Hypermedia and Campaign-change
Yes, I believe there are both fundamental and causal differences in the structure of hypermedia political campaigns in contrast to previous campaign models, and Howard does a decent job of demonstrating these differences. For instance, in a brief section of his book called “Power and Social Control in the Hypermedia Campaign,” he writes: “there is an important difference between the mass media and hypermedia campaign: Instead of voters choosing to support a candidate or campaign, now candidates and campaigns choose supporters” (168). This difference via internet political software is both fundamental and causal, because “technology staffs” have the technological power to restructure the power relationship between politician and citizen. Fishing analogy: no longer must a campaign broadcast to the public at large, like casting a trawling net; rather a political campaign can “narrowcast,” like targeting an especially desirable fish with a spear-gun. This fundamental transformation of structure gives agential choice to the political campaigners to target individuals with spyware and data-mining where they lacked such agency in the past. Rather, in the past campaigners could target vaguely outlined publics with redlining tactics, but they lacked the detailed information necessary to redline at an individual level, much less sponsor digital self-redlining. Furthermore, hypermedia software changes the causal relationship of politics as well, because the invasive tactics used by campaign software cause different kinds of citizen behavior not evident in the past, like donating to campaigns online. Thus, both political campaigns and voters possess significant agency to choose each other, whereas in the past that agency fell mostly to voters.
On an even less abstract level, Howard makes an additional point that shows how structural and causal changes to campaigns have become common due to hypermedia. He writes: “the technology staff has the power to filter, destroy, or protect information for the campaign organization. Since so much political campaign business now occurs in digital form, the technology staff simultaneously plays the roles of archivist, accountant, and confidant” (168). On an informational level, hypermedia thus allow campaign IT personnel to rewrite or whitewash problematic digital information. Placing the control of information in the hands of IT staff causes or enables them to manipulate information as they see fit as they create the structure of both hypermedia software and politicians’ websites. An entirely new subset of workers has a hand in controlling the material presented to the public. Therefore, the changing technology puts much greater political agency into the hands of technicians where before such control was exercised by news media, speech writers, and public relations workers. The process of building a campaign diverts from the public spotlight to a bank of hidden computer terminals.