No, this won’t be the “Meerkat Election”. Or the “Periscope Election”. And as exciting as these new live streaming social media apps are, they certainly not “taking over” Washington, the Presidential Primary, or the 2016 elections (or any other political scene).
It’s the same old story, and we will hear it again and again over the next year and a half.
Much of the hype emanates from the run-up to the US presidential primaries and general elections and wild extrapolation from a few high profile incidents or particularlly succesful outliers.
- 2004 was called the “Meetup Election” after Howard Dean’s spectacular primary campaign used the platform as part of its effort to mobilize volunteers and raise money.
- 2008 was called the “Facebook Election” and the “YouTube Election” as these tools grew in importance and particularly the Obama campaign used them.
- 2012, of course, was called the “Twitter Election” (by amongst others, a purely disinterested source like the CEO of, well, Twitter) as that was the new tools of the season.
- And 2016 in addition to having already been dubbed the Meerkat Election will probably also be called the Snapchat election and the Whatsapp election and surely more too.
Much of all this hype is driven by a combination of tech journalists and political reporters with an endless need for new content and always looking for the new thing and self-interested sources like political operatives and tech professionals who have a story to tell. (It turns out that the Smith for President social media director thinks social media may decide the election, and that social media consultant Johnson and social media CEO Williams agree.)
One is tempted to say that much of it is bullshit (in the technical sense of the term as communication designed to impress), as no one seems to care whether it is actually true in any meaningful sense of that word. Thought-provoking that even very self-consicously “serious” news outlets lend their name to this stuff.
It’s all predictable but slightly annoying, as is the tendency of some journalists in other countries to pick up on coverage of US election campaigns and assume that whatever happens (or could/will/may happen there) will eventually also decide the upcoming election in country X.
What is missing from this is the simply but important point made by everyone from serious political professionals like David Plouffe (as he has written, “balanced communications across all mediums is critical in any messaging effort today”) over scholars of political communication and media like Andrew Chadwick to historians of technology like David Edgerton: the interplay between old and new media is not either/or scenario where a succession of new media arrive, displace old media like television and inherited campaign practices like going door-to-door, and proceed to decide the election in a blaze of dazzling technology-driven power. It is an additive process where new forms of campaign communication are gradually added on to existing, well-known ones in the pursuit of victory.
So what we have today is digital politics, yes, because these tools—all these tools, including seemingly old and unsexy “mundane tools” like email, spreadsheets, databases, etc—are increasingly integral to much of what many of us do, especially in high income democracies, and hence also important parts of the political process.
But it is digital politics as usual, as old media and campaign practices remain stubbornly important and central, and elections are still won as much on the basis of policy, personality, performance, and at the mercy of events and conjecture like changes in the economy.
I know saying we have a “complicated” election ahead of us that will be decided by a combination of many different factors and where those involved will rely on a wide range of different forms of communication, most of them fairly well-known and older ones, is not very exciting. But it is the honest-to-God truth of the matter. Calling it the “app-of-the-year election” is not.
Now that is off my chest at least I will have this blog post to point to for the rest of the 2015-2016 election season and probably for the rest of my life.
rasmuskleisnielsen.net 