 | |
| |
TechnologyDaily Mobile
Going Viral: Politics On The Web
by Heather Greenfield
In a digital age when television commercials and "robocalls" can be bypassed with a click, politicians are on a quest for more effective ways to reach voters. Experts say the answer to the high-tech dilemma may be low tech -- other voters. The goal is to engage those voters as a way to "go viral" with election-changing information.
The 2006 election illustrated the power of video spread virally by online activists and other candidate allies. Some political observers have argued that the now-infamous video in which Sen. George Allen, R-Va., called a volunteer for his opponent a "macaca" may have tipped the balance in that Senate race -- and thus to Democrats in the entire Senate.
Colin Delany, who offers new media strategy advice and observations at e.politics, said video is so much more powerful than any print description "because you can pick up so much on someone's body language." He said the benefits to viral video are twofold: 1) People are more likely to actually view something from a friend; and 2) by going viral, candidates are put "in touch with a new audience."
"Someday your boss is going to come to you and say, 'Make me viral!'" said Benjamin Rahn, president of the ActBlue Web site that raises money for Democratic candidates. But the drawback is that viral video is spontaneous, he added. "It's not something you can apply a certain number of people and dollars to and make it happen."
Trying To Control The Uncontrollable
Part of the difficulty is that a campaign has no control over some elements. Patrick Hynes, an Internet adviser whose clients include the Straight Talk America political action committee of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said achieving "a successful viral campaign is a one-in-a-million shot. You need bloggers and online news consumers wanting to be entertained," Hynes said.
Peter Daou, an online media consultant for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., likened the spread of video online to people voting on the information by deciding whether to watch it themselves and then forward it to friends. "I'm still a believer that it's the quality of the information that makes something go viral," Daou said. "You can put out what you think is the most compelling information, and you can put it in the places it will get the most attention."
Once a really good gaffe is caught on tape, Daou said, it is a matter of having a staff that is aware of "how things move online" and "how to make the information easily digestible."
Jessica Vanden Berg, the campaign manager for Virginia Sen.-elect James Webb, said the "macaca" video went viral because staffers took steps to publicize it. "People just assume we threw macaca on YouTube," Vanden Berg said in a reference to the popular video-sharing site. Instead, she said it was a set of carefully orchestrated steps.
Vanden Berg said the campaign leaked the video to The Washington Post first, posted the video on YouTube "because it was free," and then referred bloggers to the Post article and video. She said that although Webb campaign aides knew a macaque was a monkey, they did not know it was potentially a racial slur until bloggers researched the origins of the word.
But Vanden Berg said she believes it "wasn't what was said" so much as what the video showed: Allen was bullying and ridiculing S.R. Sidarth, the Indian American Webb volunteer who shot the video. "People had a perception of George Allen that was sort of similar," Vanden Berg said.
Jon Henke, an online strategist hired by Allen after the video spread widely, said he thinks that perception of Allen was "inaccurate and unfair," but the video reinforced assumptions. "It provides a powerful reason for people to believe their assumptions are confirmed," Henke said.
On The Wrong End Of A Viral Campaign
The candidate and the issues are key factors. Campaign strategists said video that highlights a candidate's personal strengths or weaknesses is more newsworthy and more likely to spread.
While Webb's staff was lauded as a good example of capitalizing on a video moment, Vanden Berg said Allen's campaign also "handled it really badly." "They had a different version of what [Allen] said every day for seven days," Vanden Berg said.
Hynes said campaigns have to respond to a viral attack by immediately engaging supportive bloggers. He said the Allen camp did not have a mechanism to even respond to bloggers ready and willing to help until he hired Henke.
"By the time Henke came on board, it was an uphill fight," Hynes said.
Had he been working for Allen when the "macaca" video began to spread, Hynes said he would have found people from every stage of Allen's life to "offer guest posts to right-of-center bloggers." They could have challenged the characterization of Allen and then described their perceptions of his true character.
After the 2006 election, strategists said campaigns should better understand what makes video go viral, but controlling online video and print messages in the age of blogs and YouTube is another matter. Daou said that learning to interface with an environment that cannot be controlled is key.
Good For Democracy
The 2006 election is the first where video was so easy to distribute that millions of people bypassed traditional TV news stations. "It's a very open, bottom-up and democratic medium," Daou said of the Internet.
So what does that mean for 2008? One thing seems certain: There will be more video "trackers" to capture potential gaffes and to exploit opponents' weaknesses. "We should hold politicians' feet to the fire," Hynes said. "Particularly with the 2008 presidential campaign, they should expect cameras wherever they go."
Hynes said that would hurt candidates who "say something to entertain one crowd but [that] would hurt them with another crowd."
Capturing such moments is part luck and part being in the right place at the right time. Daou said such viral video simply cannot be created because "the authenticity detector is very high online."
Chuck DeFeo, who served as the e-campaign manager for President Bush in 2004, said bloggers have become a filter "that has to be listened to now" by politicians and that have become a source of material for mainstream media.
DeFeo believes the good that will come from the inherently democratic medium is greater participation in the democratic process. Historically, he said, the broadcast media talking at an audience coincided with a decline in democratic participation and voting. "The Internet has reinvigorated political participation, and that is a healthy thing for democracy.
NEW FEATURE
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
