The truth hurts

I am naïve about politics. Willingly naïve. In studying and following politics, I understand that there will always be some backroom dealing and shady practices. However, after reading the first half of New Media Campaigns, I am left wondering who is really running things. Although the final votes are cast by actual senators and representatives, the examples of easy it is to sway those votes (with enough dollars of course) both saddens and sickens me.

Although I agree with his basic premise that as the medium is changing so are the rules and influencers of political power, what I keep coming back to is how easily 1) we as a people are led and 2) how little our actual convictions mean. The tone of the first 100 pages seems to mirror that – although seemingly optimistic at the promise of new technologies, it seems as though Howard is discouraged at the ability of professional e-politic consultants to create, guide and invent new ways to completely distort the nature of democracy. Of course, that could just be me imposing my disappointment onto his readings.

On a larger scale however, this book brings a question I have had since I started studying mass/new media years ago to politics. As we as a society have more and more of an ability to choose and shape the messaging we receive, what happens to the idea of popular/mass culture? Outside of a few major events that are shared nationally (the Super Bowl for example) what are the water cooler talks of the future going to be about? Where will our shared identity come from?

Politically, Howard begins to discuss this when he quotes insiders talking about the move away from candidate politicking to issue politicking. We’ve seen this happen in just 10 years – the 2000 campaign for some reason seemed to revolve around who we would rather drink beer with, George W. Bush or Al Gore. The personality of the candidates seemed so much more important than the issues and facts. While this should be an improvement, it seems as though we are going to a place where half truths and political doublespeak about specific issues rule the messaging; especially bullet points and catchy slogans that can be emailed and posted to twitter quickly and virally.

And it works! Oh my does it work! Howard shows the math behind getting four senators to change their votes, and how to calculate the cost per vote by determining how many banner ads it will take to cause a handful of people to send a meaningful letter to their senator. Even more so, is the ability to create a group of concerned citizens out of nothing. His example of how a political consultation firm created a group of 300,000 people out of zero to combat a legal issue that would probably benefit them is amazing (side note: why does it always seem that American’s will do everything in their power to limit the effectiveness of health care legislation?)

Clever slogans that give the impression of the bandwagon effect: Taking our country back – from whom? Giving democracy back to the people – what does that mean? Impassioned pleas for good old days that never existed, even now the ideas purported by some of the conservatives to essentially reenact the Bush era are nothing but talking points that resonate on one issue with specific groups of voters. But the question of how does that affect comprehensive legislation? (Karl Rove/Winning is the only end game politics – concentrate on one or two issues that resonate with the most voters.)

What I find most interesting about the interviews is the actors’ ability to willfully create a dissonance between these companies’ actions and their results. On one hand they all seem to extol the virtues of modern networked communication tools to better inform and engage voters. This, they seem to say, will allow voters to choose their leaders with better, almost perfect information. At the same time, these people are actively working to manage the voters access to specific information and market specific viewpoints not through education but with targeted campaigns based on proven issues that will drive action.

For example, the databank.com example will allow voters to get the information they want, whether they know they want it or not. By examining trends in purchasing, voting and other histories, they are able to group demographic groups around issues and market to them specifically ignoring larger issues or context.  While effective as a marketing tactic (sounds similar to Facebook promoting the ability to give us the ads I want, as though they are doing us a favor) it seems so slimy when presented in a political science form.

This leaves us with the simple question that has plagued democracy since its modern inception. Which is worse: An informed but apathetic voting populace? Or a misled but enthusiastic voting populace? Of course we all want an informed and excited voting base, but in reality this is not the case. While voting is often promoted as the end all be all, if those who are voting are participating on incorrect pretenses created by an Astroturf campaign that has little or no public value, are we gaining anything by having more people at the polls? Just because more information is available, are people really going to through THOMAS archives to read the bills? Do people really have the time and energy and context to properly rate bills on merit? Probably not, and now, instead of power elites dictating the political discussion at a national level, we have moved to a world where power elites are leveraging the power of relational databases and data mining to target individuals while seemingly hiding behind the curtain of populist struggle.

This is in response to New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen by Phillip N. Howard.