, the fact is in elections, there are winners and losers, and it really doesn't matter how "right" you believe your candidate is, because the other candidates also have supporters who utterly believe they're "right" as well. In the end, the winner is the person who does the best job of persuading other people to support them, not the person who may be right. Just because Democracy doesn't produce the outcome you desire does not mean it isn't working. You win some, you lose some, move on to the next battle.
Agree. I'm the original poster, and I thought I was actually being objective. Calling it as I see it.
In reality, the true old-school definition of Liberal should be applied to Newt Gingrich Republican Revolutionaries because they were trying to rock the boat and change the status quo. Old-school meaning how Liberal was defined 100 years ago.
Today, Liberalism, has been usurped by Socialists. In America, there are enough people that associate Socialists with Communists. And slowly Liberal is being connected to Socialism, which is connected to Communism. Whether this be fair or not.
Simple fact, Liberalism basically means more state control of the economy. Who disagrees with that statement?
It's no secret that several of the more liberal leaning congressmen and women are members unapologetic socialists.
Slashdot Moderators showing their true colors.
Any post pointing out Dean's Liberalism is getting flamebait.
I liked the article and agree with a lot of the authors sentiments, but disagree with the overall analysis for a number of reasons:
1. Dean didn't have the kind of control over his Internet presence to force it to zig or zag. You're right, Dean didn't plan on being an Internet candidate he wandered into it, or rather it wandered in to him. The pissed off Internet masses were bubbling and looking for someone relatively mainstream to throw their support behind. This was a relatively large and vocal group that looked scary, but in the end was a mutual admiration society of bloggers and activists that was going to love Dean and/or themselves no matter what Dean did. However, as much as the zealots of this group have and will always love Dean, the realists in the group realized that ultimately he is unelectable. Right or wrong, he's been painted as angry and he vocalizes for a small section of society. These realists fled the cause for a more electable (and yes mainstream) candidate, come primary day.
2. The media is dumb. You said it yourself, look at the kind of crap that's on at any given time. Just look at the coverage that Jackson's Teatgate has received. There is no media conspiracy to prop up Kerry. On the contrary, the media bubble had been so Dean focused for so long, that he was bound to disappoint. Instead of being a solid contender now, he a washout, because the media had set such high expectations of his performance.
All I have time for. Discuss.
I've taken a hard line against the imperialist ambitions of the current US administration
The US is strongly antiimperialist, so there is no imperialism to oppose.
This guy is about as disconnected from reality as the "Dean is the frontrunner" belief turned out to be. How did the media networks defeat Dean, when *everything* up to Iowa was Dean Dean Dean Dean Dean. I never heard jack squat about any other candidate, ever. Unless Howard Dean tried to run television campaigns in Iowa and New Hampshire and was *refused*, then I don't see what their deal is.
Arguing that he was picked on by CNN and others after his Iowa concession speech may be correct, but that doesn't change the fact that he gave them the target to aim at, and it was HUGE. That was not "just being a normal person". The thing that lost Dean this election was Dean himself.
Howard Dean spent more money and had more visibility than any other candidate until kerry started winning. I have a pre-caucus Economist showing Dean and Bush as the candidates; To many, it seemed all but decided. There was always some doubt; every conversation I had about Dean moving towards the elections was "Sure he's winning, but could he beat Bush in a million years?". The answer, sadly, was no, and people realized this. Sure he opposed the Iraq war, and with today's data he can look back and be proud. But had the president/CIA/whoever not been lying/stretching the truth, who knows how acceptable that stance would be now.
I have been to the Dean site. I have read On The Issues. It's all "I will implement a plan..." with no real details. When there is some hint, it's something that flies in the face of 5000 years of civilized experience.
This is commonly followed by a laundry list of problems that are implied to be all Bush's fault instead of the millions of assholes in this country who possess life skills below those of a retarded squirrel.
--- Ban humanity.
After all the hype, all the buzz, and all the "we're savvy on the Net" hyperbole, the plain fact of the matter is It-Didn't-Work. There have been some great and insightful posts here on why that happened, with lots of "if he woulda, coulda, shoulda" quarterbacking, but that doesn't disguise the fact that for whatever reason It-Didn't-Work. I suspect that the 'Net exaggerated the phenomenon, but it is not at all new or soley as a result of the 'Net. After all, though he may have gathered it there, Dean did not blow $40 Million on the 'Net.
Remember when Jesse Jackson was surging in the polls because of his "Rainbow Coalition" during the Mondale-Gary Hart fight? The hype was tremendous, and Jackson started to believe it. Amazed at the buzz Jackson, in a major speech, intoned, "There's somethin' happenin' in this land!"
Well, when push came to shove and people actually had to choose their candidate they 'came to their senses' (in quotes in case there are some Jackson fans out there) and voted in a middle-of-the-road, basically boring sort of guy who got himself trounced by....George (Herbert Walker) Bush!
Could it be, instead, that people took a good look at Dean, saw through the hype and bluster and said, "No, thank you."?
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
...everything looks like a nail. The author of this article is one of "those people". You know, the ones who attach themselves to current fads and don't realize when they're dying or dead, and keep flogging the blog, er, I mean horse well beyond its death throes.
Whether Dean was or was not a potential candidate is beside this guy's point--he was arguing that the internet is an effete medium that cannot overthrow "big corporate" control. I've got news for him, the internet isn't media-controlled. If someone wants to find something, there are ample search engines and plenty of word-of-mouth via email. Over 70% of the American populace is logging on, so it's not like there's an accessibility problem. Fewer than that even bother to vote!
If people are gullible enough to believe what's on the TV, they're never going to choose the candidate that represents them. The internet isn't necessarily a more pure medium, but there are at least a lot of voices. The problem is, bloggers are bought the same way TV and radio spots are, so how does a change in media really matter? It doesn't. That's why Dean isn't the Democratic candidate: he didn't win.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
"A mixed economy with heavily socialist leanings is the best mix for the real world."
Since socialism is all about empowering the rulers at the expense of the ruled, having a "heavy" degree of this is not good. A mixed economy with the government only involved in what is absolutely necessary is much better.
Sorry, this does not include football stadiums, health insurance for people who can afford it (and other "welfare for people of means" programs), mohair subsidies, or limousines for Congressional members.
The libertarians are also not near as bad as the communists. As the libertarians are at their worst selfish hermits, you don't get them organizing and killing tens of millions of people at a time in order to "better society" like the Communists do.
I'd much rather have Ayn Rand than Lenin as my next-door neighbor. If I accentally kick that football into her yard, that greedy old bat will keep it because "I violated her property rights".
Lenin, however, would come over, shoot my kids, take the football, and burn down my house "to help the working peoples".
Dean's campaign vanished from the face of the earth after he fired the Trippi dude and hired an Al Gore lobbyist-stooge. And Trippi had spent all the money on Iowa and New Hampshire. But before that.....
1) He didn't control his volunteers. You don't let kids with pierced tongues try and persuade Iowa farmers to spend all day at your caucus. You don't let your gay volunteers kiss you with camerapeople present - however you might feel about it, gay rights is a loser issue except in a very few Zip codes. Did Karl Rove pay the guy to smooch him?
2) He didn't understand television. TV is a cool medium. When you are on TV you are a guest in people's living rooms. Dean vomited on the rug.
3) He didn't do damage control. After the New Hampshire speech, he should have gone on TV to apologize and show how levelheaded and non-angry he could be. Instead, nobody ever saw him on TV after that.
From http://www.makethemaccountable.com/podvin/media/04 0201_TheScream.htm
2/1/04
By David Podvin
On December 1, 2003, Howard Dean was ahead by twenty points in the polls when he appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews and said, "We're going to break up the giant media enterprises." This pronouncement went far beyond the governor's previous public musings about possibly re-regulating the communications industry, and amounted to a declaration of war on the corporations that administer the flow of information in the United States.
It was an extraordinarily noble and dangerous thing to do: when he advocated a truly free press, Dr. Dean was provoking the corrupt media conglomerates that control what most Americans see and hear and read, and thereby control what most Americans think.
The media giants quickly responded by crushing his high-flying campaign with the greatest of ease. This time, they didn't even have to invent a scandal in order to achieve the desired result; merely by chanting the word "unelectable" at maximum volume, the mainstream media maneuvered Democratic voters into switching their support to someone who poses no threat to the status quo.
John Kerry is a member in good standing of the feeble Daschle/Biden/Feinstein wing of the Democratic Party, a group of politicians whose disagreements with the mercantile elite tend to be merely rhetorical. Any doubts about Kerry's level of commitment to his stated progressive beliefs were conclusively answered in 1994 when he proclaimed himself "delighted" with the Republican takeover of Congress. The media oligarchy knows that a general election race between Kerry and George W. Bush will insure a continuation of its monopoly, regardless of who wins.
The news cartel had always been hostile to Dean; independent surveys revealed that he had received the most negative coverage of any candidate except Dennis Kucinich (the only other contender who strongly favors mandatory media divestment). But after his statement on Hardball, reporting about Dean abruptly came to an end and was replaced by supposition. The existing conjecture in political circles about his ability to win was transformed into a thunderous media mantra that drowned out all other issues
By mid-December, the news divisions of the four major television networks were reporting as fact that Dean was unelectable. The print media echoed the theme; on December 17, the Washington Post printed a front-page story that posited Dean could not win the presidency. The Post quickly followed up with an onslaught of articles and editorials reasserting that claim. Before the month was over, Dean's lack of electability had been highlighted in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and every other major paper in the United States.
As 2004 began, Time and Newsweek simultaneously ran cover stories emphasizing that Dean was unelectable. In the weeks before the Iowa caucus, the ongoing topic of discussion on the political panel shows was that Dean was unelectable. National talk radio shows repeatedly stressed that Dean was unelectable. The corporate Internet declared that Dean was unelectable. And the mainstream media continued with the storyline that Dean was unelectable right up until Iowans attended their caucuses. Iowa Democrats could not watch a television or listen to a radio or read a newspaper or go online without learning that Howard Dean was unelectable.
It was the classic Big Lie. Through the power of repetition, the corporate media - which has been wrong about who would win the popular vote in two of the last three presidential elections - inculcated the public with the message that Dean could not win. Pollster John Zogby wrote, "Howard Dean was the man of the year, but that was 2003. In 2004, electability has become the issue and John Kerry has benefited."
The unexamined