It is election time
again. Many things will be familiar.
Candidates will do the things that candidates do. Reporters will
report on them and pundits will either deplore them or praise
them depending on their own pre-determined position. What will
be different this year is the way technology changes the nature
of the game and the way we experience it.
For the last couple of decades television has pretty much ruled
the political roost. Campaign ads, televised debates, and television
news shows were the means for most of us to find out about the
candidates and what they stood for.
This is changing. Consider the national conventions. They used
to receive full gavel-to-gavel TV coverage. No more.
Since politicians have learned to control coverage to a remarkable
degree, there's no breaking news unless there's a medical emergency.
And there's very little visual interest. Face it, it doesn't matter
how good the speaker is, if he or she is standing behind the lectern
it has the visual interest of a box of rocks.
The reason that the networks don't cover the whole convention
isn't that they aren't patriotic or public-spirited. It's that
their viewers won't be watching.
While most folks still get the majority of their campaign news
from television, increasingly it's not the only way. The Pew Research
Center found that almost a quarter of Americans now go online
for information about the campaign.
Online news is available on demand, around the clock. It's available
from more than one source. If you live in a town where the local
newspaper is controlled by a partisan publisher, not to worry.
You can hit the Web and review as many news and opinion sources
as you can stomach.
Among the news sources you can review are blogs, short for "Web
logs." Blogs are like journals only with feedback and links. This
year, for the first time, there are blog writers who are accredited
as journalists for the campaign.
That's only the tip of the blog iceberg. There are official blogs
on both candidates' Web sites. There are unofficial blogs posted
by folks who just want to have their say in public. All those
blogs, in turn, generate comment and research by their readers.
Since anyone can start a blog or put material on the Web or a
discussion group, this is likely to be the most transparent campaign
we've ever experienced. Consider that the first, accurate and
fact-based confirmation of John Kerry's choice of running mate
came from a volunteer source.
A contributor to a forum on an aviation Web site reported solid
evidence that John Edwards would be the Vice Presidential candidate
almost twelve hours before the official announcement. The evidence?
It seems the contributor watched as the slogans on Senator Kerry's
plane were re-done to include Edwards' name.
Technology has also changed the way the campaigns run. With tools
like email and the Meetup site it's easier than pie to bring a
supporters together on short notice. That makes local organizing
easier than ever.
Local organizing could become more important than it has been
for decades. A volunteer today can go to the Web and order materials,
even download some of them. That volunteer can email friends and
set up a meeting without going through a creaking and controlling
campaign bureaucracy.
Candidates aren't just limited to sending resources out to supporters.
They can also bring in resources, especially money. Four years
ago, raising a million dollars in a day on the Net was big news.
Today, it's almost routine.
So is rapid response. Candidates can respond almost instantly
to their opponent's advertising and notify their supporters by
email about what's happening.
Reporters must move faster, too. There used to be two big filing
deadlines, for the morning and evening papers and news shows.
Now, the news cycle is virtually continuous.
Reporters, using wireless communications and laptops or cameras
with video uplinks file, quite literally, around the clock. They
write copy for their newspaper or TV show, and also for the Net.
Those same reporters use their wireless connection and cell phone
to do research and interviews for their stories. Often, that's
not enough, and the reporters on the bus wind up interviewing
each other.
Just like before, the politicians will keep doing what politicians
do. This time around, though, technology gives us many more ways
to find out about them and respond to them.
Top of page
The official campaign Web sites.
Want to see lots of different stories about the campaigns? The
best source I know of for that is Google
News.
Yahoo has excellent lists of political blogs.
Meetup
Want to compare things today with how they used to be? Well,
there's always memory, but you can also visit the Web site for
the American
Museum of the Moving Image's look at television campaign ads
from bygone days.
You can read books about all this, too. Start with Joe Trippi's
book, "The
Revolution Will Not Be Televised : Democracy, the Internet, and
the Overthrow of Everything" about Howard Dean's campaign
and its use of technology.
Then read some classics about presidential elections. For starters,
I've picked three books which cover a twelve year period and deal
with elections involving Richard Nixon.
"The
Making of a President: 1960" was the start of Theodore H.
White's long-running series of presidential campaign books. It's
good reading today because the 1960 election was the first where
TV was deemed to be dominant.
"The
Selling of the President" by Joe McGinniss will give you another
look at Richard Nixon, six years later and a winner this time
over Hubert Humphrey. Nixon may be gone, but Roger Ailes is not
and you'll find him in this book as well.
"The
Boys on the Bus" by Timothy Crouse will show you Richard Nixon
again, this time against George McGovern. What you'll see here
is the first real look at the spin-doctoring that we now take
for granted.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project conducts research
on how we use the Net in all aspects of life including politics.
This
link is to the section of their site called e-government and e-policy.
24 August 2004
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