Before we forget and get all cynical again

Posted: November 9th, 2008 | Author: admin | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , |

Its only four days after the Obama Victory  and I’m surprised with how quickly I am over it all. Maybe I couldn’t sustain the intensity. Maybe Sarah Palin is more fascinating that Rahm Emmanuel.  All through September and October I had been gripped. My laptop, youtube, pollster.com, huffingtonpost and associated feeders had been one. Part of a collectively formed neural map that jumped from here to here to here and then here etc… A swarm of clicks, comments and embedded data. Now meh..

So before I forget I thought I’d post up a little email exchange that Mat Wall Smith and I had about our top five US Election 08 campaign moments from a ‘new media’ perspective. Mat as always responds to a concept in the most insightful way and I ‘ll try and catch Mat on Oovoo today and have a little diavlog with him about  what he means when he says ” seed the network like unthought”

but here  are our top fives!

Gillian
Here is my top 5 media moments

1. Google hacks and Obama website. How US Election 08 showed the clear relations between network participation and community organisation. How this raises questions about publics, audiences and participatory media
2. Obama campaigns ‘Flusher’ Program. ( links campaign office to electoral roles in real time! see Newsweek article here)
3.CNNNBC customised viral videos take pointcasting into a new affective realm,
4. Huffington Post and Viral contagion.
5. NYTimes electoral day ‘emotional cities’ application which they call a ‘word train’.. Newpspapers as affectual communities.
6.. ( ok one extra) the fact the the papers of record sold out. newspapers literally as memorials.

A screensnap of the New York Times 'election word train'

Mat replied to my shorthand list in the following way:

Well - I’m nowhere near as engaged as you on this.
But I spose

no 1: Being moved by people being moved by Obama - or rather an
intense empathy evoked by his achievement/which is to a degree ‘our’
achievement coupled with the the pain of all costs.

no 2: It was all about pure unadulterated affect. That is why the JFK
comparison pops up with little actual corelation - Except that the
mass didn’t NOT elect a Catholic/Non-Anglo far more important that
they were good looking eloquent and efused a positive energy. The
lesson nothing: seeds network like the unthought…

no 3:  the martialling of the moveon, getup, avaaz model to mainstream
politics with all of the problems and possibilities it entails. - this
is a democracy Jim, but not as we know it.

no 4: Martialling Ubiquitous media and understanding that ubiquitous
facedness is more important than a coherent/controlled top down
message (particularly if you are good looking and eloquent)

no 5: The strange shift in politics and media that sees the US
president-elect acknowledge that the world is listening and with that
comes the responsibilty of dialogue.


3 Comments on “Before we forget and get all cynical again”

  1. #1 Andrew said at 7:45 pm on January 13th, 2009:

    Hey G, Ed Giles passed this on and I know you’re interested - http://nymag.com/news/features/all-new/53344/

  2. #2 admin said at 10:24 pm on January 13th, 2009:

    Thanks A,
    where is that Ed Giles, when I need him. I’m miffed if i’m out of his little forward lists. This is great article and makes some great points. I like that it points out that the Times is a ‘news organisation’ rather than a set in stone media form, or genre for that matter. It is also interesting the way they break down media geneologies from vox pop to word train. There is a consistencies of rhetorical elements - such as first person voice, real time ness that is ‘newsy’. The examples it gives demonstrate that news is not just a format ( even if it feels that ways if you watch TV or read newspapers), it is an affectual organiser. Even if papers or ‘journalists’ cease to exist institutionally, ‘news’ endures socially but in different compositions, using different methods and technologies. The connections between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media are far more interesting that their differences, I think. They reveal more. Why does transparency endure but other design elements, like the news cycle ( from 24 hours to 5minutes) or blue backgrounds, or sequential pages etc etc don’t?
    always back to affect and rhetoric…

  3. #3 Spatiality said at 2:41 am on January 15th, 2009:

    See, that election always seemed more interesting than the task I had at hand.

    ‘Martialling Ubiquitous media and understanding that ubiquitous
    facedness is more important than a coherent/controlled top down
    message (particularly if you are good looking and eloquent)’.
    Where was that little nugget when we were discussing Kevin07 (so long ago now)?

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