Howard, part 2
Howard builds a strong argument in support of his statement that “political hypermedia have altered the way political consultants, politicians, and academics understand voter behavior and the relationship between candidates and constituencies”; I think Howard intended to imply that not only has understanding of these behaviors and relationships changed, but indeed the very chains of action and reaction, causation, and effects, those behaviors and relationships themselves have changed with the increasing use of hypermedia in political culture. Howard uses the term “political hypermedia” throughout his book to essentially denote the use of various Internet- and computer-based technologies in the construction of political campaigns, be they candidate or issue centered. Hypermedia campaigns are characterized by the use of both out-of-the-box ICTs, as well as some that are built in-house in tandem with the campaign. The use of these new media, in contrast to the “mass media” campaigns in the days before the Internet and computer technologies, are characterized by small and fast feedback loops, low information waste, and low process toxicity (158). There is little doubt as to the relative efficiency of hypermedia info-gathering tools over more traditional methods, as reflected in the widely shared sentiment that “there are big differences between an individual’s policy preferences and what they reveal as survey respondents” (98). In other words, hypermedia allow campaigns to be more responsive, they take into account in the decision making process all data they gather, and citizens do not become impatient with providing the data because too frequently they do not know even they are providing it. Campaigns still use more ‘traditional’ methods of gathering information about the public (surveys, focus groups, etc.) and media to deliver their messages (tv, radio, print, phone, etc.), but the use of these tools is increasingly shaped by the information gathered and analyzed through new ICTs. This interplay and interdependence of the more traditional methods and media tools of political culture with types of hypermedia such as the ones described by Howard makes causal relationship difficult to define. And
Howard states that “there is still some mystery about the causal patterns, but the ability to predict outcomes has improved dramatically by refining the formula for legislative success, testing political messages, and studying personality psychographics on top of demographics” (93).
The types of technology and the ends to which they are used vary greatly, and grouping them all together into one category, “hypermedia”, to and from which we might draw causal relationships masks the sometimes significant differences between specific hypermedia tools. As Howard acknowledges, “political culture consists of both chosen networks and imposed schemata” (140). Consistent with this reality, some of the hypermedia tools described in Howard’s book deal in the precious currency of data, and in order to secure that data, the employees of many campaigns and other entities of American political culture are more than willing to rely on what sometimes represent gross invasions of privacy, such as using credit card purchase histories and Spyware to overlay basic demographics with “psychographics” in order to better ‘understand’ their constituents. One campaign worker expressed a common belief that “politics has always been driven by data; it’s just that the data on the electorate [were] never very accurate” and hypermedia can help campaign workers ensure that the objects of their political campaigns know and are responsive to their constituents through data that is not self-report, as in the case of surveys and focus groups, but which directly reflects the behavior of individuals and groups.
A central part of the shared culture of campaign workers is this belief that the “more data they collect on citizens and candidates, the more transparent and responsive this dyadic relationship will become” (94). Although people frequently do not know that their personal information is being gathered and analyzed in the construction of political campaigns, the campaign workers Howard interviews rationalize invasions of privacy with the firm belief that such information leads to tighter feedback loops between citizens and political objects, and thus a more responsive political culture. It is difficult to stomach the thought that the best way for our political system to effectively represent its constituents is to use personal information gathered in disingenuous and arguably unconstitutional ways; is it really the case that privacy is the toll we must pay (more often than not unwittingly) in order to pave the least “toxic” (156) path to a ‘deliberative democracy’? Howard agrees with many other scholars (including Fischer from this course) in stating that “users have an important role in defining how technologies will be used, such that the story of how a technology is intended to be use is incomplete without the story of how it is actually used” (172); but, in the case of data-intensive hypermedia tools, what role can the “users” (ie. the public) whose interests they are supposed to promote, possibly play in shaping the use of data-gathering technologies like Spyware and spider programs, when they don’t even know they are using them?
In contrast to those forms of “hypermedia” which rely heavily on amassing and analyzing personal data, there are hypermedia tools which seem to take more of a citizen- and discourse-centered approach (rather than a campaign-centered one) by allowing citizens to knowingly formulate and strengthen their political beliefs and policy stances, and connect them with those of other citizens and of specific candidates and campaigns. The most notable of this is the lively peer-reviewed debates in the Agora on GrassrootsActivist.org, which are of a markedly different character and technical structure than the data-mined reports of DataBank.com. In the Agora, citizens have a forum in which to voice their opinions, respond to those of others, or just watch and learn. So several questions linger: the first is whether or not this type of forum helps anyone figure out their stance on an issue who doesn’t already have their mind made up, and whether or not this type of deliberative hypermedia leads to a more representative democracy; and the second is whether or not American citizens, if they knew of these invasions of personal privacy, would be willing to allow them in the name of a more "transparent" democracy.
As a side note, I'm pretty sure the community of American librarians would go nuts over the issues of privacy and the models of information provision described in this book. The foundation of their profession consists in helping individuals find the information they need on their own terms, and facilitating the perpetual construction of a more active and informed citizenry while respecting the rights to privacy encoded in the Constitution. Also, I wonder what sort of connections can be made between the invasions of privacy in this book, the USA Patriot Act, and the relative use by Republican and Democratic campaigns of this highly personalized voter data from organizations such as Databank.