The rise of new media brings new media manipulation and new media exploitation. This truism should be front and center whenever politics, media and technology intersect.
The CNN-YouTube debate, which should have been called America's Best Home Political Videos, was a noteworthy turning point in the way journalists and candidates will interact -- but not for the reason many pundits have put forth.
Many writers gushed about the fact that questions for the candidates were selected from video submissions made by ordinary people. But there is nothing new about contests where the winner gets a cameo appearance on a TV show.
As is typical of user-generated content, despite all the hype about empowering citizens, the individual was utterly powerless, except to try to please and serve the interests of the gatekeeper and thereby obtain some attention. Remuneration, however, was not part of the package.
In fact, the debate essentially acknowledged that the submissions were mere props in a standard political event as it opened with a hip, ironic, media-aware question: "I'm wondering if since this is such a `revolutionary' debate, that if you as politicians can do something `revolutionary,' and that is to actually answer the questions that are posed to you tonight."
Later, one questioner asked: "I know you all are going to run around this question, dipping and dodging, so let's see how far you all can get."
CONTROVERSIAL
Whether any of the candidates could be pressed on their answer depended entirely on the debate's moderator.
But what was truly new, or at least very notable, was how cloaking the debate questions in an aura of citizen "journalism" could be used to present far more controversial content which would not otherwise be permissible under US journalistic rules.
That is, a moderator might be able to ask about gun control. But it would be a breach of decorum for a journalist to intone that some gun owners would say: "To all the candidates, tell me your position on gun control, as myself and other Americans really want to know if our babies are safe. This is my baby, purchased under the 1994 gun ban. Please tell me your views."
Yet the selection of a video of a gun owner asking that question was different. Under the unwritten rules of US journalism, it apparently counted as merely running the content of a third party -- or at least, that would be CNN's moral defense.
And as is common with data-mining, it's the central authority that ends up empowered. In a way, it's a very advanced version of the technique where if a journalist wants to put something in an article, he or she contacts a source who's certain to make that particular point.
Or, in today's environment, journalists go through blogs and forums in search of a post that could be quoted for the viewpoint.
But extending this idea to video presentations advances it to another level. Powerful visual images can be embedded in what are nominally questions.
VIDEO
In post-debate reaction, US Republicans seemed to have recognized this somewhere down in the deepest, lizard-brain core of their political body. It just might be a campaign-killing moment to justify continuing the Iraq war against a video backdrop of wounded anti-war soldiers, or to defend theocratic opposition to stem-cell research next to a display of someone suffering from an illness which might be cured. Pictures matter, and so the obvious Republican counter-move is to restrict such video-based debates only to favorable venues.
Thus, shifts in power will be met by incorporating such changes into the machinery of partisan propaganda. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with bringing different media sensibilities to political events. The talking head format is not sacred. But no matter how heavily marketers try to sell us on the idea of entertainment stardom -- even 15 seconds of clip fame -- as civic merit, we should never mistake a change in media style for any advance of citizens' power in politics.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
Since being re-elected, US President Donald Trump has consistently taken concrete action to counter China and to safeguard the interests of the US and other democratic nations. The attacks on Iran, the earlier capture of deposed of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and efforts to remove Chinese influence from the Panama Canal all demonstrate that, as tensions with Beijing intensify, Washington has adopted a hardline stance aimed at weakening its power. Iran and Venezuela are important allies and major oil suppliers of China, and the US has effectively decapitated both. The US has continuously strengthened its military presence in the Philippines. Japanese Prime
After “Operation Absolute Resolve” to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the US joined Israel on Saturday last week in launching “Operation Epic Fury” to remove Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his theocratic regime leadership team. The two blitzes are widely believed to be a prelude to US President Donald Trump changing the geopolitical landscape in the Indo-Pacific region, targeting China’s rise. In the National Security Strategic report released in December last year, the Trump administration made it clear that the US would focus on “restoring American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere,” and “competing with China economically and militarily
RSS