[LINK] Internet Transforming Politics and the Media

[Tom Worthington]

One journalist who cannot be accused of not giving a topic the depth of 
analysis it deserves is the ABC's Eleanor Hall. She has just completed 
studies at Oxford University on the use of the Internet in politics: 
<http://www.abc.net.au/correspondents/content/2009/s2762916.htm>.

Her carefully researched 37 page paper "Politics in the Youtube Age: 
Transforming the Political and Media Culture?", is available online: 
<http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/Publications/fellows__papers/2008-2009/Hall_-_Politics_in_the_YouTube_Age.pdf>.

She argues that Obama's use of the Internet was not the grassroots 
campaign it was portrayed as, but had strong central coordination:

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"... I concluded that the Obama campaign is less revolutionary than it 
at first appears and that there are a range of reasons why it is 
unlikely that British politicians will follow even some of the more 
riskfree elements of the Obama e-campaign.

     The Obama campaign showed that online social networking can be a 
powerful political tool and the US President’s web supporters are 
justified in claiming this as the first election victory for YouTube 
politics. But it also showed that a web 2.0 community can be harnessed 
to a fairly traditional campaign hierarchy and could be open to 
manipulation by the very political gatekeepers it claims to be challenging.

     Obama’s is a story of how web 2.0 helped an outsider to get into 
the race for the White House but then how the candidate’s campaign used 
social networking to increase several important levers of its power. The 
campaign amassed a huge database of supporter contacts and information, 
it raised the biggest war chest of funds in US history and it used the 
web to marshal and direct its online supporters. It also used the 
internet to counter one of the other political power centres in the 
campaigning environment, the mainstream media. In doing all of this 
there were negotiations made and, sometimes uneasy, alliances formed.

     The Obama team directed political activity but did not squash 
dissent, as campaign directors in a TV age campaign might have done. It 
broke away from the old “war room” approach to data that was 
characterised by secrecy and central control and gave supporters more 
autonomy in the way they involved themselves in the political campaign. 
The web 2.0 community showed it was powerful and Obama’s embrace of it 
meant many more citizens did engage in the political process. But this 
was still a political campaign with the goal of winning power and was 
strikingly similar in key respects to an old-style top down, command and 
control political operation.

     As for British politicians emulating elements of the Obama e 
-campaign to re-engage citizens and reinvigorate the democratic process, 
most players agreed it appears unlikely to happen any time soon, despite 
the expenses crisis. While many MPs and citizens are increasingly using 
web 2.0 to engage in politics, institutional and cultural differences 
between the US and the UK make it unlikely Britain will ever see 
Obama-levels of enthusiasm for using web 2.0 in political campaigns. ..."

     From: Politics in the Youtube Age: Transforming the Political and 
Media Culture?, Eleanor Hall, Trinity Term,  Reuters Institute 
Fellowship, University of Oxford, 2009
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-- 
Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/people.php?StaffID=140274