The First Campaign: unpacking ideology and contributing content

 

The underlying theme of “The First Campaign” is that the technological medium has become the message itself. For the 2008 presidential elections, the Internet and burgeoning channels of social media will have the unprecedented power to chart the race and influence the outcome.

 

Within the compressed period of the last 5 years or so, political campaigning has had to move away from the legacy left by the pack journalism of the 1972 Nixon-McGovern presidential contest. That was when reporters—the “Boys on the Bus” covering that campaign––incestuously group-thought to decide what was newsworthy. The press navel-gazed, ended up covering itself, and produced filtered news that did not reflect the ideological diversity present in any political race. Today’s digital world is even farther away from the 1948 Truman-Dewey campaign when individual contact with voters and grueling tours were essential tools for campaigning, before television took over for good.

 

This cannot and will not happen again. Today, voters and citizen journalists have the power to unpack homogenized ideology. What constitutes “the press” has been transformed to include the wired and hooked electorate who can become involved instantaneously through blogs, text messaging, video-sharing and social networking. They can now push their own content into the mainstream. Even television’s role will probably diminish. With its traditional requirements for prior programming, big production and network stars, television cannot deliver unfiltered news content on the spot, just in time, truly on demand.

 

Presidential candidates as well as politicians are being yanked whether they like it or not into a technology-driven world where the media they use is just as important as what they want to say. As Garrett Graff said in his Carnegie Council interview on December 7, 2007, this is the Miranda Era of presidential campaigns and YouTube will hold candidates accountable. Political messages can no longer be manipulated as easily, because the digital natives and the creative workers of the new economy now have the means to take control of the issues, shape the debate, and move it to online and digital public fora with great speed. People are back into politics, the way it should be.

 

Digital media is so potent not only to elect presidents, but to topple them as well. In the Philippines, the public who wanted to unseat President Joseph Estrada for massive corruption used text messaging to mobilize huge crowds for mass protests at one of Manila’s main avenues, EDSA, and at the Shrine commemorating the ousting of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda in 1986 during the People Power Revolution, also on EDSA. This blog contrasts the role of cell phones between 1986 (EDSA 1 to oust Marcos) and 2001 (EDSA 2 to oust Estrada):

 

“During the 1986 EDSA revolt, most of the events were on radio [and]  government controlled television and phone service was limited, but by January 2001 the Philippines had one of the most advanced cellular phone systems in the world at the time. And Filipinos texted more than anyone else on the planet – they still do – for 2007, 60 million cell phone subscribers sent 1.68 billion text messages.

 

“So when the senators left for EDSA, a swarm of messages was sent out by those in opposition with one request. ‘Come to EDSA’ and pass this text on to your friends. Within hours the crowds grew. From ten thousand to fifty to nearly a million some say. Conservative estimates are at least a half a million people filled the streets and areas near the Shrine.”

 

When Estrada struck back, cell phones were also used to forewarn demonstrators about parts of the city where military forces are proceeding. This allowed the protesters to avoid those street intersections or move swiftly to another site. Could the army have texted and counter-strategized? No, their hands were carrying guns and water cannons. Cell phone messaging confused the army and minimized public physical harm. Estrada was deposed.

 

Today, there is a technological arsenal more sophisticated than the cell phone, giving people access to data and information in ways that were not possible before. Governments can be made more accountable, but are leaders and political candidates moral and creative enough to harness this technological power in ways that serve the public’s best interests?

 

In other countries other than the US, such as middle-income developing countries, is the technological infrastructure available to promote transparency, accountability and good governance through the Internet and social media? In dualistic economies with a small, rich class and masses of rural poor, will this kind of technology only enhance culture wars and reinforce government capture by the elite?  If that happens, has technology aided democracy or in fact eroded it?  And with citizen journalism, who will be the watchdogs? How will gossip and sensationalism be filtered out? What will be the role and rules of ethics?

 

These questions will be the subject of one of my future blogs.