Edublog Suspended: Politics Around the Web 10/15/2008
Wednesday, 15 October 2008 Clay Burell 
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YouTube for president? – Politico.com Print View – Annotated
Yes, yes, yes. I’ve been saying it for the last week: Web 2.0 is helping decide the 2008 election over and above the control of the mainstream media.
This is a great article on the specifics of this political phenomenon.
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Whatever the results on Nov. 4, we’re already prepared to declare the winner of Election 2008: YouTube.
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Consider these facts:
First, YouTube is stealing time and attention from older broadcast media. In the 60 years that the top three TV networks have been broadcasting, they have produced about 1.5 million hours of content — assuming, for argument’s sake, that they have been broadcasting 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That’s the equivalent of about six months’ worth of YouTube uploads. -
Kansas State University professor Michael Wesch points out that the amount of content currently pouring onto YouTube — about 200,000 three-minute videos added every day — is the equivalent of 385 always-on TV channels. In July 2008 in the United States, approximately 91 million viewers looked at nearly 5 billion videos on YouTube. The typical viewer watched 55 videos on the site in that month, according to Comscore.
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Second, the service has become the ubiquitous resource for all things political. According to the Pew Research Center, as of this past spring, 35 percent of all Americans said they had watched online videos related to the campaign, triple the level of 2004. One out of 10 Internet users — people who told Pew that they at least occasionally use the Net or send or receive e-mail — said they have either forwarded or posted someone else’s political video.
YouTube is used both for instant response and for deep recall. Every day, the candidates and their supporters upload snippets of video from an event, sometimes even before the event concludes, in the hopes of catching the attention of the networked public sphere. At the same time, people are searching for and watching videos of content they may have missed but want to catch up on — whether it’s the latest “Saturday Night Live” parody or an old speech by a candidate. YouTube has become the instant replay or, more appropriately, the TiVo of our time.
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Third, YouTube has made it possible for the presidential campaigns to become full-fledged media operations, delivering their messages directly to voters without any intermediaries such as the mainstream media — and at a fraction of the price of paid TV ads.
Together, Barack Obama and John McCain’s YouTube channels have received more than 100 million video views — though it’s telling to look at the different ways the two campaigns use the service. As of this writing, McCain’s channel contained just over 300 videos, with about 20 million views in all. Nearly all of his videos are short, well-produced pieces that look like, and in many cases are, TV commercials. Of his top 10 most-viewed videos, only one of them — a nearly eight-minute clip of a Sarah Palin speech — breaks that mold.
Obama, by contrast, had more than 1,500 videos on his site, totaling about 80 million views. Many of them, like McCain’s, are similar to TV commercials, but that is hardly the rule for Obama. Hundreds of his videos are more like campaign training manuals or appear to be microtargeted at a narrow sliver of viewers — Republicans in Ohio, for instance, or absentee voters in Michigan. But even those obscure videos have been viewed thousands of times. At the other end of the spectrum, only one of Obama’s top 10 most-viewed videos is a 30-second commercial. The rest are longer TV appearances and speeches, including Obama’s famous speech on race, which was 37 minutes long and has been viewed more than 6 million times.
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But focusing only on how the campaigns are using YouTube, without looking at what ordinary users are doing, would be a bit like exploring video today by looking only at what the big three TV commercial networks put online. A search for videos tagged with the words “Obama” or “McCain” finds more than 750,000 unique results on YouTube. In other words, the campaigns are responsible for only about 0.25 percent of all the content uploaded to the site about their candidates.
Consider how all this content is being used, with millions of people finding videos that speak to them and forwarding these videos to their friends and acquaintances. Collectively, this is the hum of democracy. If, in the past, Americans mulled over politics by talking with their friends at the local diner or their co-workers at the coffee machine, now those same conversations have expanded exponentially online.
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Sometime today you will open a political message from someone you know and click on a link. Odds are that link will take you to YouTube. In the same way that television was recognized as the medium that changed political communications during the presidential campaign of 1960, online video and YouTube will be recognized as the medium that changed it for 2008. Regardless of who wins the most votes on Nov. 4, the technological winner is YouTube and, by extension, democracy.
Andrew Rasiej and Micah L. Sifry are, respectively, founder and editor of the Personal Democracy Forum, an online magazine and annual conference on how technology is changing politics.
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Americans of all ages have become 21st-century pamphleteers.
- And that’s the use I’ve been putting Diigo to these days also, in posts like this.
– post by cburell
- And that’s the use I’ve been putting Diigo to these days also, in posts like this.
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Penn: What’s ‘in’ is now ‘out’ – Mark J. Penn – Politico.com
A hopeful piece about how all the recent calamities might bring a surge of life-style and values changes for the better across the USA.
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Who’s in control of McCain’s campaign? – Politico.com Print View
McCain’s struggle can only elicit our sympathy, and our hope he sides with honor.
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Forget that an independent legislative panel found Friday that she had abused her power and violated ethics laws as governor of Alaska. Forget that with the possibility of Palin being a heartbeat away from the presidency, McCain gives up the argument that his ticket represents experience and a steady hand on the tiller.
The real problem for McCain is that Palin is running a separate — and scary — campaign that does not seem to be under anybody’s control.
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There are those whispering in McCain’s ear that if he gets into the gutter, he can get into the White House. Ads are not enough, they tell him. He must launch the attacks personally and without reservation.
But honor is still an important word to John McCain. He would like to win the presidency and retain his honor.
Some tell him he cannot do both. At this point, however, he is trying.
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Charles M. Firestone: The Responsibilities of Citizenship: A Bundle of Literacies
A must-read for educators and edubloggers.
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the key to promoting the health of American democracy will ultimately fall to one bottom-up factor: an informed and engaged citizenry.
Media magnate, diplomat and philanthropist Walter Annenberg once said, “Citizenship is every person’s highest calling.” It is our highest calling because only through the active exercise of our rights and responsibilities of citizenship will Americans, as citizen-sovereigns, collectively solve the crises facing us.
Americans are very good at claiming rights; we are not always so ready to recognize our responsibilities. Our rights of citizenship include the right to vote, to be protected by the rights of the American Constitution, and to be treated equally in the law. But what are our responsibilities as citizens?
Democracy means citizen sovereignty. To be sovereign each citizen should have a responsibility, among other things, to be informed, at least minimally, of the issues on which he or she is asked to make a decision – whether for candidates, ballot propositions, or local civic questions. We should have a right to be informed, but also a responsibility to become informed.
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In the law of intellectual property, a copyright is actually a bundle of rights, for example, the rights to publish, display, reproduce, and create sequels to an original work of authorship. I would analogize this to the concept of citizenship: a significant responsibility of citizenship is that of literacy, by which I mean a bundle of literacies.
This begins with the skill to read or understand the basic information on which to base a vote. Of course, we have long ago rid ourselves of literacy requirements to vote. They were a pretext to deny votes to freed slaves and their descendants. One can learn orally and visually, certainly a favorite of politicians who can afford to buy broadcast advertisements. But citizens should aim to go beyond such media messages by reading about the issues online or in print.
Literacy today is not simply learning to read. There are additional literacies — abilities to understand and operate — in 21st century America. First there is media literacy or digital literacy, the ability to comprehend and communicate in the electronic media. Certainly we want our young to understand the process by which they receive messages on television or online. The more we are able to comprehend, analyze, and communicate upstream, the less there will be pressure to censor. More importantly, however, is the utility of these skills to the exercise of the basic functions of citizenship: informed voting and civic engagement.
Beyond the technical literacies are two crucial literacies in a democracy: civic and news literacies. By this I mean understanding the basic tenets and concepts of our democratic system (civic literacy) and the ability to integrate news of the day into those constructs (news literacy). As our media trend toward more partisan outlets and more editorial voices, all of which are fine, we need to differentiate fact from opinion on our own, to be critical receptors of those messages.
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Today, we see why two more, financial and environmental literacies, have moved from the purview of the wealthy, educated and curious to the responsibility of every citizen. The blame for our financial crisis can extend very broadly, and I would point first to the Wall Streeters who created credit default swaps and derivative securities based on faulty credit ratings. But the common mortgagees who secured loans beyond their means, and those of us who have run up avoidable credit card debt cannot escape blame. Frankly, many lack the financial literacy to understand the consequences of their actions in this sphere. Today, micro-lenders in Third World countries attach financial literacy to their micro-loans. The repayment rate for GrameenBank in Bangladesh is over 95%. We in the US should be a lot more attentive to financial literacy ourselves.
Finally, our contributions to global climate change and energy dependence on fossil fuels are clear. Each of us, as citizens of the planet, now has a responsibility to learn what we can about our inter-relationship with the environment. We need to become more environmentally literate.
The list can and probably should go on. Cultural literacy is next on my list, but others will have other priorities. The point is that we need to look at these as part of a bundle of literacies that are our responsibilities as citizens. If we want to preserve a healthy democracy and society for future generations, we need to instill these literacies in our young as they assume the mantle of their highest calling, citizenship.
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Another Conservative for Obama
A Canadian conservative notes McCain’s surprise mortgage bailout proposal at the second debate – a $300 billion plan – violated conservative principles and amounted to “pandering to middle-class voters.”
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Until now, I haven’t had much new to say on the matter — not since January, 2008, when I wrote a column titled “John McCain for President.” But in the last few months, my doubts about McCain have been growing.
The tipping point came during last Tuesday’s presidential debate, when I heard the GOP candidate tell Americans that he wants to take US$300-billion of taxpayer money and use it to pay off the mortgages of private citizens. I know these are rough times. But what kind of “conservative” seeks to socialize the financial risk freely taken on by millions of Americans through arm’s-length home loans?
It was just one moment on Tuesday night, but it perfectly symbolized how this erstwhile “maverick” has descended into bald-faced redistributionist, welfare-state populism.
With both McCain and Obama doing their best to pander to middle-class voters amidst the fallout of Wall Street’s crash, the ideological stakes have vanished, or at least gotten very tiny, in the U. S. presidential election. And so I am inclined simply to pick the guy who is best placed to restore America’s political capital in the community of nations. As every available survey of international opinion overwhelmingly demonstrates, that man is Barack Obama.
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Even a McCain supporter in Virginia notices it: McCain/Palin are wasting the time they spend attacking Obama on time that could be spent on crafting policy solutions.
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In Virginia Beach, stronghold of televangelist Pat Robertson and neighbor to the Norfolk naval base where Mr. McCain served his first duty tour, some 12,000 people filled a convention center for a rally.
Mr. McCain issued the same dark warnings after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin warmed up the crowd, lauding the “good, hardworking, patriotic Americans” and accusing Mr. Obama of “pointin’ fingers” instead of “lookin’ to the future.”
But letter carrier Joe Voss, 56, complained that precious campaign time has been wasted attacking Mr. Obama’s character instead of offering fresh economic proposals.
“After the last presidential debate, all I could think was: Whoever gets in there, I’m screwed,” Mr. Voss said.
He came out to see Ms. Palin, and even spent $5 on a souvenir hand towel with her image on it. “Every time she says ‘Joe Six-Pack,’ I cheer,” he said.
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E. J. Dionne Jr. – McCain and the Raging Right – washingtonpost.com
Here’s to intelligent and principled conservatives for speaking out against McCain/Palin’s pandering to the “kooks.”
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We are in the midst of what could become — and here’s hoping it doesn’t — the worst economic downturn in decades. The last thing we need is a campaign that strengthens fanaticism, tarnishes the authority of the next president and whips up the worst kinds of prejudice. This works both ways: Obama should not be delegitimized if he wins, and McCain should not want to win in a way that would undermine his own capacity to lead.
When Christopher Buckley, a novelist and former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush, announced last week that he would vote for Obama (his first vote ever for a Democrat), he referred to words once spoken to him by his late father. “You know,” the conservative hero William F. Buckley Jr. said, “I’ve spent my entire lifetime separating the right from the kooks.”
McCain has an obligation, to his own legacy and the country he has served, to separate himself and his campaign from the kooks. Extremism in defense of liberty may be no vice, but extremism in pursuit of the presidency is as dysfunctional as it is degrading.
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Judge: Restore voter roll names | The Detroit News | detnews.com
Score one for the Justice System. Vote suppression won’t work this time for Michigan.
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In a 43-page opinion, Murphy ruled that Michigan’s Secretary of State violates federal law through two methods it uses to purge names from its list of qualified voters.
Murphy ordered election officials to immediately halt and attempt to rectify one of the two practices — canceling voter registrations for those whose voter identification card is returned as undeliverable.
He ordered the state to remove the “rejected” marking in the qualified voter file for all people whose original voter ID cards have been returned as undeliverable since Jan. 1, 2006. About 1,500 people have been removed from the voter list in that manner this year, according to evidence presented in the case.
Murphy said a second Michigan practice — immediately canceling the voter registration of those who apply for a driver’s license in another state — also violates the National Voting Rights Act.
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Schools Lag Because Focus Not on Capacity to Reason – J.E. Robertson – Open Salon
As we see the effects of voting by (parents’?) party instead of by ideas, this is a timely article.
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This may be one of the most fundmental areas in which we need to reform our common culture: we are not educating test-takers, we are educating human beings. And a free citizen, capable of accessing all the benefits of a free society, must have at the core of his self-awareness, an intellect that knows it can be applied, that it can assess, relearn, inquire, challenge and distinguish between ideas, the less good and the better.
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The Extreme Right Debates A Coup
Straight from the extreme right’s mouth. If it were in German and from 1930, it wouldn’t surprise. But it’s in “American,” 2008.
MInd you, people who think like the below have children they send to schools.
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now that the Democrats have won a convincing victory in both House and Senate and the Bush administration is making conciliatory noises, the right’s mad dogs are unwilling to drop their bone.
Which leads them into unforgiving territory – effectively advocating a coup to overthrow that democratic process and install their own dictatorship, all in the name of national security.
After all, if you’re going to say things like
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this:
So let me be the first conservative to step forward and say what must be said.
Finally, after years of suspicion and accusations, we not only found the smoking gun, we found the bullets, the target, the secret plans, and the conspirators plotting to politically assassinate a President who is guilty of protecting out nation from terrorists. Unmasked and caught red-handed, the modern Democrat is a traitor. They should be treated no differently than the Rosenbergs; tried in a court of law, convicted, and suffer the harshest punishment. Death by firing squad, preferably. On TV, if possible. -
Then you end up, by neccessity, with people who sincerely believe something like this:
The choice is clear. Vote Republican, stay the course, and fight the war on terror over there. Vote Democrat, withdraw from Iraq, and fight the war on terror here. The choice is simple. If the dims win, they will try to impeach both Bush and Cheney. Conyers has the plans drawn up. That would make Nancy Pelosi President of the United States. I will proudly be one of the patriotic Americans to take up arms to throw off the yoke of fascism she represents. Hopefully I would be on the squads assigned to eliminate the left.
That’s where the logical chain ends, at a rightwing coup to overturn the will of at least 55% of the American people in the recent midterms. Few – if any – of the uber-right’s pundits will admit this, but they all know it is true.
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Could such a coup succeed? Well, that’s another matter. It would have to be instigated at the highest level, probably that of the presidency. Then, though, the 30% who are hardcore supporters of illegal spying, legislation that severs America’s ties with the rule of law and makes it possible to throw any American in the gulag, laws that allow martial law to be declared and the military to become a domestic law enforcement arm simply on the president’s say so – then, those 30% are more than enough as long as another 30% simply accepts and does nothing. History, from Hitler’s rise to Saddam’s rule in Iraq, tells us that is usually exactly what happens.
That such a happenstance may be remote is debatable, but it is also beside the point. The extreme right are advocating exactly such a coup as a logical consequence of their rhetoric. They know it. It falls to those of us who actually love freedom and democracy on both left and right, rather than using it as a cover for totalitarian ideology, to throw it in the uber-rights’ faces and make sure everyone else knows it too. That’s the best way to make sure such a coup remains only a remote possibility.
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- Edublog Suspended: Politics Around the Web 10/18/2008
- Edublog Suspended: Politics Around the Web 10/13/2008
- Edublog Suspended: Politics (and Publishing) Around the Web 10/16/2008
- Edublog Suspended: Politics Around the Web 10/19/2008
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