Obamagirl Video as a Teaching Moment
BY Alan Rosenblatt | Thursday, June 14 2007
Cross posted on DrDigipol.com.
The sudden interest in Obamagirl's Crush on Barack music video provides a great opporunity to talk once more about the nature of internet communications. As I have often argued, the net is a chaotic message environment precisely because it enables anyone, as long as they have access to a wired computer, to post their own ideas and opinions. And this content has no editor other than the poster.
So, just as the 1984 video before swept through the campaign news cycle, the Obamagirl video may be starting its sweep now.
But what does this mean for the candidate?
Well, for one, it means this girl likes Obama, at least on the face of things. It also means new people might get to know Obama because a video of this sort has the potential to reach and engage a new audience. It may also mean that detractors of Obama will latch onto the video as an indictment of the Senator, via a guilt by virtual association line of thinking.
But this guilt by association approach is steeped in a fundamental ignorance about how the web works. When anyone can post content about a candidate, the candidate cannot be held responsible for the content posted (despite suggestions by Fox & Friends to the contrary).
The internet is giving everyone a megaphone. While some use this megaphone to yell to their friends about their favorite movie, some are using it to express their political opinions. This is a great thing. This is what democracy is all about.
About nine years ago, I wrote a paper called "Lurking About in Hyde Park With the Disembody Politic." This paper explored the idea that the internet gave all citizens a soapbox to stand on and express their views... much as citizens did in Hyde Park in London or on Speakers' Row in Berkely, CA. But while those venues limited the speaker's reach to only those within earshot, the internet allows speakers to reach every corner of the country and the world.
And it allows speakers a wider range of options for how to express themselves, ranging from text, to pictures, to music videos and mashups. And with this new range of options, we have to accept that people will experiment with message and form. And these experiments will not always have universal appeal.
So, what is the lesson in this teaching moment? It is that we must expect independent voices expressing independent views that are germaine to electoral campaigns but NOT the responsibility of the campaigns. If someone crosses a line of acceptability in their expression, we simply cannot hold the candidate or the campaign responsible. A thousand flowers will bloom regardless of how a campaign may seek to stop it.
Viva democracy!!