I watched with a lot of sympathy and a bit of mirth on how Sarah Palin has to endure the media scrutiny on her suitability as the next Vice President of United States. The Saturday Night Live Parodies featuring Tina Fey who impersonated her like a clone, Matt Damon on YouTube questioning if she believed dinosaurs were around 4,000 years ago "I really need to know that.. because she has access to the nuclear codes", the painful interview with CBS' Katie Couric in which she reviewed she might not fully comprehend what the US$700 bil bailout was really about... Even CNN, supposedly above such naughtiness, joined in to mock and skewer her when Jack Cafferty "lost" his broadcasting cool. And the same clip was posted on Youtube and it got more than 2 million hits whithin several days.
I recalled when Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11 movie came out and saw those unflattering clips on politicians - my guts instinct was that the visual image would be horrendously damaging to President Bush's bid for his second term. When President Bush was re-elected, the media analysts were quick to pronounce that Video Clips could not Kill the Political Star. I thought I was wrong too. However, that was pre-YouTube, pre-Facebook and pre-Blog. In a movie, unless you film a sequel, there is no immediate follow up. You can't make a political movie and bring out the same arguments, reinforce your views repeatedly because it is a one-hit exposure. But with the social networking empowered Internet, you can.
You can group all your Greatest Hits (say, a really bad TV interview) on your facebook. You can link to others' greatest hits, their most watched lists and even film your own analysis and parodies with easy-to-use bluescreen technology and a video camera. You can mass mail your clips, news and links to your friends and they pass it on like a digital virus. The human info-sphere has evolved and like it or not, this is the way it will be in the years to come.
I wonder how our local politicians will fare in the New New Media world. Religious and community leaders, CEOs and top executives will not be spared. I have started a Facebook network in my own company and I am prepared that someday someone will post an unflattering story or clip about me. The easy way is to censor it and punish the staff and send one of those Dilbetish HR warning emails that everyone hates. The hard way is to make a stand on who you really are and what you truly stand for. You really can't hide. I am human and this is me - strengths, weaknesses, successes and failures, smart moves, wrong calls, exceeding expectations and disappointing limitations. Be True. And no Facebook posting and YouTube parody can ever hurt you... too badly.
Harold Fock
An example of a politician's greatest nightmare
Agreed wholeheartedly with you, Mr Harold.
The world today has entered into a virtual realm, constitued of a myriad mind-boggling online social networking media: facebook, blogs, You-tube and the like.
These newfangled devices are shaping all aspects of life from politics,education, businesses to even culture.
Leaders in all aspects of the society are trying to embrace technology, to learn to use and apply these new devices so as to be able to connect to the masses of people, especially youths who are lapping up these new modes of life completely.
It is an amazing thought that technology really grows at an astronomical rate. My personal experience in blogging exemplifies this fact. When I started to take to blogging, I was overloaded with so much information and techniques to blog (not the content, I mean learning the fundamentals and the ever-growing new features). The IT challenges to people who are not IT-savy are immense, I must say, unless they have really that committment to learn these new modes of communications.
Posted by: Tom | October 10, 2008 at 01:44 PM