The New Role of Blogging in American Elections
New Media Plays a Lead Role in the 2008 US Presidential Elections
Dec 12, 2008
In July 2007 there was a debate among Democratic presidential hopefuls. Broadcast on CNN, the interchange featured questions selected from about 3,000 videos submitted via the mega videovlog YouTube.
One of the younger respondents was a student at my university (Kansas) who described himself as "floored" when he saw his 27-second video on television. His query was directed at Senators Clinton and Obama and dealt with the race and gender issues of the election...but that's not the whole story.
Jordan Williams, 20, told our local paper that he was "a little bit dismayed when Senator Obama made a joke. But they didn't answer the question, so I was immediately a little annoyed." But Williams, a member of the Campus Young Democrats organization, expressed his continuing interest in following political news and being a good citizen. He added: "I just think it's very important. Some people care about what Lindsay Lohan's doing on the weekend and I like to care about what speech [John] Edwards recently gave."
In general, blogging (and its sister OSIM [online social interactive media] techs and venues) have affected Campaign '08 in many ways. Here are just a few:
- Through the use of blogs and other OSIM, Barack Obama was able to gain a decisive edge in fundraising and appeal to youth voters to win the Democratic nomination for the presidency. (His margins of youth vote in Iowa were the highest in polling history.)
- All major American political candidates and campaigns are extensively creating OSIM and both employing OSIM professionals and reaching out to independent bloggers. The newest job title in politics is "Blog Outreach Coordinator."
- Many people are creating their own political Web sites, from blogs to MySpace pages, to self-organize (or self-cast) on behalf of candidates and causes.
- Military bloggers (milbloggers) have affected perceptions of the Iraq war in the United States and thus affected its political role in the election.
- Most major media organziations, especially those concerned with politics, are "blogging up," asking their correspondents and editorialists to start blogs and hiring bloggers.
- Citizen journalism has redefined all journalism, especially in politics. The proverbial "first draft of history" is no longer written or pictured by news professionals but often by ordinary citizens on the scene of news events, from the South Asia tsunami to the London bombings.
- The cell phone and pocket digital camera have affected political discourse. Politicians never know who in a crowd might be videoing them. Examples include the George Allen Senate campaign ("Macaca moment") and Obama's "bitter" comments. Politicians can't control distribution of their image and words any longer—everyone in the room is a potential journalist via the cell phone and YouTube. As a result, reporters have commented on how, for example, in the New Hampshire campaign the candidates were more guarded, less personal with voters.
- MySpace and Facebook have become significant loci for political argumentation and organization.
- YouTube is now the world's "network of record." People go to it to see breaking news and upload their own "I-reports."
- The young campaign worker (22-29) grew up with OSIM: text-messaging is no more "new" media to them than the wheel and fire.
