(Examples of personal data given: email address; password; gender; age [as I recall]; example action groups: local; Jewish; young.)
Want to enjoy the Obama battle bus to Ohio from New York? Why not? It would be fun.
You can now telephone folks in Philadelphia and Ohio.
Read the script, first, of course.
Second, elicit their electoral preferences to work out what you say to them; try and improv a little to give it a measure of reality.
Third, build support for the Obama movement so it becomes unstoppable.
Read the script, first, of course.
Second, elicit their electoral preferences to work out what you say to them; try and improv a little to give it a measure of reality.
Third, build support for the Obama movement so it becomes unstoppable.
Totally unreal.
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I tried this calling method on the night before election night. You dial the number on the screen, with a name attached. All four calls got no response - not unexpectedly, since receiving a random call on the night before elections is likely to mean an election call.
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I tried this calling method on the night before election night. You dial the number on the screen, with a name attached. All four calls got no response - not unexpectedly, since receiving a random call on the night before elections is likely to mean an election call.
Even such superficial impressions made me realise that Obama's campaign was an extraordinarily slick operation. It utilized the latest in digital technology and data-mining to mobilize the vote. Now UK politicians are clamoring to repeat the trick.
The language of US elections is highly militaristic (campaign; mobilize; fighting an election), and for good reason. Politics arouses a lot of violent opinion, especially in the States. The election is a situation that invites people to pick sides; to swear allegiance to their leader and party; to battle with their friends, family and acquaintances for recognition of the party as representative of their values; and then to take action and vote.
Through utilizing military rhetoric, people are strongly engaged and personally connected to their campaign. (And the election wasn't the end of it because I've received emails since then, eliciting my support for Obama's actions.)
It reminded me of the computer games I used to play as a teenager. Except this time, the information and the overarching narrative of election conquest played out in real time and real human lives. Peculiarly, Obama delivered videos directly into my inbox, just like the instructions you received in (video game) Red Alert.
Despite the artificiality of my connection to Obama, the videos generated a sense of personal immediacy and directness that was unusual in our media-driven age. It also reminded me of TV speeches of Neville Chamberlain we watched in the Appeasement module of A-level history. As of yet, the internet has not been tarred by the same sense of inauthenticity, and mediation by video channel, that prevents directness on TV.
But looking at other sources of my political awareness - the newspapers I read; the newsfeed I got on facebook; the channels I watched; all the sources were designed to reinforce my opinion that Obama was a good choice. Divisions in the US would suggest that exactly the same belief-reinforcing effect was happening to Republicans. They may not have been as likely to be tech-savvy as Obama's supporters (generally younger and in better connected areas such as the two coasts), but Romney was surely playing the same tactics.
Looking back at the now infamous '47%' speech, it's clear that people were being fed completely different angles on it. Republicans got the 'victim psychology' lecture - without always realising this rested upon a false dichotomy (i.e. that people always think of themselves as victims or as achievers; whereas surely we think of ourselves as both at different times, and neither much of the time too). Democrats got the 'elite' Romney lecture, which was also a less-than-rounded characterisation of him. (In fact, Obama's campaign spent a huge amount tarring Romney as a candidate, which is pretty dirty as a tactic.)
There were massive differences in the information given by each side. The intent was to mobilize core supporters with a one-sided wall of information. This information divides the people into two warring sides. One could make a case for calling it 'information wars in the digital age.'
It's not entirely new - Orwell certainly wrote about it in 1984; and this thread of information distortion is a subject that surely goes back to the classical era; in works such as Utopia and Richard III, humanists such as Thomas More recovered the distorting effect of eloquence noted by ancient writers such as Tacitus. For example, Utopia captures the paradoxical quality of information distortion that occurs when any powerful entity tries to create an idealised image of itself in order to win over and mollify its subjects and proximate populace.*
However, the difference today is the quality of virtual interactivity made possible by modern technology. It creates greater opportunities for each of us to be remote agents, rather than full-body participants, in these 'information wars'.
I wonder what happens when this behaviour moves outside the military and political sphere. Surely, subject to regulation, this is already occurring in the world of commerce. At my last job at Little Pim, I was certainly aware of digital strategy, and ways of winning over potential buyers in order to sell our product. And as a start-up, we were far from the cutting edge of this desire to encourage other internet agents to actively promote our product.
Will there be information wars between rival companies in the future? Is this already happening? What kind of distortions will that create?
My feeling is that regulation will keep commercial information control from becoming dangerously distorting (in the way that politics can be), but my current knowledge is insufficient for a conclusive answer.
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[*At many universities, people interpret Utopia as a depiction of an ideal society, where the semi-communist state intervenes to minimise people's working hours and prevent disorder in order to create social harmony. However, readings since the mid-80s have noticed that this coincides with chilling details of repression that exist within the text, suggesting that really this idealisation is a way of blinding people to the regime's flaws.
Example: "THEY do not make slaves of prisoners of war, except those that are taken in battle; nor of the sons of their slaves, nor of those of other nations: the slaves among them are only such as are condemned to that state of life for the commission of some crime, or, which is more common, such as their merchants find condemned to die in those parts to which they trade, whom they sometimes redeem at low rates; and in other places have them for nothing."]
It reminded me of the computer games I used to play as a teenager. Except this time, the information and the overarching narrative of election conquest played out in real time and real human lives. Peculiarly, Obama delivered videos directly into my inbox, just like the instructions you received in (video game) Red Alert.
Despite the artificiality of my connection to Obama, the videos generated a sense of personal immediacy and directness that was unusual in our media-driven age. It also reminded me of TV speeches of Neville Chamberlain we watched in the Appeasement module of A-level history. As of yet, the internet has not been tarred by the same sense of inauthenticity, and mediation by video channel, that prevents directness on TV.
But looking at other sources of my political awareness - the newspapers I read; the newsfeed I got on facebook; the channels I watched; all the sources were designed to reinforce my opinion that Obama was a good choice. Divisions in the US would suggest that exactly the same belief-reinforcing effect was happening to Republicans. They may not have been as likely to be tech-savvy as Obama's supporters (generally younger and in better connected areas such as the two coasts), but Romney was surely playing the same tactics.
Looking back at the now infamous '47%' speech, it's clear that people were being fed completely different angles on it. Republicans got the 'victim psychology' lecture - without always realising this rested upon a false dichotomy (i.e. that people always think of themselves as victims or as achievers; whereas surely we think of ourselves as both at different times, and neither much of the time too). Democrats got the 'elite' Romney lecture, which was also a less-than-rounded characterisation of him. (In fact, Obama's campaign spent a huge amount tarring Romney as a candidate, which is pretty dirty as a tactic.)
There were massive differences in the information given by each side. The intent was to mobilize core supporters with a one-sided wall of information. This information divides the people into two warring sides. One could make a case for calling it 'information wars in the digital age.'
It's not entirely new - Orwell certainly wrote about it in 1984; and this thread of information distortion is a subject that surely goes back to the classical era; in works such as Utopia and Richard III, humanists such as Thomas More recovered the distorting effect of eloquence noted by ancient writers such as Tacitus. For example, Utopia captures the paradoxical quality of information distortion that occurs when any powerful entity tries to create an idealised image of itself in order to win over and mollify its subjects and proximate populace.*
However, the difference today is the quality of virtual interactivity made possible by modern technology. It creates greater opportunities for each of us to be remote agents, rather than full-body participants, in these 'information wars'.
I wonder what happens when this behaviour moves outside the military and political sphere. Surely, subject to regulation, this is already occurring in the world of commerce. At my last job at Little Pim, I was certainly aware of digital strategy, and ways of winning over potential buyers in order to sell our product. And as a start-up, we were far from the cutting edge of this desire to encourage other internet agents to actively promote our product.
Will there be information wars between rival companies in the future? Is this already happening? What kind of distortions will that create?
My feeling is that regulation will keep commercial information control from becoming dangerously distorting (in the way that politics can be), but my current knowledge is insufficient for a conclusive answer.
- - - - - - -
[*At many universities, people interpret Utopia as a depiction of an ideal society, where the semi-communist state intervenes to minimise people's working hours and prevent disorder in order to create social harmony. However, readings since the mid-80s have noticed that this coincides with chilling details of repression that exist within the text, suggesting that really this idealisation is a way of blinding people to the regime's flaws.
Example: "THEY do not make slaves of prisoners of war, except those that are taken in battle; nor of the sons of their slaves, nor of those of other nations: the slaves among them are only such as are condemned to that state of life for the commission of some crime, or, which is more common, such as their merchants find condemned to die in those parts to which they trade, whom they sometimes redeem at low rates; and in other places have them for nothing."]
