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It is Election Day in the US and we discuss how technologies have impacted out ability to follow the campaigns in this edition of the Overflow podcast! We get a little long clocking in at over 32 minutes, but we have alot of thoughts on how the political landscape is changing.
The State of Georgia provides us with early voting options, so we have both taken advantage and are planning on watching the election dialogue via Twitter and online blogs, prior to turning to cable television coverage later on for the results.
We start by juxtaposing the differences between the 1968 Presidential Election as exposed by Joe McGinnis in The Selling of the President and the current methods of presenting the candidates. During that successful run by Richard Nixon, his handlers focused on using the medium of television to his advantage after learning from the mistakes made during his first campaign in 1960 against JFK.
It can be argued that the presidential candidate became a product for mass merchandising at that time, and all brand marketing tactics were to be implemented to ensure election success.
There are new tools in 2008 that are being used to sell these candidates ranging from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and IPhone apps that have all been implemented as a way of communicating to potential voters.
We completely blow over the fact that these candidates have web sites, since it is something that is commonplace now and is to be expected Obama & McCain.
Here are the some useful Apps:
The Facebook pages for each candidate have added significant numbers of “friends” in the last two weeks, and Cameron indicates that Obama has added over 400,000 while McCain has added 60,000.
Obama IPhone App provides instant information about candidate speaking engagments, local events, video clips and a complete rundown on any policy position statements right from the phone. A search for a McCain equivalent came up empty.
Hopefully, the result is that we are all a lot more informed about the various stances on issues, since we have the ability to easily research that was not available to us in the past.
The big question is whether or not the successful candidate (and party) will use these new tools as a way to provide more transparency going forward. Our expectation is that we should be able to see where spending is going, what programs are successful or not, and how our representatives are voting.
YouTube was used during the campaigns for both positive and negative reflections on the candidates.
George Allen was knocked out of the race after getting caught on tape using a racial slur and having it posted online.
Obama Girl received tons of mainstream coverage after posting her video, “I’ve got a Crush on Obama” (currently at 10 million!!! views).
Will I. Am produced a video of the Yes We Can speech that inspires and was spread virally for over 11 million views!! This type of user generated content is able to disseminate and engage voters in the political process who might not have otherwise participated.
Finally, another form of negative campaigning can also come about from YouTube and the spread clips of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright used against Obama.
Cameron tosses out the question near the end about the possiblity of having an election altered as we use voting technologies. What do you think? Leave a comment on the post about your feelings regarding the potential now or in the future regarding voting regularities.
