The Need For Speed?

This article points to a few very poignant facets of modern day campaigning-- it is speedy and accessible, and it occupies the use of “new media” to facilitate dialogue or disseminate information to a new technological generation of citizens. Blogs and other social media sites rival print media and perhaps even broadcast media in their 24-hour coverage of news and also how they engage audiences in political dialogue. Rather than having a television talking at you and boring print media lecturing on the facts, new media allows for the audiences to join in on the political discourse as well and exercise their political self-efficacy as we discussed in class. Sites such as FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube have spearheaded this revolution in the media. There are benefits to this speedy and participatory coverage but as this article points out, there are also a few drawbacks. 

This piece highlights a facet of new media-- rapid response ads, particularly on YouTube. Rapid response ads are clips of debates and sound bites of politicians, annotated with commentary, to spark traction for the idea being represented. The video attached to the blog post, for example, was released by the Democratic National Committee. It features sound bites and video snippets from a debate that Mitt Romney participated in and was released before the debate even ended. We’ve already discussed how sound bites can be dangerous because they have the potential to be highly influential on a viewer’s political perspective. They only capture a framed and sometimes manipulated sound or clip of a politician, often without context. The fact that these ads are posted this rapidly means that most of the commentary attached to them has been created beforehand. One could have an opinion that Romney is a elitist that commits tax fraud, create the skeleton of an ad for it, extract clips from a live debate by Romney, and post the video before the debate concludes. Usually the more traction the ad receives, measured by the views, the more fuel an organization is given to create more. The fact that YouTube allows for comments under the video is key in opening up political discourse, but with such an impressionable public, are their perspectives already skewed from the clip? For college-educated young adults and political enthusiasts, probably not-- they will take it as entertainment at best. For the majority of the citizens, this can be perceived as critical information and severely alter their ability to make sense of the politics around them. 

The fact is, these ads won’t cease. They serve their purpose, which is to deliver persuasive bits of information framed as the host party sees fit. It may seem perhaps wishful to hope for, but the public needs to exercise discretion when viewing these clips and review the debates or media remarks from politicians in context. Look at the candidate’s platforms, observe their public forums and debates on their key issues, and allow that to form your opinions of a candidate. Fast media is convenient, but is it accurate, all-inclusive, and objective? More often then not, the answer is no. With many of these ads being financed as commercials that play before a viewer is allowed to watch their desired video, maybe there is little that can be done to escape the pervasiveness and traction of these ads.

http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/01/20/the-speed-of-modern-campaigns-does-it-matter/