The Changing Role of the American Media
The news media include newspapers, magazines, radio, television, films, recordings, books, and electronic communications, in all their forms. These means of communication have been called “the other government” and “the fourth branch of government.” The news media are a pervasive feature of American politics and generally help to define its culture. The rise of new communications technologies has made the media more influential throughout American society. The news media provide a “linking” function between politicians and government officials and the public.
The American media has evolved from political mouthpieces to large corporate holdings. There is very little regulation of the broadcast media today.
As in the past, Americans are receiving information about political campaigns through media coverage of the candidates and through television and radio advertising. Meanwhile, the Internet has begun to play an influential role.
It would be hard to overestimate the importance of mass media in the U.S. electoral process. National television networks reach 99 percent of all American homes, making contact across the entire socio- economic spectrum. Cable news stations, radio and television talk shows, newspapers, news magazines, and Internet sites all provide voters with information about the candidates. The content and emphasis of their coverage are among the most powerful factors in determining how voters perceive the candidates and the issues.
As a way of communicating more directly with voters, candidates buy television and radio advertising time. In the 2000 presidential election, the two major-party candidates spent $285 million with about 60 percent of it going to advertising. The high cost of reaching voters requires the campaigns to concentrate their ad buys in areas where they believe they have a chance of affecting undecided voters’ opinions – resulting in the residents of some media regions being bombarded with political ads and others having little exposure to them.
Blogs – A New Form of Journalism
Blogs, short for Weblogs, are frequently updated Internet journals that have become a growing Internet subculture.
While blogs have received much attention, they were actually one of the earliest publishing practices on the Internet. Blogs were relatively unknown until recently, when, with increased publicity and the availability of easy-to-use, free blog publishing tools, their use became more popular. Blogs enable Internet users to publish and connect to a worldwide audience. Today, there are an estimated two million “bloggers” globally, and that figure is growing steadily.
While blogs generally follow a similar format, they come in many varieties and subject matters including politics, technology, current events, culture, entertainment, and specific hobbies and interests. Blogs are an interactive dialog. Internet users can read a blog and then submit their own comments. Blog entries are dated, with the newest ones posted on top of the page. Most blogs are postings of thoughts, opinions, and links to related news articles, other blogs, and web sites. While the use of blogs in political campaigns, organizations, and businesses has become increasingly popular, allowing these institutions to communicate informally, the majority of blogs are published by individuals.
Although scattered blogs existed during the late 1990s, it wasn’t until 1999 that San Francisco’s Pyra Labs created the free web application blogger. Originally, the hope was that the innovation would help those collaborating on business projects to coordinate and share information on an internal web server, a kind of company bulletin board. There seems to have been little thought about the central role blogging would play in the very external media world, as young journalists, particularly those in Washington, D.C., gravitated to the form for its style, humor and pace.
Some of the Web’s best known political bloggers – Glenn Reynolds (www.instapundit.com), Joshua Micah Marshall (www.talkingpointsmemo.com), Andrew Sullivan (www.andrewsullivan.com) and Slate magazine’s Mickey Kaus (www.kausfiles.com) have become veritable journalistic powerbrokers due to their large on-line followings. A link on one of these bloggers’ sites can catapult a previously unknown web writer into fame, or notoriety, or both.
Bloggers have been compared to 19th-century pamphleteers and to the 17th-century British diarist Samuel Pepys. They’ve been slammed and sneered at by mainstream news columnists and they’ve gotten their revenge by picking their critics apart on-line. The Godfather of present-day blogging, it’s generally agreed, is the Internet gossip Matt Drudge, whose role in the Lewinsky saga resembles the role of today’s bloggers in Lott’s demise.
Blogs are best understood as a modest but helpful complement to mainstream journalism. Blogging has the following virtues: candor, a sense of humor, intellectual honesty (in the sense of confessing immediately and openly to mistakes), and an open-mindedness to different points of view (there are limits to this, of course).
But there some limitations to blogging that have also become apparent. Bloggers tend to form on-line cliques and pat one another on the back. Few of them have been able to keep up the same level of quality for long periods of time: If a thousand flowers bloom in the blogosphere, many wilt fairly quickly. And though bloggers don’t claim to be objective, their personal obsessions can still become grating. Also, while bloggers can be highly substantive and demonstrate considerable expertise – some of the best are career journalists or professors – they’re very rarely thorough. Bloggers tend to specialize in putting a deft touch on preexisting information rather than in generating completely new findings; there’s no such thing as a blogging investigative report or feature story.
All of which suggests the complementary, rather than alternative, role of blogging with respect to mainstream media. The central virtue of blogging is that in the proverbial agora, or on-line marketplace of ideas, bloggers are like Socrates on speed.
They’re constantly interrogating arguments and points of view, noting flaws, advancing more sound positions, and shifting the focus to new questions. The mainstream media are being watched more closely because of bloggers – and kept more honest – and that can’t be a bad thing.
The Use of Blogs for Campaigning in the U.S. Presidential Elections
It is fascinating to think of the new directions that blogging is taking. This once techie phenomenon became an invaluable tool in the 2004 presidential election, adding another innovative Internet component to campaign communications. The 2004 election is the first in which the Internet has played a significant role as a medium for campaigning and for raising money. Former presidential hopeful Howard Dean, governor of the small state of Vermont, used his web site to form a network of thousands of enthusiastic volunteers. Before dropping out of the race, Dean raised more money than his opponents in the Democratic primaries and received favorable media coverage for demonstrating the political power of the Internet.
The other candidates took note of Dean’s on-line success and the publicity generated by his blog, and created their own official blogs. Wesley Clark, John Edwards, and John Kerry were among those who launched official campaign blogs.
Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate in the 2004 presidential election, John Edwards’ blog (http://share.johnedwards.com/) describes itself as “a community designed to encourage supporters of Senator Edwards to communicate with one another and express their opinions about today’s important issues.” Users of the Edwards blog are encouraged to create an account that enables them to post links and rate comments, but comments may be posted without an account. The blog, started in August 2003, was more campaign-controlled and less free-spirited than the Dean blog. For example, the blog is designed more like the Edwards web site and less like a traditional blog. Also, there are no links to any unofficial Edwards blogs or web sites, but there is a section for state supporters in the official blog.
Democratic Presidential candidate in the 2004 presidential election, John Kerry began his official blog (http://blog.johnkerry.com/) in August 2003. The blog, entitled “We Will Beat Bush: Daily Updates from the Campaign Trail,” was more interactive and operated in a less controlled environment than the Edwards blog. Kerry took the Dean blog’s style and created a very interactive and user-friendly blog. The blog links to “Unofficial Kerry Sites,” including several blogs, Yahoo groups, and web sites.
While many Democratic candidates embraced blogs, republican president George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney’s reelection web site took a more cautious approach to this new communication technology. When the Bush-Cheney site was launched in August 2003, it did not feature a blog. Instead, the web site featured a newswire that allowed bloggers to place a news feed box on their web site that instantly posts news items from the Bush web site onto their blogs. On October 6, 2003, the campaign launched an official blog (http://www.georgewbush.com/blog/). The site noted on its launching posting that the blog offered “the latest news and views from outside the Washington ‘Beltway’ and from Bush-Cheney ’04.” The posting went on to say: “Each morning we will update you on the day’s top stories as well as give you a quick summary of what Bush-Cheney ’04 has planned for the day. We’ll also help you follow President Bush and Vice President Cheney. We will regularly deliver breaking news notices of when President Bush, and members of his team will appear on TV and action alerts to guide your efforts to help reelect President Bush and Vice President Cheney.”
While it is great that the Bush-Cheney campaign embraced blogging, the site was more of a newswire than a blog. For example, the blog does not allow for comments, a key element of most blogs. And while many Democratic candidates provide links on their blogs to grass-roots supporters’ sites, the Bush-Cheney blog does not. One article reviewing the Bush-Cheney’s blog noted that “[a]lthough weblogs are often used as an opportunity for writers to post interesting links and opinions, many regard the Bush-Cheney weblog as a series of tacked-together press releases made to look like a weblog.”
Additionally, many candidates’ grass-roots supporters have created their own blogs to show their support, devoting their time and energy to promoting their favorite candidate. Other blogs have popped up as commentary and opinions about the presidential candidates and there are plenty of negative blogs against presidential candidates. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has even started a blog (http://www.democrats.org/blog/) called “Kicking Ass: Daily Dispatches from the DNC.”
Thanks to the innovation of the Dean campaign, blogs are a useful political communication tool that will become a standard not only in presidential campaigns, but in state and local elections as well. But for a blog to be successful, it must provide a user-friendly, interactive atmosphere, something not all campaigns have fully embraced. Ultimately, a blog is only part of creating a true on-line community. While other candidates have joined the Dean “Blogwagon,” some of these campaigns have forgotten that a blog is only one component of a successful on-line strategy; other campaigns have not adapted the use of blogs and have failed to benefit from this new and innovative campaign communication tool.
The American Center acknowledges the following websites in compiling the essay:
http://www.campaignsonline.org/reports/blog.pdf
http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/comm/20030202edmoon02p1.asp
http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_burns_govbrief_5/0%2C7874%2C770542-%2C00.html
http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itdhr/1004/ijde/kern.htm
A Word From the Center
