{"id":20976,"date":"2016-02-16T11:32:28","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T15:32:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=20976"},"modified":"2016-02-16T11:32:28","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T15:32:28","slug":"new-media-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2016\/02\/16\/new-media-events\/","title":{"rendered":"New Media Events"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"twitter-politics\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Image via TechCrunch<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHow tall is Jeb Bush?\u201d This was the question on (apparently) many people\u2019s minds leading up to the February 13th<\/sup> CBSN GOP debate. Thanks to Google, in partnership with CBSN, we now know that Americans are asking the hard questions, like \u201cWhat is Ted Cruz\u2019s real name?\u201d \u201cWhy did Ben Carson wait to go on stage?\u201d and, of course, a real deal breaker for me as a voter, \u201cHow old is John Kasich\u2019s wife?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The integration of mass media broadcast and social media platforms has shaped the way Americans engage in electoral politics. Debate coverage this election cycle has included solicited questions via Facebook and YouTube, anchors and pundits reading tweets on air, and live coverage of debates from corporate social media accounts. February 13th<\/sup>\u2019s GOP debate was a stunning example of how social media and the Internet have shaped broadcast news. For the entire debate, two graphic overlays displayed information from Twitter and Google. The Twitter live feed featured tweets curated by CBSN that, by and large, featured the #GOPdebate hashtag and offered a range of commentary, summary, fact checking, and humor.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

What did Trump say about ______? is a pretty good summary of his campaign.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Google bar at the bottom of the screen switched between two topics: search trends over time and popular search questions. A bar graph showed the \u201csearch interest\u201d trends for the top three candidates at the time (consistently Trump and Cruz, with Bush and Rubio swapping places occasionally). Every 30 seconds or so, the bar graph was replaced with the \u201ctop trending questions\u201d on each of the candidates. Well, all except for Marco Rubio, who never got a set of top trending questions, for reasons that I\u2019m sure are fascinating and nefarious.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/p>\n

I do not know\u00a0how this information is meaningful.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The relationship among these three entities\u2014CBSN, Twitter, and Google\u2014are by and large mutually beneficial. Twitter, which has been facing death knells<\/a> for quite some time now, gets to remind the country that yes, people are still using Twitter, and doesn\u2019t it look exciting? Google also gets its logo\u00a0on the screen for the entire debate, while showing off its analytic capabilities. And CBSN gets content from both of them to accompany the debate. There is undoubtedly some sort of monetary relationship among them as well, though if this information is at all available I have been unable to find it.<\/p>\n

These sorts of strange bedfellows arrangements are nothing new. They\u2019re akin to what Daniel Boorstin called \u201cpseudo events,\u201d also commonly referred to as \u201cmedia events.\u201d Boorstin defined pseudo events according to four characteristics: 1) they are not spontaneous, but carefully planned, 2) their immediate purpose is to be reported on by the media, 3) they have an ambiguous relationship to reality, and 4) they are intended to be a self-fulfilling prophecy\u2014a pseudo event simultaneously makes a claim and makes that\u00a0claim real.<\/p>\n

Boorstin gives the example of a hotel that’s looking to increase its prestige and, subsequently, its income. Rather than improving the accommodations, they hire a PR firm who tells them to use their upcoming 30th<\/sup> anniversary as an opportunity to drum up attention. The hotel partners with leading community figures\u2014prominent bankers, lawyers, and members of society\u2014to draw attention to the event. The hotel makes the case for its prestige by holding a 30th<\/sup> anniversary banquet attended by important people and covered by the media and, in so doing, proves itself to be prestigious. Sometimes pseudo events fail spectacularly, as in the infamous 2012 Mitt Romney food drive<\/a> in which the campaign purchased canned goods and gave them to supporters so they could be filmed giving the cans directly to Romney. Unfortunately for him, the media event revealed itself to be a farce. It backfired quite forcefully in his face, exacerbated by the fact that the Red Cross does not even accept canned food donations. Oops.<\/p>\n

\"Mitt-Romney-collects-canned-goods-e1351699353343\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Image via Yahoo News<\/em><\/p>\n

But the Twitter-Google-CBSN partnership, and others like it, is different from Boorstin\u2019s media events in important ways. While it is planned, it also relies on an element of spontaneity to make it interesting. The inclusion of the Twitter feed and up-to-date Google analytics gives the event a sense of movement and dynamism. Of course, to keep it from getting too<\/em> spontaneous, the Twitter feed is curated, and moments like the MSNBC Iowa Caucus F-Bomb<\/a> can be gracefully avoided.<\/p>\n

What we have in these mass\/social media partnerships is an extension of Boorstin\u2019s media events. I call them new media events, <\/em>and offer a few preliminary observations on the characteristics of new media events:<\/p>\n