Did you notice a little something extra at this year’s political conventions? I’ll give you a hint: some new players were involved, and they weren’t on the stage. Or rather, they weren’t on the stage in the room, but they often drowned out the campaigns and the parties in the much more public arena of social media. As I put it in the most recent edition of Technology Bytes,
In 2016, parties were no longer truly in control of their own conventions. The Internet took over. If early conventions were deliberative, and broadcast-era ones were a show, this year demonstrated what Party Conventions of the Third Kind, the Interactive Kind, can look like.
The people were revolting! It’s yet another example of how campaigns’ broadcast-era ability to shape the public narrative is eroding year-by-year, opening the political process to new actors…like us. How many people’s perception of the speeches was shaped by what their friends and family said on Facebook? Not to mention the outside voices that injected themselves into the media narrative…Julian Assange, anyone?
Check out the full article for more insights and examples, and let’s think ahead to conventions to come. We’re ALL potential players in the game now.
– cpd