Few things in politics shock me any more, but last week's events in Westminster were simply breath taking (here is a typical reaction). David Davis's decision to resign from his parliamentary seat and contest the resulting election on the issue of 42 days is one of the biggest political surprises in recent years. It is still not really clear how this is all going to pan out and whether Davis, Cameron or Brown will be the big winner (or loser) from these events.
The early stages of the contest lead to two observations. Firstly, there does seem to be a huge divide between the established wisdom of political commentators and those who comment on these events on blogs and message boards. For an example of this, look no further than Nick Robinson's newslog. Robinson broke the story of Davis's resignation and, in his original post, played up the angle of a division between the outgoing shadow Home Secretary and the leader of the opposition. Within a matter of hours, comments were appearing all over the board attacking Robinson - he was buying Labour spin, he was failing to recognise Davis's bravery, he didn't understand just how angry the electorate were over 42 days, he represented "politics as usual" (indeed the attacks were so vitriolic Robinson wrote another blog post justifying his position). A similar pattern occurred on the message board and on other blog.
There is clearly an interesting conflict going on here, but I suspect two things are happening. Firstly, we are back to the old chestnut of how unrepresentative people who comment on politics online are, if only because they disproportionately care about politics, relative to the rest of the voting population. For this reason, I suspect the commentators are ultimately right - Davis might have harmed the Conservatives long term political calculations, which are aimed at looking like a viable government in waiting and winning a majority in a general election. At the very least, it is one hell of an unnecessary risk when plan-Cameron looks to be going perfectly. But, this leads me to my second point - Davis's maverick behaviour is tapping into a genuine sense of anti-politics, which seems to reject smartly packaged, strategic calculation. And that is why it is attractive to a lot of people online.
Such feeling would seem to provide fertile for an Internet campaign, especially since Davis has said that he going to fund the election from individual donations to his cause. It was today that he launched his website... and what a missed opportunity! There is, right at the bottom, a tiny donation link (you could really miss it if you weren't looking very hard). This is what you get if you click on it:
If you would like to support David by making a donation to his campaign, you can do so by making cheques payable to:
‘Haltemprice & Howden Conservative Association Fighting Fund’
Send them to 32 Main Street, Willerby, East Yorkshire, HU10 6BU
Last Call for Program Committee Volunteers - Please reply directly to stuart.shulman@gmail.com if you are interested in joining the Program Committee.
DRAFT - Call for Papers - DRAFT
"YouTube and the 2008 Election Cycle in the United States" April xx-xx, 2009
A two-day conference jointly hosted by: The University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Political Science The Science, Technology, and Society Initiative (STS) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst The College of Social and Behavioral Sciences The Journal of Information Technology & Politics (JITP) The Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP)
Keynote Speakers Day 1: Richard Rogers, University of Amsterdam, Director, govcom.org is a Web epistemologist, an area of study where the main claim is that the Web is a knowledge culture distinct from other media. Rogers concentrates on the research opportunities that would have been improbable or impossible without the Internet. His research involves studying and building info-tools. He studies and makes use of the adjudicative or 'recommender' cultures of the Web that help to determine the reputation of information as well as organizations. The most well-known tool Rogers has developed with his colleagues is the Issue Crawler, a server-side Web crawler, co-link machine and graph visualizer.
Day 2: Noshir Contractor, Northwestern University, the Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences in the School of Engineering, School of Communication and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, USA. He is the Director of the Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) Research Group at Northwestern University. He is investigating factors that lead to the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of dynamically linked social and knowledge networks in communities. Specifically, his research team is developing and testing theories and methods of network science to map, understand and enable more effective networks in a wide variety of contexts including communities of practice in business, science and engineering communities, disaster response teams, public health networks, digital media and learning networks, and in virtual worlds, such as Second Life.
Approach We welcome both disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches rooted in political science, media studies, and communication scholarship. The JITP Editor strongly encourages new and experimental approaches involving collaboration with information and computer science scholars. Potential topics might include, but are not limited to:
- citizen initiated campaign videos, - candidates' use of YouTube, - the impact of YouTube on traditional or new media coverage of the election cycle, - the effect of YouTube on citizen interest, knowledge, engagement, or voting behavior, - political theory and YouTube in the context of the 2008 election, - new tools and metrics that support the study of the "YouTube Effect," - the use of YouTube in the classroom as a way to teach American electoral politics, or - reviews of existing scholarship about YouTube.
Paper Submissions Authors are invited to prepare a manuscript following one of the six JITP submission formats by January 10, 2009. These formats include research papers, policy viewpoints, workbench notes, review essays, book reviews, and papers on teaching innovation. The goal is to produce a special issue, or double issue, of JITP with a wide variety of approaches to the broad theme of "YouTube and the 2008 Election Cycle in the United States." Authors of accepted papers will be notified by March 1, 2008.
How to Submit Everything you need to know about how to prepare and submit a strong JITP paper is documented at http://www.jitp.net/. Papers will be put through a blind peer review process and authors will be notified about a decision by March 1, 2008.
Best Paper Prize The author or authors of the best paper will receive a single $1,000 prize.
Conference Chair Stuart Shulman
Program Committee Sam Abrams Ryan Biava Bob Boynton Andrew Chadwick Jane Fountain Jeff Guliati Matthew Hale Justin Holmes Mike Margolis Andrew McCallum Toni Pole Stephen Purpura Jeff Seifert Mack Shelley Charlie Schweik Christine Williams
It's been a while coming but I had my first interview with the International Affairs Forum, the online journal of the Center for International Relations in Washington. I was talking about my research on new Web technologies and international terrorism. Check it out and let me know what you think of it.
[I've been writing this on and off in spare moments since Saturday, so apologies if it is a bit stream of consciousness like].
Wow. After nearly a year and a half it is finally over. The most remarkable political contest I have ever seen for sure, and I would venture to argue the most amazing thing seen in American politics since at least 1968, if not more. After that, it seems quite likely the general election itself will be something of an anti-climax. But now seems a good moment to offer some provisional and very sketchy answers on how the whole thing turned out the way it did. I'm not alone in this undertaking. Today's papers were littered with pieces analysing the outcome (here, here and here for a few) and Daily Kos (here, here, here and here for some examples) has been running a symposium on just this subject.
The first thing that came into my head was what to call this post. The original version is the unbracketed title above, namely "why did Hillary lose?". I added the additional bit because it seemed a little unfair not to acknowledge Obama's achievements. But, despite all of BarackObama's manifold political achievements, it does seem more compelling to focus on Hillary Clinton, as her candidacy fits neatly into a broader story - an epic story at that - about the Clintons and the generation they are a part of. In this sense, her campaign is part of a curve in American politics that starts with the spike in birthrate in the postwar period, and continues as that generation has its political consciousness shaped by the Vietnam war and the events of 1968. 2008 might mark the last chapter in forty year journey, the end of what Obama refers to in the Audacity of Hope as "the psychodrama of the baby boomers". In the shorter term too, we only need to go back about a year and it would have been hard to find more than a handful of commentators arguing anything other than Clinton's inevitability. Undoubtedly, something did go horribly wrong for her campaign, even though Obama skilfully exploited the opportunity it presented.
So here is my, very provisional list of thoughts (and I also have to give a hat tip to my friend Jon, who I had email exchange with on this subject a few months back which has done a lot to shape my views on the question, although the decision as to which arguments to include and how to phrase - and thus their shortcomings - are entirely my own). Just before I begin though, I want to make one more point. I don't believe their was a mono-causal reason for Hillary's defeat. For that reason, I reject arguments such as that articulated by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times: "She didn’t lose because she was a woman. She didn’t lose because America isn’t ready for a woman as president. She lost because of her own — and her husband’s and Mark Penn’s — fatal missteps." I think this misses the point. Hillary's defeat and Obama's victory was a perfect storm, bought about my a multitude of factors. Change any one of them and it is possible to conceive a different result. With that in mind, here we go (ideas are sketched into headers, with other key points highlighted).
The war. I'm sure history will judge this as being hugely important to Hillary's defeat. It was, but a big caveat need to be thrown in: I'm pretty sure she still could have won with it hanging round her neck. But it had three significant impacts. Firstly, it gave Obama his opening. Because he'd opposed the war from the beginning, in contrast to any other candidates in the race, he could use this stance to justify his position in the race. Secondly, the war vote allowed older doubts about the Clintons on the more radical wing of the Democratic Party to solidify and create hardened opposition. Thirdly, and finally, many of the networks and communities which Obama was able to exploit, were created in the aftermath to the Iraq war on blogs and Democratic-supporting websites. This was especially important to Obama's fundraising success. Which leads neatly too...
The Internet. The Obama campaign got it, as did many of their supporters. If you've been following the campaign over at TechPresident this much is quite clear (as Micah Sifry suggests in his post-primary season essay on the subject). As the famous Apple / Think Different video illustrated the power of a creative commons approach to campaigning. I do think the really important thing to grasp though is the Obama campaign was in reality a hybrid. It harnessed the best bits of Howard Dean's open source mentality for sure, but in its ruthless approach to data-management it also borrowed heavily from the Bush campaign in 2004. It success was found in a combination of collective activity, open source campaigning and information management. The most obvious example of this can be seen in fundraising, which simultaneously managed to be very centralised (as anyone on the Obama email list will know - messages were posted perfectly in synch with campaign events) but also relied on a decentralised network to publicise and galvanise supporters. In many ways, the great achievement of the Obama campaign was appreciating that these two approaches to politics were not mutually exclusive.
Fundraising. I mentioned fundraising above. But really... fundraising. Obama's success (and for that matter Clinton's, at least in comparison with everyone else ever to compete in a primary other than BarackObama) was mind blowing. But two points. Firstly, it did have an impact. In 2007, Obama's money making made him look viable. Later on, it made it look possible that he might achieve the holy grail - being able to opt out of general election, as well as primary season, state funding. Secondly though, fundraising (or more specifically the power it gave Obama to buy lots and lots of TV advertising) had a pretty negligible impact. In many of the late primaries, Obama outspent Clinton 3-to-1. And it had no impact on the voting blocs and who they supported.
This was a change election. I've seen this written so many times, and I'm still not really sure what the term means - especially when John McCain is still polling somewhere north of 40 per cent. Clearly not everyone in the US thinks it is a change election. But it is also true that there is a sense - after Iraq, Katrina and economic slow down - of real Bush fatigue. A bigger and academically-grounded theme, bought out in Michael Hais and Morley Winograd's book Millennial Makeover, is the idea that the US is in the middle of one of its recurring political realignments, wherein political power shifts from one generation to another. It is this idea that brings us to the concept of post Baby boomer politics and also might explain Obama's support from younger voters. If that is the case, newness was good. Hillary ran as an incumbent. Because the electorate were not happy with the status quo, Hillary's decision to dwell on her experience and the nineties was a big mistake (not least because this raised fears of dynastic politics - Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton anyone? Although a voxpop with a young voter on this subject a few months back came up with my very favourite line of the whole election: "We're for Obama. We don't want royal families. We don't want Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton. We want Obama. He's our Robert Kennedy". Ahhh, the irony). Of course, this might have made sense in 2004. It might have even made sense if there had been no Obama. But with the fresh-faced nearly shop new Senator from Illinois in the race, it was a dreadful error. Aside from his perennially popular anti-war statement, Obama had virtually no history for people to judge him on. As a result, voters were able to project all their political desires onto him. Clinton backers might have asked "what the hell does hope actually mean?" - but failed to figure out the real problem. It could mean anything voters wanted it to, especially in the early stages the campaign when Obama was running strongly as a post-partisan candidate.
Hillary had all the disadvantages of being the establishment candidate, but not all the advantages. Despite the fact that she ran as an uber-insider, Hillary didn't actually gain all the benefits one might have expected to from this position. While she got a good lead in super-delegates early on it was far from decisive, and she got little help from the party establishment later in the race, when the likes of Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi did a lot of harm to her campaign, while remaining technically neutral. Other senior Democrats, most notably Ted Kennedy openly came out and endorsed Obama. Why did this happen? I suspect it was because, despite their political successes, the Clintons was never really true party insiders. They were certainly not liked when they came up to Washington in 1992, and despite his political recovery culminating in re-election, Bill Clinton was never able to do much to help Democrats down the ballot running for other offices. And maybe senior Democrats were wary of a return to the Clinton dramas of the nineties. The support the Clintons gained early on was largely due to their power. When that power began to ebb, then so did the support. In contrast, the fact she was seen as a Washington insider killed her.
2004, 2006 and 2008. I think one also needs to look at the circumstances of previous elections in order understand the collective decision making processes at work in the Democratic Party this time around. In 2004, they rejected Dean and instead went for the safe option of Kerry, and look where it got them. 2006 was a different story. They fought across the country and bought their opposition to the war front and centre... and won out (this lesson shows something of a capacity for partially remembering history, of course - the Democrats chose plenty of centrist candidates during that election, and they lost the most ideologically charged contest in Conneticut). But these two electoral experiences seemed to give the Democrats a taste for risk taking.
Sectional voting patterns. This really was an election in two parts. Although it seems a long, long time ago now, Obama was originally spoken of as the candidate who was going to unite people, regardless of race, gender, class or even political leanings. The first crack appeared in this edifice when Clinton won the New Hampshire primary and the Nevada caucus - in New Hampshire, women turned out to vote for her, while in Nevada it was noted that, despite support from major labour unions, Obama was not getting the support from Hispanics. This took us into a second electoral phase, were support for both sides was frozen and largely predictable. By super Tuesday, the super-voting blocs, almost evening matched in size were arranged against each other. On Obama's side, there were African Americans, upscale voters and young people. On Hillary's side there were women, traditional working class Democrats and Hispanics. And it pretty much stayed that way for the next four months (for a good and detailed account of electoral coalitions, check out this set of Real Clear Politics essays on the subject - this is part one, use the links at the top to access the other three parts). Only rarely, as occurred at Wisconsin for example, was either side able to break through. By and large, we could have guessed every primary result from Super Tuesday through to the end with what we knew about voting patterns that had occurred up to that point. It just so happened that Obama's coalition was a little bit bigger, and he was better at mobilising it (especially in caucuses) than Clinton's was. This leads me to one of the more controversal points I want to make...
Hillary didn't go negative soon enough. I'm sure many will disagree. But I think a good argument can be made that Clinton didn't go negative at Obama early enough. Lets be clear what I mean by this. I don't mean some of the more brazen nastiness that has (rightly or wrongly) been linked with the Clinton campaign (such as this or this ). I mean a more deliberate and systematic attempt to question Obama's experience and wisdom, and compare it with Clinton.
This is most famous ad of the campaign, and it does exactly that. However, it was only deployed before the Texas primary. Although it may have helped in that campaign, it wasn't enough to get Clinton to prevail overall. The reasons, I think, is that sectional voting patterns had already become really solidified. People judged the argument through the prism of already being strongly supportive of a candidate - in other words, they saw what they wanted to see: inexperienced Barack verses level headed Hillary, or an evil Clinton hatchet job. Which leaves me asking: what would have happened if this ad had been deployed before these patterns had developed? Would the 3am ad have even been as a negative ad? After all, it focuses on Hillary's skills. It was only negative in Texas because she was in a one-on-one run off with an opponent who she was trying to label inexperienced. I think the root cause of this problem was very simple - in December or January, when this ad might have made a difference, the Clinton camp were simply not taking Obama seriously enough to think about running it. If one wanted to go a bit deeper into the dark art of politics, there is also a question as to whether the Clinton people were doing their op-research well enough. Why, for example, did they not turn up the Reverend Wright clips? When these did come out, they were certainly a problem for Obama (and might still prove to be a problem for him in November). But his primary coalition was, by this time, solid enough that it barely budged in response to the flap. Had this story come out in January, things might have been very different.
Heisenberg uncertainty principle. In particular, the idea that act of observing something changes its behaviour. This worked at two levels in this campaign. Firstly, the Clinton campaign was built on established wisdom from politicians, journalists and academics (yes, I got it mindboggling wrong too). Momentum was everything. The campaign could not go on beyond Super Tuesday. It might be over in Iowa and New Hampshire if a candidate could score two clean wins. For that reason the campaign planned insufficiently for small states and contests after Super Tuesday. That would cost them during Obama long run of wins in February and March. In contrast, the Obama people didn't buy this idea. They understood it was a contest about delegates, where Clinton's momentum could be offset by racking up large wins in small states. Secondly, the observers themselves - the press - proved to be a vital constituency. It is probably going to far to say they were Obama's base (Clinton after all had some big cheerleaders in the national media), but they helped his cause a lot.
Also a shoutout for Saturday night live, who seemed to really hit the right note a few times during the course of the campaign.
The electoral system. Clinton was unlucky in one major respect. The electoral system did not help her one bit. A key element here was the order of the primaries. Had one of "her" states voted straight after Super Tuesday instead of all being six weeks later, things might have been very different. Secondly, it is hard to imagine two states that could have caused Hillary more problems by discounting themselves than Florida and Michigan. Of course there is lots of internal state politics involved, but I wonder would have happened had it been, for example, Washington State and South Carolina that had moved themselves up?
Cock ups. Bad luck on the rules cannot excuse some serious cock ups on behalf of the Clintonistas. The biggest mistake she made was an inability to handle caucuses. And the anti-established wisdom excuse holds no water here - her campaign should have known that insurgent candidates always do well in this form of competition, because they have a motivated support base. There is also (frequently verified) story of Mark Penn not understanding the rules of the California primary. In the last weeks, the Clinton campaign became fond of arguing that, under a winner takes all system, they would have won. True enough, and this contest has demonstrated some problems with a proportional system. But the Obama people factored proportionately into their strategy - they knew that winning small states big was as good or better than winning big states small.
Sexism and race. Aside from the drama of the whole contest, future historians will undoubtedly focus on an historic election which pitted the first viable African American candidate against the first viable female candidate. This had unfortunate consequences. At times there have been very unseemly conversations about whether blacks and women were historically sinned against to a greater degree and which group "deserved" the presidency first. I certainly don't want to enter into these, not least because I think it starts an argument that can't be won. But I do accept a point Peter Tatchell made last year about different forms of discrimination and prejudice. They aren't equal, either in their absolute outcomes, in their acceptability or the impact they have on our political culture. This manifested itself in a number of ways. I was pretty shocked as to how people (rightly) spoke of "Obama's historic candidacy" but neglected to mention "Hillary's historic candidacy", which, like her or hate her, it undoubtedly was. I suspect this was because people were so familiar with the former First Lady and got used to the idea that she would win the nomination last year; on that basis it didn't capture their imagination in the same way. I also think it is fair to say that people are much more touchy about race than they are about gender - racial jokes for example, have a complete red line around them, gender, not so much so. I don't think we can quantify the impact this had on the race, but it certainly changed the narrative of events. The issue of race also gave Obama one huge advantage - he could make an amazing speech on it, and gather the plaudits. Obama deserves a lot of credit for the speech and its content, but the issue of gender did not and never could afford the same opportunity to look statesman (or stateswoman) like.
There is one more interesting point to be made about race and gender. Obama's candidacy generated intellectual unity across the generations of African American supporters, ranging from old style civil rights activists such as Jesse Jackson to younger, professionals. In contrast, Clinton's candidacy cut to the heart of the division between second-wave feminists (who tended to support her) and younger post-feminists, who were more likely to go for Obama, or at least regard the Clinton candidacy as a far less important struggle. So this division was not just generational, but intellectual (as this excellent Slate piece outlines). Obama didn't have to contend with a division like this.
Human interventions. Finally, two people deserve special mention. I suspect we don't really know the impact of Bill Clinton on this election. Before hand, he was regarded as a huge asset to Hillary. Then, in South Carolina, it all went a bit wrong for him. And throughout the campaign, he intermittently caused problems. But he was also did a lot of quiet campaigning, especially in the rural parts of later states that might have proved decisive. I suspect he did damage her on occasions, but without him, she would have had to drop out sooner. And secondly, John Edwards. Obama owes him a big thank you. Whether intentionally or not, he was a huge help. Iowa might have turned out very differently without him running, and Clinton could have run Obama a lot closer. He also dropped out at just the right moment for Obama, when the latter was firmly established as the major anti-Clinton candidate and needed to coalesce his support.
A bit of fun for the weekend - and to celebrate the end of exams...
LastGraph takes your Last.fm data and turns it into beautiful posters that display your listening history over a period of your choosing. You can customise these and they're pretty effective. Highly recommended.
I have to confess, I don't think the Democrats have got hold of John McCain yet, in terms of structuring a message to beat him in the presidential contest. The narrative they are running on seems to be that McCain is Bush mark II (hence the third term and McSame slogans). In some ways, this makes sense. Obama has run as the change candidate thus far and has been very successful, so he looks a good bet if he can brand his general election opponent as the continuity candidate. It will also not cause much harm to remind everyone that his opponent is a member of the same party as the incumbent, very unpopular president. But I still don't really buy it. McCain isn't the same as Bush. He's frequently opposed the administration and has a long track record of bipartisanship in the senate (most famously on campaign finance reform). Whatever one thinks of his politics, it really is quite hard to imagine the worst excesses of the Bush administration taking place under McCain. So I just feel - and have for a while - that the Democrats aren't going down the best line on this one.
But... and it's potentially a big but... there is one thing that I think might turn out to be highly influential in the coming election, and may make the Democrats narrative much more powerful, at least if it takes hold in the popular imagination. A number of historic examples indicate how a single image can define a candidate. Rather than anything he has done in his time as a senator, maybe McCain will be defined by this picture, already quite prominent in the blogosphere.
So what's wrong here? It isn't so much the fact that Bush and McCain are embracing, but the body language of the two men. Bush looks regal, almost dismissive of his would-be successer. McCain, on the other hand seems to be pulling Bush closer, desperate to embace him. There is an odd role reversal thing going onto, with McCain, the older man, almost childlike in the way he is holding Bush. This image has everything the Democrats want to get across: Bush's arrogance and McCain's subservience. It will be interesting to see if this photo keeps reappearing over the course of the campaign.
This picture reminded me of something, and it took me a long time to figure out what. And then I remembered. A photograph that did a great deal to undermine the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War (for the full story of this photo, see here).
Update on 2008-06-10 22:33 by Nick Anstead
An excellent comment by Mark below makes an important point - the McCain photo looks very bad because of McCain's inability to raise his arms. This is due to his treatment during the time he spent as a POW in Vietnam. I wonder if that will offer him some protection from this image? Although, to be fair, it is still appearing all over the pro-Democratic web very frequently.
I haven't really looked at this systematically, although doubtless it would be an interesting exercise to do so, but an thought occurred to me today as I was perusing Hillary Clinton's campaign website. Consider these two posts. Firstly, this post comes from the 3rd June, just after Hillary had won in South Dakota. During her speech that night she said she wasn't going to make any decisions, and encouraged people to go to her website and tell her what they wanted her to do. The feedback is almost universally pro-Hillary fighting on. Furthermore, it seems to echo her electability talking point with lots of threats not to vote for Obama. I did a quick keyword search for the word "unify" and found it was used in one comment (sorry, doesn't allow for hyper-linking to individual comments, so it is at 7.30 on the 4th June) out of more than four hundred. So at that moment in time, everyone commenting on the Clinton blog was, almost to a person, following the party line. For that to have occurred, you really have to assume that there is some kind of moderation strategy in place. It is just too lop-sided.
But look at this blog post, from earlier today. In it, Clinton suspends her campaign and endorses Obama to be the next President of the US. But something has changed between now and Tuesday - there are plenty of comments that are rejecting Hillary's argument. For example (12:25, 5th June):
My heart is breaking, I know she would have been the best President this nation has ever had. I love Hillary and if she ever runs again I will be there for her. I will not support Obama, he is a radical. I will not support the DNC they are so screwed up. I will now turn my attention to John McCain and I will always be a Hillary Democrat. I love all of you and know Hillary has to do what she feels is best. God bless everyone on this web site and thank you for all your hard work, and lifting spirits when the press would knock us way down.
God bless America and all who have been hurt by the Democratic Party.
And there are plenty more like that. Additionally, it should be noted that there are some comment also saying Hillary voters should support Obama. In other words, discussion has broken out in what previously seemed a very sterile environment. I think of two reasons for this happening, one cynical, one very realist. The cynical one is that resentment in the Hillary camp means that they don't care that much about the new message and are perfectly happy to let their supporters discuss how much they dislike Obama and how they aren't going to vote for him come November. The more realistic explanation (and I suspect the true one) is that Hillary Clinton's campaign apparatus has completely collapsed - she isn't paying her staff anymore, who are probably all complete nervous wrecks anyway, after the past six months. But the odd thing is this. Out of that chaos is emerging a much more organic discussion environment, where Hillary supporters are voicing their feelings directly to each other.
When I was doing my MA a few years back, a tutor mentioned one day that Korean pro-democracy student activists looked like well-trained soldiers when they threw Molotov cocktails. I don't remember why the topic was brought up in the first place but I remember being quite surprised at learning the existence of such a reputation outside the country. After the mid-1990s, however, street protests of such kind seem to have become a thing of the past. Or at least replaced by a more pacific version. Since 2002, when there was a series of commemorations for the two teenage girls killed in a vehicle accident caused by two American soldiers, protests have invariably taken the form of candlelight vigils in Jongro Square, Central Seoul. And it was the case with the one against the beef import deal, too. Until last weekend. After 16 times of candlelight rallies in vain, frustrated protesters eventually stayed gathered until early in the morning [* according to the Korean law, you need a pre-granted permission to protest and you can't protest after the sun sets] and some of them started to march on the roadway until they all were taken to the police station. The police also announced that they intend to arrest anyone who violates the law on public assembly and demonstrations. In this context, the biggest issue in Korean cyberspace at the moment is whether the authorities' hard-handed reaction is justifiable. What makes the citizen protesters angrier is not the embedded violation of human rights by the current legal framework in general. The reason is rather that the rallies are NOT "ideologically motivated" like the authorities and the pro-government media define. I am by no means saying that it's okay to be hard-handed via-à-vis ideologically motivated activism, but the point to be made here is the mass of protesters this time, which the authorities said they would take any necessary measures to stop, is indeed composed of those who wouldn't usually be engaged in collective action like this: mums that brought their children with them, teenagers after school, young ladies in their high heels, etc. Therefore, those who have been participating in the rallies and those who sympathise with the protesters flood online discussion forums and comment boxes on news portals with the question, "Hundreds of riot police with their shields? Are we really in 2008 or in the 1980s?" On the other hand, the authorities' argument is that that what's illegal is illegal, it was the citizen protesters that turned violent first, and the police only reacted to that.
It shouldn't be my place to say which account is what exactly happened because I wasn't there, but what I dread to notice is the striking similarity between what the authorities of today say and what the military government in the 1980s said when they sent paratroopers to major cities to quell pro-democracy protests. The Gwangju Massacre in May 1980 had been officially regarded as a rebellion inspired by communist sympathisers, and it took almost a decade before it received recognition as an effort to restore democracy from military rule. The police appeal that it is not fair to compare what's happening now with what happened in the 1980s, given how things have changed. I know there has been no gun, no tear gas, etc. I don't think, however, that the comparison is meant to be a simple equating anyway. It's more about the fear of "going backwards in democracy". Can we blame someone for being shy after bitten once?
Hence, while rallying, today's protesters in Korea also live-broadcast their rallies through their mobile phones, webcams and laptops. This is not just to mobilise more people but, perhaps more importantly, to protect themselves from potential government propaganda and media distortion against them. In other words, they are making sure that the rest at their homes see that there are no pro-communists behind the protests and that no violence is initiated by the protesters.
Liberal news media like Hankyoreh, OhmyNews and MBC (above) put welcoming spotlight on this phenomenon, commenting that this is a new version of digital journalism. Sounds cool and cutting edge, but saddens me personally. One of my interviewees, who happened to have been directly exposed to the 'Gwangju Uprising', told me that he was really shocked when he moved to Seoul immediately after the incident and found that people in Seoul had no idea what'd happened in Gwangju and vaguely guessed that it was a rebellion orchestrated by pro-communists, just like the government and the pro-government media said. He added that he regretted that things would have been different if there had been for the Internet. The first model of DIY journalism, OhmyNews, was born in Korea and now a version two. What's going on is unfortunate enough, but I also find it sad that the impressive level of technological sophistication that Korean civil society is often associated with in the literature seems acquired out of necessity.
It is nice to see that, even in the age of the web, old habits die hard. In particular, the copy editors at the Guardian at still earning their money, even on Michael White's politicsblog. Apparently,
Friends report seeing David Miliband here at the very wet Hay Festival. He was spotted in the audience for Gene Robinson, the openly-Christian American bishop, and for ex-President Jimmy Carter, at 83, twice his age, who apparently told him he was too young to be foreign secretary. Thanks Jimmy.
OK, we all know this, but still every time I encounter it, it just blows me a way.
I stumbled on a random fact the other day about the time people spend shopping. Apparently the Norwegians spend the least, Canadians spend the most. I mentioned my new and very exciting fact to Stephanie Carvin, a lecturer in the Department here who happens to be Canadian. Stephanie's explanation for it (aside from the fact that Canadians just like shopping...) was that Canada is jammed full of huge malls and that these aren't only commercial centres, but act as community resources, where people meet, socialise, and access services. That seemed pretty plausible, although we had no idea how many shopping malls there were in Norway.
So I'm back at my desk and curiosity takes over. I open up firefox and type "shopping malls in Canada" into Google. First hit is this article in Wikipedia. A couple of clicks later (via this page), I get to this list, of shopping malls in Norway. There are about fifty shopping malls in the whole of Norway, and lots, lots more in Canada (sorry - there are actually far too many to count). I reckon, even on a per head basis, Stephanie is right. Additionally, the Canadian centres are a lot bigger, while the largest Norwegian shopping centre only has hundred fifty shops in it.
But here's the point. I could have been in any research library in the world, and I don't think there is anyway I could have located that piece of information as quickly. In fact, it seems fairly likely I would never have been able to find it in that form, laid out perfectly for addressing my specific query.
The amazing thing though is that the list I found hadn't been created by a single individual who chose to sit down and compile it. Nor was it put together with an express single purpose in mind. Instead, it was manufactured by hundreds, perhaps thousands of atomised individuals, all with their singular motivations and interests. But these micro-level actions led to a macro-outcome: creating a resource that previously would not have existed. The remarkable thing then is not just ease or the speed with which we can now access information, but also the ability of web 2.0 environments to extract inputs from multiple sources, and remodel and reorganise them again and again, to make that information more and more useful. That is unprecedented.
