Image of spontaneous street celebrations in Harlem courtesy of matt semel at flickr – reproduced under a Creative Commons licence.
No doubt one of the big stories about the US election will be the influence of the blogosphere and the netroots. In many ways, the rise of the intertubes in politics was an unintended consequence of the Rove approach to politics, as Publius perceives:
The bigger story is that this same anger – this same frustration – has led liberals to organize in more numerous and consequential ways. In the last few years, we’ve seen new think tanks. We’ve seen blogs flower. We’ve seen the rise of media sites like TPM and Huffington with real journalistic chops. We’ve seen unprecedented efforts to register and canvass voters.
In short, we’ve seen a new energy driving liberals back to politics.
In an opinion piece at ABC Online, Barry Saunders sums up the changes that net based activism and citizen journalism have wrought:
The impact of social media on this election has been enormous. Whoever takes office will have to deal with widely available factchecking data, embarrassing videos, rabid wingnuts, opinionated bloggers and TV hosts, and a massive number of new voters and donors who feel they have invested in the American political process – as well as two wars and a collapsing economy. Here’s hoping they know what they’re doing.
John Quiggin writes of the “end of the first age of the blogosphere”:
Once the initial euphoria dissipates, and the inevitable mistakes, failures and compromises/sellouts begin to emerge, it’s necessary to strike a balance between criticising what’s being done wrong and reminding yourself how much worse the other side was and would be again. The attitude of constructive critical support is a hard one to maintain, especially given the habits built up over years in opposition.
We’ve already had a look at Michael Bérubé’s thoughts here at LP:
But perhaps the left blogosphere could be of some use in this regard, no? It needn’t be consolidated fully into Obama Enterprises Inc.; it could serve instead as a forum for writers dedicated to things like “hope” and “change” and “arguing that Obama was wrong to cave on FISA and better not do that kind of thing as President.” Of course, it could also serve as a forum for charting and mocking all manner of Ace-of-Confederate-Red-State-Yankeespade wingnuts as they venture into new realms of sheer barking lunacy that even the world’s sheerest barkingest lunatics have hitherto been unable to imagine. That might be fun. And it could do “shorters” and cat blogging and Theory Tuesdays and Friday Random Tens too. It’s a blogosphere. It’s a big place, with many many tubes.
And Possum makes some sharp points comparing the media/punditsphere and online social media:
Data beat punditry, statistics beat navel gazing, demographic analysis beat wishful thinking.
The intertubes were 3 hours ahead of the network coverage, Dick Morris should never show his face in public again if he had an ounce of integrity, and, most importantly, this has been a demonstration that sometimes things dont happen in the same tired old ways they always have before.
There’s one point I’d like to add to all this analysis.
Going back as early as 1976, commentary about US elections focused on the decline in voter involvement and its eclipse by top-down media strategies. We’ve seen a massive revival in citizen participation and activism, something that was recognised by Barack Obama in his victory speech. The future of this re-engagement will be dependent on how Obama governs, but as he correctly says, it will also be dependent on the preparedness of citizens to continue to act publicly and collectively.
All technology is shaped socially. Blogging, YouTube, and other social media have been enablers and not just causes of this invigoration of democracy. I’d like to see some research and analysis focused on the wellsprings of activism we’ve seen bubbling up. I think that would be, in many ways, a more productive frame through which to look at what’s interesting, distinctive and exciting about this campaign than yet another round of “journos v. bloggers” style articles.
Elsewhere: An interesting post from Terry Flew on the role of satire in the campaign, and some suggestions for future analyses of the results.
As Bob the Builder said: “Can we build it? Yes we can!”.
Re satire in the campaign, from Terry Flew’s link, citing the Guardian:
Indeed Colbert, Maher et al (and the front cover of a magazine with Russia as seen from Alaska) had a part to play but I read somewhere that SNL had 50 million hits on the intertube on one of the Fey/Palin skits.
There are two elements that may well have connected in voter’s minds, firstly not just that Palin was an ignoramus on foreign affairs but that with McCain’s age, the risk of her attaining the highest office in the land was therefore too much to bear. (This of course was coupled with the alienation of independents with the right/Christian ‘Bible Spice’/anti-abortion_evolution_intellectual fervour of Ms Palin.)
(For comparative purposes think of Hawke’s comment ridiculing Fraser’s “keep your money under the bed”: “You can’t do that, that’s where the Commies are”–multiplied by a factor of weeks of suchlike ridicule on TV and intertubes.)
Be interesting to see Bill O’Reilly’s future take on the “Tina Fey Conspiracy: The Evil Librul Media”
Colbert would say now, one suspects: “Reality has a well known liberal and humorous bias.”
In the SMH this morning; Miranda Devine writes of Obama’s early flirtation with drugs. I kid you not. Not for Miranda some sense of the occasion, just some irrelevant puff (sorry) about smoking weed and doing blow. (Subtext, what else can you expect from a black dude).
Those grapes look really sour Miranda.
Huggy
I look forward to seeing Miranda in a snit over this for some time.
I would be interested to know if involvement in Obama’s campaign leads to a huge surge in membership of the Democratic Party. AFAIK registration as a Dem voter party membership? (And why register with a party affiliation anyway; seems a very dangerous custom to me!)
If Obama campaigners do join the party, it will be remade from the bottom up, and it will be interesting to see if it moves right or left. I’m guessing left.
Dangit, my not-equals sign disappeared. That should be: AFAIK registration as a Democrat voter does not equal party membership, or does it?
Experience says, “Whenever hopes triumph over experience, eventually hopes fade – or are dashed – and reality must be dealt with.”
Obama deserved to win, but let’s think realistically about what he can achieve. It’ll be a long, hard slog; with disappointments mixed in with the successes.
Still, it was a wonderful day.
There’s not really any such thing as party membership, Chookie, in the Australian sense. There are party officials who are elected by registered voters – but it’s one of the big differences between our system and theirs.
Morra Aarons-Mele on the future role of the blogosphere:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/nov/05/barack-obama-bloggers-media
Speaking of “Yes We Can”, did anyone else come across this during the campaign? It was news to me until someone showed it to me this morning. Pretty impressive and powerful stuff putting Ohama’s words to music!
Sorry, that embed was obvious a dismal failure. Try this link instead.
I can see the darn thing in the Preview Pane but it must pull it out when posting.
I had a blast at the Warren View do watching the death by 1000 cuts of the Republican Party with you lot.
Now that’s etertainment.
Thanks people.
I thought Mranda Devine was really off and irrelevant with her Obama drug rant. Janet Albrechtson was even worse with her thesis that black people who voted for Obama are racist (I think that was her message – it was very confused. Sheridan was his usual ” Some republican luminary (insert name here) told me at dinner the other night” totally stupid self.
What is it with these right wing pundits? At least Hitchens has had the sense to edge himself over to the Democrats. I wait with baited breath for his mea culpa on Iraq.
Huggy
Wow and after 20 months of campaigning, a fraud-friendly $600m dollar campaign, voter registration fraud (which in the end barely netted a few hundred thousand extra registrations), we get less of a voter turn out (118 million 2008 vs 122 million 2004) with Obama just getting 400,000 more votes than Kerry in 2004. And Kerry actually did run against Bush, got swiftboated and didn’t even have the entire U.S. media in the tank for him. Landslide? Obama for all his efforts -and he had to spin that effort hard because he couldn’t run on his character or record – bought himself a five point win.
Wow, if this is a forerunner of both the effectiveness and efficiency of the 143 day Senator, look forward to the first 100 days. Oh wait he’s already revised it to the first 1000 days.
All that buzz and excitement? It’s the 3 or 4 million Bush voters who stayed home who won it for him. Call it the welfare vote.
Haha!
Charming, as is your wont these days, saint.
And your figures on turnout are wrong.
Dunno, Saint. There seemed to be an awful lot of people outside the White House chanting “Yes, we did.” and “Pack your bags and go today”, so many millions of happy peoplein Grant Park, that Chicago is planning to use the success of that rally in their bid for a future Olympics, and an ABC repoter observed that usually nobody’s ever smiling in Washington, but today everybody was smiling. Not to mention the millions in New York. And even Condaleeza Rice, who is not one of my favourite people, thought Obama’s win was a great thing. In fact, the American Imbecile even got in on the act, and said it was wonderful.
And Sarah Palin’s gone back to Alaska to watch for those Russkies invading across the Bering Strait.