gnovis Journal - Issue 8.2 - Spring 2008

Less than a month from today, following the national conventions and selection of vice-presidential candidates, the 2008 US Presidential Election will finally enter its concluding stage – a two-month political & media extravaganza that will exceed any election spectacle we’ve seen before....

I explore the relationship between civic engagement and democratic practice. I suggest that the traditional model of civic engagement does not capture the distinctive engagement of many young people today and is limited in three crucial ways: an inflexible model of organizational commitment, an antiquated understanding of contemporary group membership, and the assumption that nearly all forms of engagement are equal in the sense of efficacy that they convey to participants. A new model inspired by participatory culture is necessary. A contemporary model of civic engagement, Engagement 2.0, suggests that the NDM represents a new space for political change—a space that has been overlooked by many political scientists.

Unlike generations of the past, today’s youth build relationships in communities that transcend cultural, temporal and geographical boundaries and membership in these communities provides for a civic engagement that is more connected than ever. The Millennial generation is emerging in the political forefront in the 2008 presidential election, and technology is helping engage and drive them to the polls. The 2008 cycle marks the first presidential campaign defined by new media, whereas it is both the medium and the message. Among these driving forces is the social networking website, Facebook. Facebook provides users with motivation, ability, and opportunities to become engaged, through peer-to-peer, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many communications and shifts the nature of community from geographic to interest-based, while blurring distinctions between types of mediums, such as print, visual and audio. Campaigns are similarly capitalizing on the interactive nature of Facebook by identifying the producers and consumers of information and targeting young influential supporters.

Cultural participation is seen, and has been shown to be, something of a proxy measurement for civic engagement.  Participation in the arts reinforces aspects of social cohesion and the building of community and cooperation.  In an ideal world, intercultural understanding and diversity are not far behind.  Due to the interdisciplinary focus of both terms, defining cultural participation and civil society is no easy matter. Cultural participation is key to the “good life” that civil society strives to achieve, while the twin freedoms of speech and expression are intimately tied to the foundations of a participatory democracy.  The author of this paper specifically engages with the following questions: (1) What implications does cultural participation – in terms of citizens’ active engagement in the arts in their communities – have for democracy?, and (2) How do recent and current national multimedia projects engage cultural participation, and what can we learn from them?

This article is a partial transcript of an interview with Jacqueline Klingebiel, conducted August 13, 2008. Klingebiel recently completed her M.A. thesis, “Hyperpolitics: Bringing the Public Back Into the Conversation,” examined the use of YouTube in the 2008 U.S. presidential primaries, and was published as a blog on Georgetown’s Digital Commons. The interview, in its entirety, is available on the gnovis podcast: http://www.gnovisjournal.org/podcast/hyperpolitics.

The 2008 presidential campaign has featured widespread use of new media technologies by all major candidates, who struggle to tailor their messages for an ever-changing variety of platforms, contexts, and audiences.  Using content analysis informed by linguistic theories of narrative (Schiffrin, de Fina, and Bruner) and drawing on theories of new media and politics (Davis and Owen, Bimber and Davis), this paper examines how candidates present themselves in biographies on their websites and in profiles on the social networking site Facebook. This analysis suggests that while candidate website biographies have evolved into a relatively standardized form, candidate social networking site profiles are currently in an experimental trial-and-error stage of new media adoption.

Did a candidate just “hit a home run?”  Which candidate is running as “the underdog?”  Is someone “moving the goalposts?”  In today’s media landscape, the use of sports references to describe political candidates and events is abundant.  This paper takes a look at the history of this type of horse-race journalism and its use in current political dialogues.  Through a study of primary election night transcripts and ratings, this study looks at how the networks and their viewers have been affected from enhanced use of sports references throughout their coverage.  Additionally, research conducted for this study looks at the effectiveness of utilizing those nuanced sports metaphors in political coverage over more direct and insightful campaign information.