Scary!
Tories get a decent communication strategy complete with screaming kids and ums and errs.
The telling moment comes at the beginning, when Cameron warns that he's in competition with the BBC and ITV. Of course he is : the most profound and fundamental shift in democratic politics over the last 100 years is the shift of power from political parties to the media in determining who will get into government and what they will do when they get there.
Political parties must learn to route around mainstream media if they want to regain control of elected governments.
5 comments:
I'm such a fan. You have a knack for keen insights and relevant links.
For me here in America maybe it's worth noting that the British Press is very important. On my browser is a button for headlines from the BBC. You may not be able to imagine how seriously flawed the American mainstream media has become!
Your observation about the need for political parties to route around mainstream media--and your corresponding alarm that the Tories seem to get it--is a good one. Reality bites, but it's better than the alternative.
I'm sure you've seen it but John Robb piece on propaganda today is very good Global Guerrillas The attention that you and other social software intellectuals pay to trust is of enormous significance to the effort to route around mainstream media. It's humbling to remember that the lessons "to tell the truth" we all learned as children are still so vitally important.
Gad! I just watched Webcameron.
I'm looking forward to the day when you rule the day as a media maven!
I probably should be pestering you via email--probably shouldn't be pestering you at all. But since I've started here, I'll continue.
Not really related to anything, I note that Glenn Greenwald spends half of his time in Brazil because his boyfriend is Brazilian. Greenwald impresses me with his blog and the way he published his book "How Would a Patriot Act?"
I suppose I mention Greenwald's Brazilian connection because I feel quite strongly you are well ahead of the curve in understanding the new media landscape. Busy as you are I'm sure you're not loking for new ways to make a living. But, damn it, I rather wish you were one of the media big wigs. So I'm wasting my time imagining how you might get there;-)
"Decent" is, imho, dependent on your point of view at this moment. The shift from "traditional" media as a political broadcast platform to the use of emerging "social" media risks opening up a whole barrel of political methods.
Thus, your closing phrase here, implying that political parties will expand their broadcast opportunities more (assuming they subscribe to a comeptitive, FPTP election system...) is double-edged. On the one hand, yes, 'power' is removed from the large news networks. On the other hand, isn't it just being moved into the hands of those that the free press is supposed to question, and supposed to hold to account?
I guess whether you hold this to be a 'good' thing for politics (bringing the politicians closer to the 'people') or a 'bad' thing (the combination of non-accountable media with accountable policy-makers) depends on how much you trust not just the platform used, but the people involved, to establish accountability.
Personally, I'm extremely cautious.
Manual trackback... 'Who Owns The Deliberation[tm]?'
John Robb continues with the discussion of Propaganda
with a link to LinuxWorld. And Nick Turse considers the US military using MySpace
I'm not sure how to describe David Cameron's video blogging: homespun or unspun? Either way I found it appealing. The folks over at LinuxWorld in response to Robb's post pointed out that getting unspun information from the trenches is one way of beating down propaganda. Webcameron exists in an eco-system of video blogging. It seems harder in that eco-system to manage your message because the medium is a conversational medium.
I was looking to a link for Billy Bragg. Right on his front page is a short video "Yo MTV...do we have a problem?" Politicians will Video Blog, and they better be prepared for answer-videos. The medium is conversational and they're going to have to learn the medium before they can spin in circles using it.
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