Candidates see pluses, pitfalls in new media

The Baltimore Sun

From Sen. Barack Obama raising more than $10 million in three months online, to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton reaching millions of potential voters with a single Web video, presidential politics has gone decidedly digital this campaign season.

Never have so many candidates embraced such a wide range of new media and, in the process, so quickly transformed election politics. Their groundbreaking techniques aim to engage younger voters less reliant on traditional media, provide an unfiltered forum for candidates and reinvent fundraising.

At the same time, though, the candidates must struggle to control their messages in a Wild West environment where the public - and opponents - can "talk back" freely and quickly, as well as make videos that satirize the candidates. And while media and political analysts generally praise this new electronic environment's potential for re-energizing politics, they also warn of the challenges it poses for voters seeking information that can be trusted.

A snapshot of the change: Three years ago, YouTube.com, the video-sharing Web site, did not exist. Tomorrow night, in a marriage of old and new media, the wildly popular online destination will serve as co-sponsor with CNN for a presidential debate that will feature Democratic candidates responding to homemade, videotaped questions uploaded to YouTube and cnn.com.

"I definitely think this is a watershed year in terms of the use of new media," says CNN anchorman Anderson Cooper, who will moderate the debate. "It's pretty remarkable how all the candidates so far have been using the Internet, have been using YouTube, have been using MySpace - all these things, which didn't even exist a few years ago. It's a trend that is only increasing and going to increase - and is changing politics in ways that no one yet fully understands."

In 2004, the campaign Web site was considered a new political tool that only one candidate seemed to appreciate: Democratic contender Howard Dean. He was one of the only politicians with a blog, and he used it to start a direct dialogue with supporters while energizing a core of young campaign workers who came to be known as Deaniacs.

Today, all 19 candidates have Web sites and blogs, according to a survey conducted this month by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a Washington-based journalism research and educational forum.

Many of the politicians used their online homes in 2006 and 2007 to announce their candidacies rather than staging events and relying on mainstream media for coverage.

While most of the candidates also have pages on such social networking sites as MySpace and Facebook, some of the most tech-savvy campaigns have gone a step further and taken up residence on SecondLife.com - a three-dimensional online virtual world.

Late last week, Clinton, a New York Democrat, broke new ground by mailing DVDs with details of her plan to end the war in Iraq to Iowa voters rather than buying TV ads there to clarify her position.

Short videos produced for the Internet continue to be an increasingly important and unpredictable component of campaign news, according to a poll released July 12 by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

Thirty-two percent of respondents - representing 70 million adults - told Pew they were familiar with a Clinton video in June that spoofed the ending of The Sopranos as it announced her new campaign theme song. The savvy piece not only capitalized on a pop culture moment with lightning speed but was also widely praised by pundits for softening her image as it was replayed on newscasts.

Sixteen percent of those polled said that they had heard about or seen a video released in June that features "Obama Girl," a young woman dancing and singing about her crush on the Illinois Democrat.

"What we're now seeing is the number of venues for delivering a political message expanding exponentially, and that is radically transforming the political process," says Philip M. Seib, professor of journalism at the University of Southern California and author of Going Live: Getting the News Right in a Real-Time, Online World.

Fifteen years ago, candidates were employing "new media." The term referred to celebrity-themed radio and TV talk shows like those of Arsenio Hall and CNN's Larry King - two of the places candidates were suddenly appearing in an attempt to bypass traditional political gatekeepers. (While Bill Clinton played his saxophone on Hall's show, Ross Perot announced his candidacy on King's.)

Today, the term is shorthand for computer screens, iPods, DVDs, videos, cell phones and other handheld devices.

"All of these new digital venues are the next generation of the phenomenon that we saw in 1992. ... But it's now at such a widespread level with so many venues, that it's a whole new game," Seib says.

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, says "new media" have played a key role in certain landmark elections at least as far back as 1800, when Thomas Jefferson and James Madison harnessed the newest medium of mass communication, the daily newspaper, to their party's fortunes. But the difference during this election cycle is in the frenzied rate of technological change.

"Technology is exploding at a very rapid pace right now," says Rosenstiel. "To some extent, part of demonstrating that you have the sense of the people in an election now means being current or comfortable with the new turn in the technology - that you're the one who is feeling the pulse."

Still, while everyone agrees on the general importance of new media to any candidate's success, no one seems certain of the exact road to success - or to potential destruction.

"Maybe it will involve having social networking on your side. Or, maybe, Hillary deciding what her song will be in a video for the Internet. We just don't know, because it is still so early in the process and things are changing so fast," adds Rosenstiel.

David Bohrman, a CNN senior vice president and Washington bureau chief, says he is trying to be open to such change without abandoning CNN's journalistic responsibility in tomorrow night's debate.

"Arguably, this is the first real seat at the table for new media - I mean, The Table," says the CNN executive producer who prominently featured bloggers in the network's coverage of last year's mid-term elections.

CNN is still playing a gatekeeper role, picking 25 to 30 videos from the more than 1,500 videos submitted for the Charleston, S.C. debate.

"I know, that's a little bit counter-Web. ... But I think we're opening this up incredibly further than anything that's been done before," says Bohrman.

That approach has garnered backlash at sites such as tech president.com and communitycounts.us, from critics who think CNN should post all the entries online and have a public Web vote.

While Andrew Rasiej, co-founder of techpresident.com, faults CNN for failing in its chance "to marry TV to Internet culture," he nevertheless considers tomorrow night's event a "milestone" in American politics.

So far, the sample videos posted at cnn.com include questions about protecting endangered species of animals, attitudes toward the recording industry prosecuting those who download music illegally, student loans and banks setting up high-interest operations in poor neighborhoods.

"By and large, they are questions the media would never ask," Bohrman says, citing the overall tendency of new media to be more inclusive, if less polished.

But while new technology is "almost always more democraticizing," Rosenstiel says, it can also be more easily manipulated by the first wave of those to understand it, other analysts say.

They expressed particular concerns about the "viral video" phenomenon that allows videos to be posted and seen by millions without anyone knowing who made them. A video attacking Clinton based on Apple's "1984" commercial, for example, was later traced back to the company that runs Obama's campaign Web site.

"It's very important as more and more material, more and more video, shows up all over the Internet and all over on digital media, for audiences, for users, to be very mindful of where things are coming from," says Mark Lukasiewicz, vice president for digital media at NBC News.

Blogs have the same potential to look as if they have sprung from grassroots when, in fact, the blogger is merely a front - sometimes for a large corporation or public relations firm.

Last fall, for example, it was revealed that a blog titled Wal-Marting Across America, which purported to be an independent travelogue by a couple touring the country in an RV and parking for free in Wal-Mart lots, was being funded by the retailer's PR company.

"It's not difficult to create a false blog - in other words, to essentially create something that appears to be created by just regular people out there who are interested, but in fact, it is funded by somebody else," says Lukasiewicz.

The tension between creating a more democratic conversation versus the desire of some elites to manipulate the election process is as old as the republic itself, analysts say. But none can remember a time when new media seemed to play such a large - and unpredictable - role in determining the next occupant of the White House.

"I'm very positive about these changes, because there's a fundamentally democratizing effect that's in play. Because there are more venues, more people can see what's going on in a campaign. Because you can give five bucks online, more people are going to participate with small contributions to candidates," says USC's Seib.

"Sure, you're going to have irresponsible stuff, too. That's also part of democracy. But if you subscribe to the idea of the more political discourse the better, then you can't help but be excited - and possibly encouraged - by what's happening in new media and politics today."

david.zurawik@baltsun.com

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