New Media and Politics

These are some of the new media, to the left, and these are some of the numbers, below. Email is far ahead of other forms of electronic communication with more than 80% of the population now sending and receiving email messages, and buying online is second. In the comparisons of 2007, 2008, and 2009 the largest increase 2007 to 2008 was watching streaming video. The YouTube 2008 presidential election campaign contributed more than 60 million views to that increase. The largest increase 2008 to 2009 was visiting social networks.

Changes in communication technology and practice are happening so rapidly they leave our understanding far behind. The changes in communication technology and patterns of use are chronicled by many tech bloggers; a list is available here. We know very little about how these new practices of communication are becoming integrated into practices of politics. This is where I am attempting to shed some light.

The new technologies of communication 'invading' our politics are: blogging, video 'for the masses,' social networks, and microblogging.

Microblogging -- Twitter being the most important

There's a hashtag for that is a collection of microblogging streams about politics. At the moment the streams disappear about as quickly as they appear. If you want to know what they were microblogging about Obama being awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace or the shooting at Fort Hood or any of the many other events energizing twitterers someone needs to have captured them and put them in an archive because they are gone. That is what There's a hashtag for that is. It is an archive of streams of microblogging about politics.

Video aggregation and distribution -- YouTube being the most important

The presidential election of 2008 was a watershed for video/YouTube and politics. YouTube did not exist in 2004. In 2007/2008 there were thousands of videos and more than a hundred million views.

Video archive There is something of the same problem for political videos as for streams of microblogging. All of the candidates in the primaries of 2007 had a channel on YouTube where you could find their videos. Then both the McCain and the Obama campaigns -- along with Bob Barr and others -- had channels for the 2008 election. The only one left is The Obama campaign videos. The rest have disappeared; they are no longer accessible as YouTube channels. So we need an archive. The Digital Library of the University of Iowa and I have put together an archive of all of the videos of four of the Democratic candidates and four of the Republican candidates for the primaries. In addition we have the videos of the McCain and the Barr campaigns.

The Obama White House is also using YouTube to distribute videos of their activities. Those have not begun to disappear. So no archival activity is necessary at this point.

Thinking outloud about these new opportunities for communication

I did two analyses based on campaigns in the primary and a series of a dozen analyses of the fall election campaign.

And I have just started on microblogging.