Video: the new political battle field
Posted by Little Ms Purple at 8/16/2008 7:41 AM 
Categories: 2008 Election, Political strategies, All Posts
Categories: 2008 Election, Political strategies, All Posts
I want to take a minute to write about how I feel video has changed political warfare since I left the game back in 2000. Last cycle (2006), we saw how video brought down Senator Allen in his race with Jim Webb and this instance highlights what is happening now. Webb's campaign had a staffer follow Senator Allen around with a video camera to tape all of his campaign speeches... when Allen got a wiff of this, he made a derogatory comment in reference to the videographer and in one fell swoop, sunk his campaign. You can see the video in the link above.
I reference this instance for a couple of reasons... first, it shows that video cameras and editing equipment have come so far down in price that really anyone can play a role. Second, the decrease in costs combined with how easy (and free) distribution of such footage via the Internet has become (look at how many different videos I embed on this blog) gives these snippets legs and if it catches on, millions of views. Thirdly, the low cost and ease with which to edit different commercials for different demographics and regions of the country allows each campaign to carry on multiple fronts against their opponent at the same time.
This has also brought us what I call "piggy backing on the Main Stream Media". The McCain camp are experts at this. Basically, it is creating an ad that will get all of the "talking heads" and "pundits" debating and dissecting the ad and thus multiple free airings of the ad will occur on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC during these segments not to mention on the nightly newscasts when an ad is controversial enough. It's free airtime and, as we saw in 2004 with the Swift Boat ads, even an ad that doesn't run in many states or number of times can have a large effect. On the flip side of this coin, you have the Obama camp... they are still running negative ads against McCain but they are doing so in specfic regions of the country regaring specific issues facing that region. The Obama camp doesn't issue a press release highlighting these ads like the McCain camp because Obama and his team want to hold on to the high road. It isn't until a couple of days of these ads running do the MSM and McCain camps catch on.
Andrew Sullivan picks up on this via MSNBC's Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Domenico Montanaro.
All of this is made possible by the low costs and ease of putting videos together and then distributing them with the click of a mouse. It was MUCH easier back in the day when the 24 hour news cycle wasn't really 24 hours and when we weren't under a deluge of daily video assults. Have fun boys.
I reference this instance for a couple of reasons... first, it shows that video cameras and editing equipment have come so far down in price that really anyone can play a role. Second, the decrease in costs combined with how easy (and free) distribution of such footage via the Internet has become (look at how many different videos I embed on this blog) gives these snippets legs and if it catches on, millions of views. Thirdly, the low cost and ease with which to edit different commercials for different demographics and regions of the country allows each campaign to carry on multiple fronts against their opponent at the same time.
This has also brought us what I call "piggy backing on the Main Stream Media". The McCain camp are experts at this. Basically, it is creating an ad that will get all of the "talking heads" and "pundits" debating and dissecting the ad and thus multiple free airings of the ad will occur on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC during these segments not to mention on the nightly newscasts when an ad is controversial enough. It's free airtime and, as we saw in 2004 with the Swift Boat ads, even an ad that doesn't run in many states or number of times can have a large effect. On the flip side of this coin, you have the Obama camp... they are still running negative ads against McCain but they are doing so in specfic regions of the country regaring specific issues facing that region. The Obama camp doesn't issue a press release highlighting these ads like the McCain camp because Obama and his team want to hold on to the high road. It isn't until a couple of days of these ads running do the MSM and McCain camps catch on.
Andrew Sullivan picks up on this via MSNBC's Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Domenico Montanaro.
All of this is made possible by the low costs and ease of putting videos together and then distributing them with the click of a mouse. It was MUCH easier back in the day when the 24 hour news cycle wasn't really 24 hours and when we weren't under a deluge of daily video assults. Have fun boys.
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