Deconstructing the Digital Era
I must confess that I've never trusted the Web. I've always seen it as a coward's tool. Where does it live? How do you hold it personally responsible? Can you put a distributed network of fiber-optic cable "on notice"? And is it male or female? In other words, can I challenge it to a fight? -- Stephen Colbert
Senator Ted Stevens thinks the internet is a "series of tubes." George W. Bush believes there are internets galore out there. And John McCain...well, the Senator has admitted that he doesn't even know how to use a computer.
Politics in the digital era is tricky, not so much because of the wealth of information on the web, but because of the millions of ordinary Americans using that information on a daily basis. Armed with new media tools, muckrackers today number in the millions. No longer is a candidate able to present a poll-tested package to the press and have that persona spoon-fed to the American people. No, today's voters have available to them a universe of information consisting of detailed voting records, primary sources, debunking sites, blogs, and more. As John McCain recently said, "[w]hat you can find out now on the Internet -- it's remarkable."
What's remarkable is that now more than ever, Americans are turning to the internet to become familiar with the candidates and otherwise engage in the political process. A just-released survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project reveals these astonishing figures:
A record-breaking 46% of Americans have used the internet, email or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaign, share their views and mobilize others.
What's fascinating about this survey is how the internet is being used in this, the first presidential campaign of the 21st century:
35% of Americans say they have watched online political videos a figure that nearly triples the reading the Pew Internet Project got in the 2004 race.
11% of Americans have contributed to the political conversation by forwarding or posting someone else's commentary about the race.
As most of us who have been on the receiving end of those right-wing rags known as "forwards" know, bullshit spreads far and wide on the internet. You know the ones, the ones with a "letter" written by some stay-at-home mom in Oklahoma who was just compelled to write about how scandalous it is that her children can't say the Pledge of Allegiance in school because it contains the words "under God." Or the ones chock-full of animated graphics of waving flags and fireworks noting some lie about terrorists endorsing Democrats, and demanding that we "take America back." Or the ones about Barack Obama's secret pact with Muslim leaders to take over the White House and then make all of us wear head scarves and replace our guns with slingshots.
The phenomenon of the right-wing forward has never ceased to amaze me. It seems like no matter how outrageous the lie or how repulsive the smear, these emails are crafted in such a way as to make otherwise sane people--our right-wing family members or co-workers--momentarily insane--just long enough to click "forward" and pass on the filth to you, and every other name in their address book.
While Stephen Colbert may wonder aloud whether you can challenge the internet to a fight, it's clear that Barack Obama has indeed chosen to do so. Obama has been on the receiving end of some of the most outlandish right-wing emails in recent memory. His response has been swift, first by dedicating a portion of his website to debunking the smears, and most recently, by launching yet another site, fightthesmears.com.* In other words, the Obama camp is fighting fire with fire--using the same medium that started the lies to fight the lies, targeting the same people.
John McCain doesn't have an email problem, and not just because the left has yet to master the art of the political forward. As we've discussed repeatedly (here and here), John McCain has a YouTube problem.
For McCain, the dangers of the digital age lay not in a single lie spread wide by email, but in his own multiple lies and panders, presented in his own words, on video. There are countless of mash-ups on YouTube and other video sites of McCain vs. McCain, offering up in delicious clips the devastating sound-bites of McCain taking one position (when it was political convenient to do so) and then taking another.
In light of the unique problems (and solutions) the internet presents to both candidates, the figures in the Pew survey are that much more relevant. More Americans are looking to online video than email forwards this campaign season, a clear disadvantage to McCain. And while Obama can fight email smears with debunking pages and emails, McCain does not have such a clean-cut response with respect to his YouTube problem. He cannot disclaim his own words, or present a mash-up of his own (indeed, as we've noted before, the McCain camp has concertedly avoided pushing out video of the candidate). The negative, then, remains unchallenged.
This isn't 2000, and McCain isn't in Kansas anymore. Gone is the ability to control voter perception through an elite group of press reporters who can be wooed and wowed with fancy buses and family barbecues. Empowered Americans are taking to the web to filter through the noise and obtain much-needed context. And yeah, there's a lot of disinformation on the web as well. But at the very least, the opportunity to critically evaluate every source and piece of information is there, as McCain would say, just "a Google" away.
In this digital era, the candidate who can most appreciate the interplay between technology and politics will have an upper hand, in both mobilizing voters, raising money, and fighting back against negative attacks. At this juncture, clearly, Obama has the upper hand. And as for McCain? Simply put, his "Straight Talk Express" isn't ready to ride the information superhighway.
*Update: Apparently, the website, isbarackobamamuslim.com, which I originally listed as being created by the Obama campaign, is not a campaign project. Still, that individual supporters are harnessing the power of the web to fight smears against their candidate is testament to how, as the survey cited above notes, Obama's supporters are more engaged online than the supporters of any other candidate.
Source: http://georgia10.dailykos.com/
Article Date: Sun Jun 15, 2008 at 07:45:43 PM PDT
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