New Media and Politics
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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.

New Media and Politics -- Research Reports
New Media
Report
spying Reframing the argument -- how many nations do you want following your electronic communication?
twitter Politics on Twitter: Hashtags, Retweets, Urls
twitter Mr. Erdogan gets and earful -- global communication
twitter #BenghaziInFourWords and the Twitter echo chamber
twitter Focus -- concentration or dispersed -- in streams of Twitter messages
twitter Probably not a social movement
twitter
A Moment in the Constitution of Social Movements
twitter
Race ace? UK and US consider constitutional changes
twitter The highpoint of global communication as Egyptians struggle
twitter Morsi and global communication November 23 to December 2
twitter What? A new dictator in Egypt?
twitter It's a global shoutout Mr. President
twitter The Reach of Politics via Twitter -- Can that be real?
twitter How many people does it take to produce 700,000 messages posted to Twitter?
twitter Really big Twitter numbers: the flow of commotion/communication
twitter The reach of This seat's taken
public opinion Consequences of lying -- Obama vs Obama
twitter Mass Murder and the Social Construction of Terrorism
twitter Hijacking the Romney Search
twitter Supreme Court and Health Care; Tracking the focus of attention
twitter Celebrating the defeat of ACTA
twitter It's Still Obama vs Obama
twitter Update: Obama vs Obama, 6/01 through 6/10
twitter Obama vs Obama, the one person election
twitter Reframing Audience; Co-motion at #SOTU
twitter Political Organizations and the Magic of Retweeting
twitter Shouting across divides
twitter Arab Spring From the Ground Up
twitter Triggers and Surges
twitter Tracking me; tracking you -- This says it all
twitter Iran on Twitter, but why not Facebook?
twitter This is epic. Protesters in Tahrir . . .
twitter The Many Voices of ACTA
twitter What they had to say
twitter What we want to know -- on engineering communication
blogging An Invitation to Blog
twitter The 4:00 p.m. news
twitter The Huntsman surge
twitter Katy versus Rick -- and the winning Perry is . . .
twitter The big day in Iowa -- January 3, 2012
twitter The final push -- penultimate tweeting
twitter How do you know you are winning? -- Three and one-half months
twitter The final push -- happy new year
twitter The final push -- who is getting the attention?
twitter The 'We Move' in #Occupy . . .
twitter Retweeting in big numbers
twitter How you know you are winning -- When a judge speaks
twitter Celebrating two months
twitter One more time Oakland becomes the center of the Occupy movement
twitter Gingrich and Perry struggle
twitter One more time Oakland becomes the center of the Occupy movement
twitter Stability -- though at different baseline levels -- Gingrich and Ron Paul September-October 2011
twitter Growth and no Growth -- Twitter messaging Cain-Gingrich September-October 2011
twitter The Crossing Pattern -- Twitter Messages Bachmann-Cain September-October 2011
twitter When they back down -- That's when #3
twitter How do you know you are #winning?
twitter How do you know you are winning?
twitter Noticing Identity in Social Movements -- #OccupyWallStreet
twitter The Medium is the Message or Something Like That
twitter A Day of Protest
twitter COP16 Was a Focused Community and How One Can Know
twitter #AttackWatch -- There is no monopoly control when it comes to hashtags
twitter The News Move in Twitter Messaging
twitter The language of threat in our political discourse
twitter #TellBashar2Go
twitter Twitter and the Inception of Political Revolts
twitter Bachmann versus Palin -- who really cares?
twitter The president spoke and this is what they said
twitter Arab spring from the ground up
twitter The State of the Union Address -- It's a happening
twitter Evoking Latent Dispositions: How Americans Came to Believe Obama Is a Muslim
twitter RT @bobboynton new media and the revolting middle east
twitter Now that's going viral: #ScariestWordsEver "President Palin"
twitter Tweeting blood libel -- a visual analysis
twitter #teaparty -- they talk a lot
twitter The Twitter Two Step -- Reach of New Media and TV
twitter Going Viral -- in the small
twitter You Can't Stomp on Us -- after a Rand Paul organizer did stomp
twitter The evil twins of global popular culture: bin Laden and Hitler
twitter "Obama muslim" retweeting and more OR retweeting is just the start
twitter Audience: the reach of political messaging on Twitter
twitter Members of Congress are not harnessing the communicative power of Twitter
twitter #twitterfacts is discovered
twitter COP15 -- Voice
twitter Cat Bin Lady
twitter Opinion Leadership From Inside the Beltway
twitter Opinion Leadership: Outside the Beltway
twitter Micro Spin and the Obama Administration
twitter The Bin Laden Joke Stream
twitter Two Structures: Times Square and #Teaparty
twitter Assessing Volatility
twitter Politics Moves to Twitter: How Big is Big and Other Such Distributions
youtube The White House Channel on YouTube and Health Care Reform
twitter Open mouth and spark a spike or Osama bin Laden wanted dead or alive
twitter Sarah Palin did what? The importance of redundancy
twitter #HCR The Argument Joined
twitter Bin Laden as Global Celebrity
both Global Communication Reconfiguring Power
twitter Twenty-four Hours Tweeting the State of the Union
twitter That was fast! Twitter and hot political news
twitter What is one tweet worth?
twitter The difference an announcement can make
twitter How big is big? And why would one be interested?
twitter North Korea did what? Dynamics of Attention
twitter News as Urumqi; how to understand what 'the news' has been and is becoming
twitter North Korea did what? Dynamics of Attention, ITP newsletter
youtube What if you had a choice?, presented 2009 APSA meeting
youtube The public face of transparency, Communication section preconference APSA 2009