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On Change

Responding to TforA's post on change, replying to my post on change below:

John says: "I think 'change' includes a major shift in technology, even if the same types of candidates continue to win. Thus, if the success of the Dean campaign induces all future presidential candidates to make heavy use of the Internet, it's fair to say that he 'changed' the nature of campaigning even if the results don't change."

Change clearly does include technological shifts. Our differences in perspective aside, it's important to clarify the issue of causation. Even if, after the Dean campaign, elections are changed in some dramatic way (which we don't think they will be), it's important to recognize that it was not Howard Dean doing the changing, but simply Dean who rode the wave of technology most successfully. Furthermore, technology is always changing - the candidate who can use technology most effectively will have (but always has had) an advantage over the others. Dean was certainly not the only one using technology. The Bush campaign had very active support during the campaign by folks at Blogs for Bush. Each of the candidates had websites, e-mail lists, online coalitions of supporters, etc. Hype for America acknowledges that online campaigning will continue to increase in prevalence, but with the realization that elections with an online component still have the same priorities, goals, and political channels of power that they always have had.

Continuing, John says: "Once financial resources are less of a barrier to participation in politics, people who were previously excluded from the political process will become involved. People who posted on Dean's blog knew that thousands of people around the country, including higher-ups in the Dean campaign and perhaps Dean himself, would read and respond to what they had to say. When Internet access is nearly universal, there will be more room in our system for candidates who are not beholden to the wealthy."

The fundamental question here is whether someone will one day be able to rise from the blogosphere and rally enough support to win a national election. Even if the internet did lower the barriers to participate in politics, real world factors will always be crucial. Real world resources (i.e., cash, connections, etc.) buy influence and power in the real world. TforA supports Trippi's argument that "a candidate who can get $100 each from two million Americans will be able to compete with candidates funded largely by the wealthy." The fundamental flaw here is that the candidates funded largely by the wealthy can also get $100 each from two million Americans".

The Internet is Yet Another Political Forum. The netroots groups can benefit greatly from the lack of participatory transaction costs. But so will the wealthy, the elite, and the established. Each will benefit from the new forum and exploit its benefits.

A Political Voice, but no Listeners

In addition to the emerging "elite class" on the blogosphere (noted below by ryan), the Internet also has the prominent precence of traditional corporate entities. Between the traditional elite and the new elite, is the Internet really better for being heard, or just better for being able to speak? The two are not the same.

The Trent Lott story of information flow from the blogosphere to mainstream media is clearly the exception, not the rule. TforA concludes by commenting, "The Lott affair showed that a few individuals--mostly outsiders with no budgets--could kick the national media into action and shake up the U.S. government." But the "outsiders" were already part of the blogosphere elite! And their power to "kick the national media into action" is overstated by TforA: Traditional news sources still dominate internet news while blogs function as the backwater, out of which occasionally comes a story wrongly ignored by the mainstream.

What is the impact for elections? First, power and influence in the real world translates to power online. Second, power online is, like in the real world, concentrated in the hands of a few.

Focusing the Question: Advantages at the Margins versus the Long Term

Since we’re trying to answer the question of whether the Dean Campaign significantly changed the nature of campaigning, we need to look at the nature of change.

TforA describes several forms of technology used in the 2004 elections, including blogs and social networking tools. TforA, as a metric for assessing the impact of these tools, looks at the number of people participating online. Meetup.com, for instance, had 180,000 people meeting up for the Dean Campaign.

While the numbers were certainly impressive for the 2004 election, the more crucial inquiry is not Dean’s immediate advantage gained in this election (for, as ryan already noted, Dean didn’t win), but the long term impact this specific form of technology will have on future campaigns and election results.

The important recognition here is that advantages come only at the margins of technology. Dean attracted attention from media and the general public because of his innovative and technologically advanced strategies. When the internet is actually universal (only 159 million people were online in 2002, out of a total U.S. population of 288 million according to the CIA and Census Bureau), the question becomes: When every candidate has an equal technological advantage and every voter has equal access to the Internet, what changes?

We’ll continue to explore this issue, but it’s worth noting that pervasive Internet shares a lot of qualities with pervasive TV, radio, and print.

EgoCasting: Internet as Political Self-Affirmation

An important psychological consideration in assessing the merits of the Internet as a campaign tool is the concept of “egocasting.” Christine Rosen writes, egocasting is “a world where we exercise an unparalleled degree of control over what we watch and what we hear.” She continues, “We can consciously avoid ideas, sounds, and images that we don’t agree with or don’t enjoy. As sociologists Walker and Bellamy have noted, ‘media audiences are seen as frequently selecting material that confirms their beliefs, values, and attitudes, while rejecting media content that conflicts with these cognitions.’”

On one hand, the Internet offers huge potential to expose the American public to the ideas and messages of diverse political groups. On the other hand, the self-guided nature of the Internet means people will only see information they affirmatively choose to see by clicking on a link. Internet users will quite naturally visit websites of interest to them. In the political arena, people will be most likely to visit sites with ideological and political leanings closest to their own.

With this in mind, we see the folly of TforA's use of Trippi's quote that “People are no longer waiting for the media or the government to give information. Now they are going online and getting it, and then disseminating it. And with that information, they are gaining power.” People are simpley "going online and getting" the information they wish to see-- nothing else, nothing new, and most likely nothing provocative that could change their vote.

This is another very important contrast to the impact TV has had on elections. TV is, to date, an entirely passive form of media with a “one to many” configuration. While Internet’s “many to many” configuration offers important potential to grant everyone a voice, the mode of information intake by individuals is more likely to reinforce existing political groups than to attract new subscribers.

Internet Democracy: Procedurally Better, Substantively the Same

I want to expand here on ryan’s point on power. Democracy ultimately envisions power in the hands of the people. To see how the Internet affects Democracy, particularly in political campaigns, we need to compare Internet Democracy to Pre-Internet Democracy. My argument is that Internet Democracy is faster, cheaper, and easier--that is to say, procedurally superior. But substantively, Internet Democracy is precisely equivalent to Pre-Internet Democracy.

The faster, cheaper, easier argument is easy to make and made well by TforA in their post about the explosion of blogging and the occasional impact blogging has on traditional media. Because of the rapid dissemination, bloggers can get a story out quickly and easily.

On the substantive side, however, the advantages and the downfalls of the democratic tradition are largely unchanged. Power for individuals is the ability to speak, be heard, and cause change. From the days of Thomas Paine and Pamphleteering, people have found ways to disseminate information relatively rapidly. As the world grew, the scope of “pamphleteering” grew as well – to national distribution, radio and TV broadcast, and now the Internet. One could argue that the Internet offers unprecedented ability to speak and be heard. But as the egocasting discussion below pointed out, while there are more people to target, those same people are looking at more things. It might be easier to write blog of political dissidence than to print a pamphlet of such, but the expression hasn’t changed. No one has a voice who didn’t already have a voice. No one has more power over others than before.

Welcome to Hype for America

Hello, and welcome to our blog! Our goal with this blog is to provide our thoughts on why the Howard Dean Campaign of 2004 didn't really change "campaigning forever." Howard Dean's campaign was billed to be"remarkable at the time for its extensive use of the Internet to reach out to its supporters" (emphasis added). The extensive media hype regarding the long term impact of Dean's use of technology has led us to name this blog "Hype for America," in honor of Dean's website, "Dean for America".

We're interested in your thoughts! Please use the commenting tool (by clicking on the comments link at the bottom of each post) to give us your feedback! You might enjoy the blog more by reading it from the bottom up in the order it was posted.

In our blog, you'll see references to our rival blog, Type for America. Feel free to check them out, too, and let them know where they've gone wrong!

Click HERE to go to the blog.