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 Thursday, September 11, 2008
There was a time, if your only source of information was the Internet, when it seemed Ron Paul was a shoe-in for the Republican nominee. Internet reality is not always true reality—then again, what's reality matter in politics? What really matters is narrative, and in that sense, the Internet is a mirror of the brick-and-mortar world, and there are lessons in political campaigns for businesses about controlling your online story.
Editor's Note: Likely, there are multiple versions of your company's "official" narrative floating around. With traditional media, that narrative was easier to control, but new media is a free-for-all where truth and untruth are flung in equal measure. What advice do you have for controlling your story online? Let us know in the comments.
During the last SES, we discussed the importance of a corporate narrative—the importance of narrative in general, too, which has spanned millennia. We've come a long way in how we store those narratives, from stone to paper to 20th Century media, and now the Internet is where we keep them. The battle for control of the narrative is no more currently raging or in flux than with the US Presidential race. In a perfect world, even a virtual word, the truer narrative wins.
But this is not a perfect world, virtual or otherwise. Just like in the outside world, the Internet holds endless ways to look at reality and endless ways to access it. Lots of people likely start with Google. Others go to YouTube. There's also Digg, Twitter, and Wikipedia. For every MoveOn, there's a RightWeb, for every day there's a night, for every witch a saint, for every liberal media a corporate media, for every pit bull. . . a pig.
The Last Word On YouTube
Today's narrative revision comes from the McCain-Palin campaign, interpreting rival Sen. Barack Obama's comment about putting lipstick on a pig as a direct, derogatory reference to Gov. Palin's lipstick on a pit bull comment. Watch the video.
This was a narrative conservatives jumped on, and indeed on YouTube you can find in the related videos section interpretations that are, well, more of the same. It's not so hard to find Obama's own commentary on his commentary, or Republican Mike Huckabee's plea that people cut Obama some slack, and that that was an old saying in politics bordering on rhetorical tradition, utilized by even Dick Cheney and yes, John McCain.
What did Obama really mean by that? Good luck in finding two people to agree on that one. We're not answering that question here, either. We're examining the power of the Web for message reinforcement and narrative reach. Out there in the so-called real world there seems only to be two hegemonies pushing one narrative or the other—either the liberal media is giving Obama a free ride or the corporate media isn't posing actual issue-based challenges to Palin's record or McCain's numerous reversals of position.
Again, good luck in finding two people who agree on those points. YouTube isn't much different in that respect. You'll find the same dichotomy, the same two versions of the narrative. This is why Obama has his own channel, blasting McCain's campaign for lying about their maverick story, and McCain has his own channel returning fire about pigs and lipstick. YouTubers themselves upload videos of McCain appearing to be very interested in Palin's chest while soldiers provide impassioned pleas on McCain's behalf. And somewhere outside of the dichotomy are the satirists, who aren't cutting anybody any slack whatsoever. Ironically, it may be there you find a distorted version of the truth that is paradoxically closer.
About the Author:
Jason Lee Miller is a WebProNews editor and writer covering business and technology. | |
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