Election lexicon

When you sit and read too many blogs and too many articles on electoral politics, you start to notice something: certain words and phrases are contagious. Each election cycle, wherever it occurs either offers up new expressions or pushes them to the forefront of the public mind. This seems to prove that human beings have a group mentality when it comes to language and tend to emulate each other. It is an interesting question about how the Internet is impacting this process. I would hypothesise the rapid communication flows and network structure of new communication technology will catalyse the spread of specific terminology.

I thought it would be fun to try and compile a list of election words and phrases over the next few months. These don't just have to be from the US, but from anywhere in the world. I'm going to start now with a few ideas, but I will try to update it with new suggestions as they occur to me. If anyone has any other ideas, do please leave them in the comments section or mail me.

Without further ado, here are some ideas to get us started.

Blue state and red state. Hard though it is to believe now, but this distinction only appeared in the 2000 election. Prior to that TV networks had mixed and matched their coverage between parties and colours. Due to the polarized electorate in 2000, and the fact that the election was contested for so long, the colours that were being used during that election cycle stuck (for examples: here, here and here). See also purple states.

Kool Aid (as in "drinking the kool aid"). This term originates from the 60s culture when the Kraft-produced soft drink was used as a way of taking acid. Generically, the phrase (which is commonly associated with Fox News's Bill O'Reilly) means anyone who believes fervently and unquestioningly in something. During the 2008 election cycle the term Kool Aid drinkers has frequently been applied to Obama supporters (for example: here, here and here).

Throw someone under a train. This is a new one on me, at least as part of the day-to-day lexicon of politics. Throwing someone under a train involves destroying the reputation of a former ally or friend for one's own political benefit. I first heard it in the immediate aftermath of Obama race speech, where some accused him of "throwing his grandmother under a train in order save his own political skin". It has now become ubiquitous, although there are some variations out there, such as "from a train" and "under a bus" (for example: here and here, and here for the variation).

Update on 2008-05-04 14:55 by Nick Anstead

Safe, legal and rare (Hillary Clinton's view on abortion). This soundbite was suggested by my colleague Chris Boerl. It was first used by Clinton in a 2005 speech to mark the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, in which she appealed for common ground to be found in the polarising abortion debate. Chris reckons it will become an important soundbite for whichever Democrat wins the nomination as it offers a way of triangulatin this key issue (Original use here, although, Chris's prediction is somewhat dented here, with an account of Obama attacking the position).

Update on 2008-05-04 15:03 by Nick Anstead

The kitchen sink. Not a new phrase, but has become politicised in recent weeks. In early March an unnamed Clinton aide used the phrase to describe the type of campaign that would now be run against Obama. It stuck, and for Obama supporters, became an attack line to use against the Clintons and to criticise what they believed were underhand campaign tactics (see: here and here).

Update on 2008-05-31 00:53 by Nick Anstead

Texas two step: No, not the dance (which according to this website requires the following: a wide belt, cowboy boots, bandannas and country-western shirts), but the way Texans select their presidential nominees. Uniquely they count the results of both a primary and a caucus, each of which allocates a proportion of the delegates. But here's where it gets interesting. I have no evidence other than one comment on this thread on Daily Kos, but it has been claimed that the "two-step" phrase is a completely new invention, concocted by the Obama campaign, in order to encourage its supporters to take part in both contests. The phrase is now certainly ubiquitous (here and here).  

Update on 2008-05-31 00:59 by Nick Anstead

Rovian: [As in to act in a Rovian manner]. A term coined by Democrats to describe things they deem to be political dirty tricks / negative campaigning. Named for George W. Bush's political adviser Karl Rove. This election cycle has seen Democrats using it to describe their own party members (examples here and here).

Update on 2008-06-12 08:45 by Nick Anstead

Putting. Fullstops. In. Everything. OK, not so much a word as a turn of phrase. I don't even know where it originates from. But it does seem to have become common in presidential politics and proliferated onto a wider range of subjects subsequently. Most obvious example that I frequently see is "Yes. We. Can", Obama's campaign slogan (example here).

Another shameless Internet rip off

A while back, I blogged on the idea that the Internet might be starting to become a dominant cultural form because other media were referencing it. However, while that example clearly fell into the category of "referencing", one I saw tonight was closer to a shameless rip off. Nonetheless, it still speaks about the influence that YouTube is having on popular culture.

So here's the amazing original - one of the most viewed videos in YouTube history. 

33 million views later, here's what the advertisers came up with.

All I can say is I hope that got paid a big wad of cash.

Update on 2008-04-29 23:07 by Nick Anstead

Here's another good example of this process at work, particularly appropriate today.

Elizabeth Edwards on the press agenda

 

The fantastic Elizabeth Edwards has just penned a great piece for the NY Times, blasting the press for it focus on the trivial (the fantastic graphic above accompanied the Times article). Edwards's argument is simple - the desire of the press to construct a simplistic narrative framework through which electoral politics can be viewed excludes really viable candidates who should be considered. The two examples she cites are Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, who could well have been serious contenders but could not get any real campaign traction. Additionally, she argues that certain candidates whose role in the race is artificially inflated because they "fit" - Rudi Giuliani being used as evidence of this. 

I suspect this story has a more personal undertone though. Although Edwards pointedly uses examples of candidates who wound up at the very lowest rung of the primary contest and made little impact, she might well also be thinking of her husband, who despite being a very serious candidate for the Presidency, lost out in the Clinton-Obama deathmatch narrative the media created very rapidly after the Iowa caucus. And it shouldn't be forgotten that Elizabeth Edwards is also returning to a previous campaign talking point about the triviality of the media discourse, which was the subject of what was (in my humble opinion) the best video of the entire campaign season. 

Who would the Simpsons vote for?

A long time ago, I remember reading an article about whether the Simpsons (who are, after all, the most typical American family imaginable... well, sort of) would vote if given the choice between George W. Bush and John Kerry. That was actually a fairly simple exercise - Marge would have been solidly for Kerry, while Homer would have gone for the incumbent. This primary season is far more complex than the 2004 general election, so I reckon it is worth asking the question again (with apologies for demonstrating far too good a knowledge of the Simpson's back catalogue): who would the Simpson's vote for?

Marge is fairly easy, I suspect. She would have to be a Hillary supporter, I reckon. Although she now doesn't work and stays at home, Marge was a bit of a second wave feminist when she was school (as I remember, she burnt her bra on one occasion and also wanted to be a female astronaut), so she would certainly feel affinity with Hillary's bid to be the first woman president. Also, despite her liberal politics, Marge is pretty religious, so she might not have been that impressed by Obama's comments about people clinging to their religion.

Now Homer is a bit more of an issue. He is the classic Nascar Dad who would probably have been for Bush in 2004. He doesn't like taxes, politicians, or liberals (and you can bet your life he watches Fox news). So would he be in McCain's column? Maybe. Homer would also be the kind of voter that the Democrats know they have to get back if they are going to win the White House back in November. And at the outset, that seemed a good bet, as an economic downturn encouraged millions of Homers towards the Democrats. But the long and divisive primary may be putting him off. Certainly Homer would need to be convinced to vote for Obama, as he is the demographic that has given the Illinois Senator most problems during the primary contest.

Just for fun, let's just assume that Bart and Lisa can vote too. Bart - the classic millennial generation child - would surely be for Obama. And even if he weren't before this weekend, Obama's Jay-Z-style brush off of Clinton would surely have sealed the deal. More than that though, although supremely confident, Bart needs a bit of hope in his life. His school is hugely underfunded, while his teachers think he is destined for a career working in Krusty Burger (and that's before we even talk about the bullies he has to put up with everyday). I think Lisa is the least predictable of all the Simpsons. She is really clever and believes the world can be made a better place. But she is also quite cynical. I suspect she might have started out supporting Clinton (like her mother, she is a bit of a feminist). The question is how she would have reacted to the campaign? Would she believe that the Clinton's had gone negative and rejected them for it? Or would she regard Obama as rhetorician lacking in substance? It could have gone either way. But if I were making a prediction as to what Lisa Simpson wanted in her heart, it would probably be this: she probably has her fingers crossed that Al Gore gets nominated at the convention.

Morning Seminar Sessions - Day Two

Here is a write-up of the events of this morning's seminar sessions...

Web 2.0 in China

There is more to Chinese Web use than traditional surveillance or game playing.

Examples of Web use in China have been violent, evident in the responses to Western and Tibetan criticism of the government’s handling of the recent protests in Tibet.

Chinese people believe that expression online should be more controlled or validated by an overarching authority. If someone doesn’t think they are an expert in a subject, they will simply not post. This is seen all over the world and is not particular to China.

The net is a place for everyone to exchange. The web is a good thing but there are people who don’t think that one should change their minds via active discussion. They believe that people’s opinions are static and should not be challenged.

Self-censorship and the Rise of Cyber-collectives

Censorship systems in China: technologies, laws, hierarchical administration. Government doesn’t need internet police as censorship is self-serving. People censor themselves in anticipation of government intervention. However, the government targets ISPs and other organisations. In this way, self-censorship is a social safety-valve.

Final Panel Sessions - 4.00 - 5.30

Agenda-setting Research: An Exploratory Study of Spanish News Websites and Mename

Users of social news site, Meneame (http://meneame.net/) used traditional news site more than non-traditional. However, it was seen that there was far greater news coverage on Meneame than that covered by the mainstream Spanish news sources such as La Vanguardia, El Pais and El Mundo.

There was a difference between news values of the viewers of Meneame and those given by mainstream journalists.

Meneame shows more transparency on how the public agenda is manifested.

Politics and Usual? The Use of Facebook in Danish Parliamentar Election Campaigning.

Social network supporters tend to be the same as offline political supporters – there is little interaction sought by voters online

There is also little integration using other digital means. These findings suggest that web 2.0 has not heavily influenced the political process in Denmark.

Politics is not only about education and voting, it is also about entertainment. Entertainment matters and this is seen in the amount of music videos etc that are being seen in current campaigns. More political parties need to think about incorporating entertainment in their political campaigns in order to gain the trust and support of the voters.

Key Note Speeches from Micah Sifry and Michael Turk

Micah Sifry – Personal Democracy Forum

The Revolution will be networked. How open source politics is emerging in America.

Open Source politics – an analogy of open source software and politics. Letting competing actors evaluate the value of your plans.

What we are seeing is a changing of the way in which people are co-creators of the political process. They are making their contributions salient be converging into networks and it is these networks which are the key.

Voter can make and disseminate messages better than political parties and traditional media actors.

How has the game changed?

There are all sorts of examples of movements on social networking sites of campaigning gaining significant numbers of voters. The million strong campaign against Hillary Clinton on Facebook, Barack Obama’s MySpace Page.

The Ron Paul campaign updates the public of donors to the site on real time – www.ronpaulgraphs.com -

There is more space online for more content and this is beginning to challenge the sound bite society created by the mainstream media. There is a counter to the sound bite society and this is the sound-blast society, where users are hungry for content – emphasised by the amount of people who are viewing campaign videos on YouTube.

Obama campaign is telling us that the value of the network is more important than a list compiled by a traditional political / power source. Clinton campaign misunderstood the network effect and focused more on compiling traditional lists.

Networks are resilient but they are not nimble – you cannot get networks to get the message of the day.

Campaigns are still not ready to devolve authority, they only want to devolve projects. This force is only going to grow but the question will be what happens to these networks when the campaign finishes? Sifry doesn’t believe that they are going away.

www.personaldemocracy.com www.techpresident.com

The Side Effect – Michael Turk

“The thought that he’ll be President is a side-effect. This campaign is about allowing people to come together to tell their life stories” – comment on the Howard Dean campaign.

The Bush campaign attempted to get its supporters to tell the story of the campaign, be messengers, to their friends and extended networks. This is because the Republican supporters are dispersed over a very large space. They wanted to remove the role of the campaign away from the traditional field organiser – the tools enabling people to vote or become supporters were released in order for people to do something with the latent energy that was being fostered. There was a concern that these tools would be abused by certain groups of people but most of the usage of tools has been constructive and the nefarious use of the net for campaigns has been limited to a few bespoke individuals.

Questions: Who owns the data being generated?

Sifry: There will become an issue of who controls the data from these networks. No-one is conscious yet of the loss of privacy that is being experienced during these campaigns.

Turk: campaigns rely on this consumer database – they map profiles of what constitutes a certain speaker. If this data were used correctly for education about the types of voter under consideration then there would be a very large turnout of voters.

Q: Is the war room model of campaigning being reinvented? Or is it dead?

Turk: campaigns realise that it is all about winning, it is not about improving the lives of the electorate. This is the reason why the war-room model is still in place today, because it is effective.

Sifry: Groups such as MoveOn are viable because they are niche organisations and delegate actionable projects that people can do on a local level. Taking advance of a small amount of people doing the heavy lifting in politics. This is an example of a super-activist group although it is not clear whether it is entirely effective.

The Obama campaign realises that the more sharing of information – such as Yes We Can video – is better in generating more support for the project.

Morning Seminar Sessions

Here's a run down of the morning seminar sessions. I'll update soon with the final keynote speech of the conference.

Power and the Blogosphere

Blogger claims that the Right will control everything on the web

The political blogosphere – 24% campaign news in the US is sourced from blogs, an increase of 13% from 2004

These figures are dominated by traditional media sources. Generally, blogs are not read by the general public. A lot of people don’t know what blogs are. It is not how many people who read blogs which is important, but who is reading them. If a blogger has an audience then they are generally politically active. In the early stages of the blog there was a distinct Conservative bias – a right wing dominance. The left did not consider blogging to have the same potential as the main stream media.

From the perspective of the US 2004 election, the netroots campaign was seen as a failure. The right wing was much more successful in mobilising people. Now in the Obama campaign we can see that the web is being more effective in mobilising the grand swathes of media. Reason for the shift in the balance of power – progressive and activist sites and blogs were built from the ground up. Conservative were built from the top down. Top tier bloggers were driven by talk radio model, they were uninterested in building up networks.

Is the right wing blogosphere dead? Progressive netroots should maintain the activist fundraising advantage for the future. 2008 election should prove more amenable to the right wing bloggers than 2006.

Political Subjectivation on Issue Publics on Facebook.

Facebook suggests that there is a kind of democratic and assimilative power structure on the platform. This is seen in the amount of wide ranging groups and issue specific discussions and organisations which proliferate on the site. However, it is also apparent that Facebook also facilitates the discussion of marginalised issues, the ones which the media would not touch. Facebook is not a neutral platform, because it offers a limited set of communicative platforms. There is no way of accessing the inner data of Facebook, you can only access the information available though your profile. The public is only actualised in the now, it does not have access to the historical discussion data and therefore the architecture on Facebook is difficult in actualising real democratic debate. If you act as a public citizen on Facebook the same blindness applies. Facebook should be understood as a node in a greater network of public activism.

Feeding Congress to the Web.

Metavid is an open archive. It is open to citizens, bloggers, mashup composers, platform developers and media producers. However it is closed to certain groups of people, for example those who speak different languages.

Metavid is open in the sense of open house – people are welcome to come have a look at the vids.

For bloggers, Metavid is open in the sense of open mic. People can comment on videos, embed the videos on their own pages,

Day Two...

Ok, here I go with day 2 coverage. I'll be liveblogging from a number of seminars and the only keynote speech today. I also have my camera with me so there'll be photos and/or videos.

Stay tuned.... 

Late night blogging on a conference night

I'm on a three line whip to be up bright and early tomorrow morning (that despite a hearty conference dinner tonight...). But after a long day listening to some great papers, I do feel the need to chill out for a bit. So I'm off to watch the latest episode of the Apprentice on the BBC's iPlayer. I've also just tried to check some blogs and get some sense of the buzz that has come from last night's debate. By the far the most comic I found was this though, which comes from a fully fledged website.