{"id":374,"date":"2008-11-26T01:06:22","date_gmt":"2008-11-26T06:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=374"},"modified":"2008-11-26T01:06:22","modified_gmt":"2008-11-26T06:06:22","slug":"early-explorations-of-political-communication-in-the-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2008\/11\/26\/early-explorations-of-political-communication-in-the-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Explorations of Political Communication in the Election"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve spent the last several days at the National Communication Association convention in San Diego, exploring several themes in rhetoric and public affairs. It\u2019s been a fitting moment to reflect upon this year\u2019s election dynamics, and several panels on political communication have been wrestling with some of the data emerging on issues ranging from Obama\u2019s oratory to the extraordinary use of the Web over the course of both campaigns. Rather than exploring any of these in depth, I\u2019ve compiled a broad list of some heuristic points\u2014what some political communication scholars consider the most noteworthy aspects of the campaign and key issues to continue exploring:<\/span><\/p>\n

Most scholars seemed to agree that Obama\u2019s speech on race in America was one of the most important speeches in the contemporary era. In a larger sense, several scholars noted that \u201cObama is a candidate made by oratory,\u201d and this will remain a phenomenon in much need of further elucidation. Some noted that Obama\u2019s campaign should finally put to rest for good any claim that oratory or rhetoric no longer matter. A couple of scholars argue that Obama has borrowed President Reagan\u2019s rhetoric of the American Dream, but reconstituted it as a communitarian rather than an individual vision of political engagement (see the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rowland & Jones, 2007). <\/span><\/p>\n

McCain\u2019s use of the term \u201cmaverick\u201d was diffused during the election, as the key issues he was a \u201cmaverick\u201d on (torture, immigration, and global warming) were all issues that didn\u2019t play to the Republican base. As such, McCain\u2019s campaign was in a difficult box. We also need to recognize that in presidential campaigns we have a history of admiring heroes and then not voting for them. \u201cHope\u201d was not a theme of the campaign, it was the result of it (Rowland).<\/span><\/p>\n

In this election, Saturday Night Live did a great job of showing that woman candidate A does not equal woman candidate B. At the same time, we need to look more into the way in which Palin\u2019s maternal image affected many women. She became for many women what George W. Bush has proven to be for many men\u2014the kind of person you could \u201cgo out and have a beer with.\u201d In particular, this should lead us to seek out differences between how many women voters responded to Hillary Clinton versus Sarah Palin (Carlin). <\/span><\/p>\n

We need to look at the overwhelming number of political ads used in this campaign. In the 2004 presidential campaign, both candidates created and endorsed (i.e. a count of \u201cofficial\u201d candidate ads) approximately 250 video ads. In this election, the sum was 850 (Louden)!<\/span><\/p>\n

During every debate, Obama\u2019s greatest asset was that he came off as steady, cool, and unflappable. McCain was very different in every debate. In Marshall McLuhan\u2019s terms of hot and cool media, Obama was a cool candidate with a hot response (Anderson).<\/span><\/p>\n

This election was a fusion of tradition and new politics, it was undoubtedly a realigning election of \u201cChicago precinct politics meets Web 2.0.\u201d Obama came across as a pragmatist, following a line of political engagement stemming from John Dewey. We also need to know more about Obama\u2019s remarkable consistency and message discipline during the campaign (Smith). <\/span><\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s use of the Internet to drive participation was extraordinary, in terms of both contacting voters and contacting them often. That the Obama campaign now has a database of 11-12 million e-mails to contact will remain a key resource in governing. A highlight in the campaign was when 630,000 new Obama voters gave to the Obama campaign in September, apparently in response to the Palin bump. The average donor gave $86 in the Obama campaign, half of which came in from the Internet (Hollihan). <\/span><\/p>\n

The number of videos about Obama on YouTube totaled 112 million, the number of McCain videos totaled 25 million. Obama\u2019s friend list on Facebook hit 3 million, compared to McCain\u2019s 625,000. In October\/November alone the Obama channel beat the number of hits on the Beyonce and Britney Spears channels on YouTube. Polls demonstrate that people were engaged in this election through the participatory media experiences that were offered by the campaigns. The study of media effects is on its way out, people are driving their own effect change now (Bennett).<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve spent the last several days at the National Communication Association convention in San Diego, exploring several themes in rhetoric and public affairs. It\u2019s been a fitting moment to reflect upon this year\u2019s election dynamics, and several panels on political communication have been wrestling with some of the data emerging on issues ranging from Obama\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":376,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions\/376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}