The Decline of the Public Sphere and Hypermedia Campaigns.
Today's question: Communication technologies have always had a role in political life. Is there something fundamentally or causally different about the newest information technologies in the political sphere? For example, you might consider: What aspects of communication and culture are structurally different about the political sphere as opposed to other kinds of activities? What aspects of new communication technologies (like blogs, online donations, citizenship, and political campaign software [e.g., VoteMover etc.]) are different from the older communication technologies that have been used for politics? Please refer to the Howard reading in supporting your answer.
The Decline of the Public Sphere and Hypermedia Campaigns.
While indeed communication technologies have played a critical role in the political life of campaigns for generations, there has been a fundamental shift in not only how “new” communication technologies are applied within campaigns in shaping and targeting their audience, but those applications have also altered the notion of the public sphere itself. Howard, in his work, New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen, notes three essentials that are required for a healthy public sphere. They are:
1.) It requires the fact of shared text, regularly published and generally accessible- citizens must be confident that the text is indeed shared across the polity so that everyone has access to the same quality of information. (p. 182)
2.) It requires the act of conservation through which we constitute the public sphere when we discuss the affairs of state and share the floor without discrimination. (p. 182)
3.) It requires the space for action: legislatures, courts, voting booths, and places of administration where decisions are made and enacted. Howard notes that one commentator believes that “the more of these spheres the better, so that different people can communicate their needs to one another.” (p. 183)
It would appear the new communication technologies support all of these three critical aspects for guaranteeing the health of the public sphere, however as Howard quite deftly indicates, the hyper campaign manager is not really interested in the health of the public sphere, and perhaps, not even that vested in the success of either major political party. Rather the managers main concerns is the success rates of each of their campaigns, so that they can then continue to sell their services to those that are willing to pay top dollar, and thus guarantee their further financial and political successes.
Howard details how the political messages are “narrowcast”, and thus modified depending upon the intended audiences race, class, gender, zip code, income level, religious beliefs (or lack thereof), and educational background. In turn he notes that “ The tools of a political campaign, the choices that campaign managers make about manipulating data, ideas, and people, reflect their own political norms.” (p. 203) Given the necessity of having the same information available for everyone in the interest of the public sphere, the campaign manager’s interests are in direct conflict with that essential. Similarly, online candidate blogs, youtube press announcements, electronic “meet and greets” all do provide greater access to political candidates, but that is at the loss of real life interactions with the voting public. That is why we have seen a resurgence and political realignment of when the primaries occur across the states, moving them eariler and eariler so that they might get a glimpse of a political candiate running for president, other than them spending all of the time and capital in Iowa and New Hampshire. Political campaign messages are becoming more and more unidirectional, broadcast to us via the internet. When this used to occur on television, it was at least parsed by geographic region, now there are multiple subgroups being tracked, and distinct messages are crafted for each. Online political chats are as scripted as political conventions, and they usually only pose softball questions that are begging to be hit out of the political park. While one could argue that this has been going on for decades, with the new communication technology available today, the effects are magnified and are eroding the very notion of the public sphere. Do you doubt that it this erosion is happening? Then come and join me in the "free speech zone" located a mile and a half away from the convention centers for the Democrats and the Republicans in 2008, and tell me that these developments are good for democracy.