A few interesting books if anyone is interested:

The Vanishing Voter, Thomas E Patterson

Mass Media and American Politics, Doris A. Graber

Not something "you can't put down" but interesting none the less!

The New Republican Party

Is all the hype about restructuring the Republican Party just that, hype?  Does all the talk really mean anything or did we hear these same words after the defeat in '08?  I'm not sure anything will happen, four years will pass, the Republican base will shrink even further and they'll be scratching their heads with another defeat in 2016.

Here is an article on what the Republicans are thinking post-defeat.  Not sounding like too much change is going on!

"So here is the Republican Party reinventing itself. The GOP majority in the Ohio legislature rushes to defund Planned Parenthood in its post-election session. The orange-tinted speaker of the House proposes to undo Obamacare through “oversight” in the name of “solving our debt and restoring prosperity.” Never mind that health-care reform doesn’t raise the deficit but reduces it. Or that “a new low,” 33 percent of Americans, the anti-Obama bitter-enders, still favor repealing the law (PDF). And a rising star in the GOP future, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, offers a dim view out of the pre-Darwinian past that maybe the Earth was created in seven days—and that since “theologians” disagree, we should teach “multiple theories.”

"This doesn’t sound like rethinking, or thinking at all, but like the reflex and revanchism of a party that doesn’t comprehend or simply can’t respond to the dimensions of its 2012 defeat."

It will take a lot of "Danny-types" to turn this around.

It Comes Down to Data

"Voters may not recognize just how much campaigning has evolved. The house looks the same, he said, but the plumbing's gotten extremely complicated."

Capturing what we do via the web or TV.

This is the data guy who headed up Dreamcatcher: "Rayid Ghani, the man who has been named Obama’s “chief scientist.”

I guess they listened: "Those familiar with Dreamcatcher describe it as a bet on text analytics to make sense of a whole genre of personal information that no one has ever systematically collected or put to use in politics. Obama’s targeters hope the project will allow them to make more sophisticated decisions about which voters to approach and what to say to them. “It’s not about us trying to leverage the information we have to better predict what people are doing. It’s about us being better listeners,” says a campaign official. “When a million people are talking to you at once it’s hard to listen to everything, and we need text analytics and other tools to make sense of what everyone is saying in a structured way.”

A new term, Microlistening: "St. Clair is among more than a dozen developers hired by the campaign to leverage technology to wring out more votes in what Obama’s advisers say may be an election as close as the contested 2000 race between George W. Bush and Al Gore. From Seattle startups to International Business Machines Corp., they’ve left lucrative jobs to mine for swing voters. They've added a new term to the strategic lexicon: microlistening."

“The things we did in 2008 in many ways were prehistoric by contemporary standards,” Axelrod said at a Dec. 7 Bloomberg View lunch. “There’s a lot you can do in the way of more finely targeting voters so they’re getting information that’s useful to them.”

"It comes down to data -- collecting voter information, synthesizing it and making use of it most effectively. The data comes from conversations on the ground and behavioral patterns on the website. Analysts may try to determine how to best target a voter who gives $5 to participate in a raffle to have dinner with the president versus $5 during a Republican debate."

Somebody's Watching Me

I guess it is a good thing that all we basically watch on TV is sports and politics (the boys will turn on Family Guy until I walk into the room) as it makes the job of these data mining companies easier!  Van Doren Family = Sports (Giants/Yankees) and Politics, done.

The company mentioned in Colin's article, Rentrak, has interesting results from the final debate, who watched, where...

"Rentrak's television ratings measurement service provides daily measurement of all TV networks nationally and at a granular level for TV stations in all 210 media markets nationwide. The service incorporates information from over 20 million televisions and is the only fully integrated system of detailed satellite, telco and cable TV viewing data commercially available."

They're watching us watch! It is the same as when I go to the grocery store and everything I purchase is recorded and I receive coupons in the mail for the items I buy.  When I go on Facebook the advertisements that appear are oddly enough items or brands that I have purchased in the past!  At least it is not stalking in the standard way but electronic consumer stalking, hoping I will purchase something.  In November, it was a President.  A little creepy for me. I may just throw some odd show in thereat home now and again now.  Suggestions?

Media Cover and Elections

Lots of folks are critical of media coverage of the elections. What really can be done? This has been discussed and written about for quite some time but not a lot of changes have occurred.  It seems the media coverage has just worsened.

M.R. Kerbel in 1997 stated that the way the media covers the elections constitutes a “strategic haze that drowns out coverage of issue stories and in the process cultivating views among news consumers that candidates cannot be trusted.”

Graber (1987) stated “they have complained about the heavy emphasis on horse race and hoopla, the de-emphasis of issues, and the large number of stories dwelling on the personal qualities of the candidates.”

Kerbel, Apee, & Ross (2000), Contend analyses of campaign stores carried out by political scientists found that less than a third of campaign coverage even mentions issues, compared with a large among of political strategy coverage.

Thomas E. Patterson, author of The Vanishing Voter, 2002 (skimmed and looks to be worth a read), is very critical of the press and their role in society.  He states:

The media have a powerful drive toward skepticism, a persistent need for novelty, and a weakness for personality.  These are deeply rooted and longstanding tendencies within the media that are based on their need to attract an audience and to avoid taking sides in partisan conflict.  These tendencies, however, are not the desired characteristics of an electoral intermediary.  What voters need from an intermediary is enough consistency and permanence to enable them to keep their eyes on the horizon.  What they get from the press is a version of politics that centers on incidents and interruptions (Buy, D’Angelo 18).”

Patterson is bold in his criticisms of the press and states that the problem with the modern presidential campaign lies mainly in the role assigned to the press and not with other players, such as PACS, advertising groups or political consultants.  He says that the press imposes its own values on American politics and drives a wedge between candidates and voters rather than bringing them together.  He says that political journalism violates the assumption that media coverage should be comprehensive, scrupulously fair, and politically balanced.

Journalism Models, overload!

In thinking about which journalism model will work best to make sure more political issues are covered, the topics of political redlining and data mining surfaced.  It seems that these days, especially if you are online, a growing amount of political information we see is tailor made for each of us.  Much of this comes from companies who data mine our information and then sell it.  Political redlining is the “process of restricting our future supply of political information with assumptions about our demographics and present or past opinions (Philip Howard, New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen, 132).”  Howard states that the elderly, poor, and racial minorities are the most likely victims of imposed political redlining.  He also states that that it is a campaign practice to decline to serve a community if it is not part of a sensitive electoral district or individuals who are not perceived to be sensitive to a political issue. 

An important quote from Howard is “Increasingly, an important part of our political participation occurs somewhat beyond our control, co-opted into a highly privatized and often covert market sphere where our political information is traded, channeled, and filtered, denying a forum for its direct, free, and deliberate exchange (Howard 129).”

In an article in New Model Journalism* titled Digital revolution only just begun the reviewer cites a report titled Ten Years that Shook the Media World: Big Questions and Big Trends in International Media  that reiterates what Howard says “In affluent democracies, the same trend towards a growing plurality of niche providers erodes the audience for and financing of well-researched journalism. The result is a widening of the gulf between a minority who will be more informed than ever before, and the many who will find less and less news targeted at them.”  The reviewer asks a pertinent question: “Will we have a growing inequality of information to add to the woes of our widening poverty gap?” He questions the implications all of this will have on democracy.

This article sites Strategies for Journalism to Flourish including self-publishing on a kindle, iPad app publications and instant video documentary making, but doesn’t give us anything to ensure the major issues many are concerned about will be reported.

An article from the 13th International Symposium Online Journalism titled Survival is Success: Journalistic Online Start-Ups in France, Germany, and Italy states that journalistic online start-ups are where we should be headed. Nine media organizations were looked at and of these five are operating at a loss. The article states that journalists want to practice their profession in a new environment, these groups want journalistic excellence, they want to use new tools and engage with audiences, but they need to pay their bills. It states that start ups must carve out a distinct and relevant niche to sustain the journalism “that we hope will be part of our democracies moving forward.”
This PBS report from 2009 is interesting and addresses accountability journalism, which is what we are after: “the journalism that holds everybody with power in our lives and influence in our lives accountable to the rest of us.”  Suggestions are offered.

I used a 1998 Robert McChesney article in a previous blog and think another quote from that fits here as well "“Democracy requires a media system that provides people with a wide range of opinion and analysis and debate on important issues, reflects the diversity of citizens, and promotes public accountability of the powers-that-be and the powers-that-want-to-be. In short, the media in a democracy must foster deliberation and diversity, and ensure accountability." The question is, how is this done?  McChesney proposes a strong public radio and television system.  He states " It could lead the way in providing the type of public service journalism that commercialism is now killing off. This might in turn give commercial journalists the impetus they need to pursue the hard stories they now avoid. It could have a similar effect upon our entertainment culture. A viable public TV system could support a legion of small independent filmmakers. It could do wonders for reducing the reliance of our political campaigns upon expensive commercial advertising. It is essential to ensuring the diversity and deliberation that lie at the heart of a democratic public sphere.”

I don’t have the solution and this subject seems to be a very large and involved one! I like the quote above regarding accountability journalism; I’m just not sure how we get there.

*As an FYI, New Model Journalism is an interesting site.  “New Model Journalism provides comment and analysis of the revolution sweeping the media, changing how journalism is paid for and how it is done.  With the traditional revenue model failing, the hunt is on for new models to sustain quality journalism. There’s a lot going on – new media technologies and platforms are developing fast, while enterprising individuals and communities are launching start-ups and experimenting with different forms of journalism.”  It addresses Social Media, Paywalls

 

Gay Rights, War on Drugs, Housing, all non-issues during the campaign

Gay Rights
 
As this article states, big bird, battleships and binders full of women all found their way into the debates, but gay rights, the war on drugs and housing were all left out. 
 
With same sex marriage on the ballot in four states and in the news a great deal, you'd think this would have come up in the debates.    Obama announced in June that he supported same sex marriage but failed to bring this up during the debates. Too hot a topic? Not a vote draw?
 
War on Drugs
 
In Are Obama, Romney ignoring Mexico's drug war?
"We may share a 2,000 mile border, but the view from here -- notwithstanding our trade relationship and the hunger for drugs in the U.S. that is fueling the bloodshed and flooding my country with weapons -- is that we're truly off the radar."
 
And from the Huffington Post, after two states legalized marijuana, does the US have the moral authority to lead a war on drugs? 
War On Drugs: 27 Reasons Why U.S. Doesn't Have The 'Moral Authority' To Lead It In Latin America
 
Housing
 
Where they stand:

Obama: Has introduced legislation that has helped millions of struggling homeowners, but not as many as he would have hoped. The home affordable modification programme has helped an estimated 1 million families refinance their home loans, but it's goal was to help up to 4 million.

Romney: Has criticised attempts to interfere with the housing market. Indeed his free-market approach appears to extend to giving no help to those facing repossession. "Don't try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom
 
Views:

“For Obama to score points on housing, he would have to point to clear policy victories, which is a challenge for him,” Kolko said. “Romney would have to point to fresh ideas, which is also a challenge.”

Possibly this was a non-topic because so many Americans are till in trouble?  “About 31 percent of Americans with a home loan owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth. In Florida, the largest swing state with 29 electoral votes, 44.5 percent of mortgages are underwater.”