My experience with the blogosphere; reading blogs, writing blogs, and even acknowledging their existence, was almost embarrassing prior to taking this class. I was a firm believer in the traditional printed newspaper and only really turned to the internet when I needed immediate information that I didn't have at hand at the time. Although I was somewhat familiar with the key elite media sites, my views of other more partisan blogs was dismissive and vague, and I believed that they contained nothing significant or even truthful that I couldn't find in my beloved mainstream outlets.
Imagine my dismay, and almost shame, when I quickly discovered one of the main themes of our class this semester was that pretty much every news break, every scandal to hit the elite media stemmed from the blogosphere. Whilst several people noted that the whole 'lipstick on a pig' fiasco was the best example of a blog story breaking into the mainstream, my personal favorite was the infamous 'that one' quote from McCain during the second presidential debate. This idea was also, as many people before me have mentioned, a central hypothesis of the Shirky book Here Comes Everybody that we read this semester, which dedicates whole chapters to the theories that 'everyone is a media outlet',stating that journalism was no longer by any means exclusive to traditional journalists; and how group action can, in today's information revolution, call the elite media's attention to one person's story simply by the means of networking. Again, as others have already discussed, throughout class this semester we have learnt that this latest revolution is just one of many that have shaken up the way the media presents itself to the public and how this in turn affects the way politics are conducted. Whether it was the development in the postal service which allowed for the travelling of information faster than ever before, or the advent of television which further speeded up the news cycle and brought about drastic ways to the way politics were conducted and presented to the public, communication and information sharing methods are constantly evolving.
The one thing that is different about this revolution is that as the internet age dawns, we are also witnessing the spectacular crumbling of the 'old' media system as we know it, as newspaper circulation numbers continue to plummet and with some of the biggest names scrambling around to try and prevent further losses. Although everyone saw it coming, as Rob quoted from the Shirky blog, the elite media has been bafflingly slow in accepting what is now very quickly becoming a reality and making moves to save their businesses. If its one thing everyone could take from the results of this past election, it is that if you move with the times and adapt accordingly, you can be a success. Step forward please, soon-to-be President Obama. He and his aides ran a historic campaign, not just because of who he is and how far he has come, but in terms of their embracement of this new form of media and information spreading, Team Obama went all out. No rock was left unturned, no type of communication was left unused, from emailing lists to Youtube to t-shirts, Obama and his messages of change were everywhere, and the public couldn't get enough of him. Then, on the other end of the scale, there were those who stubbornly marched on, clinging to old ideas and refusing to acknowledge the changes going on around them, and these people end up going down along side the 'old' media. Although McCain tirelessly built his campaign around his rebellious senatorial reputation, going so far as to recruit Palin as his very own mini-me maverick (who now, quite painfully so, has been pointed to as the kiss of death for the Republican party), his unwillingness to be a part of the information revolution, even going so far as to admit he didn't know how to use a computer, proved to be one of his downfalls. As Molly put it, the McCain campaign simply didn't "get" new journalism the way Obama's did.
Another topic that has been central to both our class and the election which again although I was acutely aware of, I never really gave a lot of thought to, is bias in the media. Although it is universally accepted that blogs are biased, and often proudly so, the neutrality of the elite media was called into question several times as the race drew closer to Election Day. Both parties were involved in the accusations, with the McCain campaign claiming that the New York Times was 'in the tank' for Obama, whilst Obama's team went head to head with Fox News over the coverage of their candidate. There are many different forms of bias that can occur in the media, and one that we learnt about in class that seemed more relevant in the election than the type that the two campaigns got so worked up about was the issue of fairness. Having followed the elite media websites for over two months, a pattern that I noticed when reading many of the articles was that journalists were falling over themselves to always present both sides of every story they reported on, even when the truth was blindingly obvious. Although it could be argued that this is how journalism should be, and that it should be up to the reader to form their own opinion after they are presented with all of the information, isn't it also a journalist's responsibility to write about facts only? Both camps, McCain's in particular, got pretty ugly with the accusations made against the other, so as Rob asked, was it right for the media to cover it all as true, even though many of the claims have proven to be either false or have since disappeared from mainstream media coverage entirely. That is one issue that has been left somewhat unresolved, and it remains to be seen if and how journalistic styles will change as part of the evolution of the media.
Looking forward to the new year and of course to the beginning of Obama's time in office, I think that it is clear that the answer to the question in the title of our course 'New Media, New Politics?' is absolutely yes, and looking back on his campaign, it also seems that there couldn't be someone better for the job of leading the country through this revolution than one who has navigated himself so efficiently and successfully through it thus far, and one who's motto is change. As for the blogosphere, it seems that its time has finally come to step into the forefront of the media world.
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