Speaker Promotes ‘New Media’ Campaigns

You may not have thought much of it if you were part of a Facebook or MySpace group supporting John McCain or Barack Obama in the last election, but speaker Ari Melber – net movement correspondent for The Nation magazine – says this kind of behavior is indicative of an important new trend in political participation.

"When we talk about the new media model, we're adding, we're not displacing," Melber said. "Barack Obama still has to go on ‘The Tonight Show,' and he's still got to go on ‘60 Minutes' like he did this weekend, that's not going away right now.  But we're also talking about directly reaching the people that participate through all kinds of national networks."

Melber spoke on Tuesday night at an event called "New Media in the Obama Era," which was hosted by the College Democrats. He presented a slideshow with data about Internet usage by candidates and citizens in the last election, and argued that there was a measurable increase in civic participation – via YouTube videos and candidates soliciting questions from their supporters.  In his view, this is a new paradigm where news and the public agenda are set from the bottom up, instead of the traditional top-down approach where media conglomerates present stories to a national audience. 

"New media broadens the agenda, but rarely sets it," Melber said.  "This is an important distinction if you care about an issue that's outside the agenda, this might prove helpful."

While acknowledging that he worked for a left-leaning publication – and making the case that journalism should not be determined by profit margins – Melber was also issued criticism where he believed the new administration had stepped out of line.  For instance, he pointed out that the Obama administration ducked the question of torture policy, despite the fact that the administration had agreed to answer the most popular question from the online community in a contest. 

"Here's someone who promised transparency and is just coming into office and is saying things that are false because the question wasn't previously answered," Melber said.

After the event Melber responded to questions from the audience.  Student questions tended to focus on the disparities between Republicans and Democrats with regard to Internet mobilizing, and also on the sustainability of vibrant democratic action outside the mainstream media. 

College Democrats President Matt Cashman, FCRH '10, said they had been looking to bring speakers like Melber to campus since the last election.

"It's because of their movement, their incentives, their ideas to get out there and to engage with the public…it's an important part of what we do [as a club]," he said.
The audience response was also generally positive.

"The whole media aspect of everything was really interesting," Gray Crenshaw, FCRH '12, said. "This was my first election voting the way it's changed the scope of campaigns forever is something to really think about." 

"It was just interesting to talk about how people like us helped him [Obama] win in ways that hadn't really been possible before," Catherine McNamara, FCRH'12, said.