Politicians Battle For Narrative Control On The Web

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.

During the last SES, we discussed the importance of 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.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBJkAswCqek

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 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 McCain has his own channel returning fire about pigs and lipstick. YouTubers themselves upload videos of McCain appearing to be very anybody
Palin’s Wikipedia page became a raging battleground as soon the announcement came down. The initial pre-announcement narrative crafted there turned out to be a bit of a mistake; things certainly looked phony and biased until the community corrected it. The point is only damage control really works on user-generated media sites like Wikipedia. The Palin camp editing the page should have made sure it was objective and then should have been stationed there to correct inaccurate edits. That’s narrative control, not embellishment.  

Digging Out Of Digg.com

One thing’s for certain, both campaigns know the importance of citizen media and are making an effort to reach out to it. As an unfortunate result, though, just like in the outside world, truth is replaced with whose story best resonates, or which storyteller holds the most clout in a given community. On YouTube, both sides seem pretty well evenly maligned or praised. Not so much on Digg.com, where searching for any candidate’s name overwhelmingly brings back positive or neutral narratives for McCain and buying Digg support), it would be wise to devote a staffer to Digg and sites like it, to help push up positive news, and bolster the company narrative.

Rebuilding In The Twitter Aftermath

Twitter appears to be another battleground area. The lipstick on a pig controversy was rocketed to the top of the Trending topics list, competing with that little matter in Switzerland that could have ended us all (small price to pay for awesome science, don’t ya think?). Tweets are evenly mixed in general, despite the controversy: