The second important concern I'd highlight is the fact that politicians must always expect to have their words used against them. If Markos or Majikthise gets involved in an in-depth discussion, and makes a remark in the context of a twenty post long dialogue, they can be reasonably sure that it will only be read by people who are actually interested in the dialogue in question. A professional politician, on the other hand, must always protect himself against quote mining by his enemies. Again, this tends to turn commentary "mostly harmless," and at any rate reduces the degree to which he or she can follow a train of thought to its conclusion in a public forum.
Finally, politicians are expected to not backtrack in plain view of the public, and so are hesitant to go out on a limb in public and to admit to error or correction in a forum where his new stance is immediately and very visibly comparable with his old stance.
Of these three, only the third point can be changed by improving our democratic culture. It would certainly be an improvement if politicians were less scared of being proven wrong on the facts, more willing to admit that there are things they do not know and more willing to accept corrections from people who do actually know. But the first two points are, as far as I can tell, an integral part of the nature of (representative) politics.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Of course if you are in "public life" you have to be more measured and keep well away from flame wars etc. Even we have to learn such lessons! Every lawyer has to learn to develop and stick to a brief. Every businessman has to try and present their business/products is the most positive possible light. In politics, your party won't thank you for repeating opposition talking points.
But ultimately, if you want people to relate to and vote for you, you have to present yourself and your views to them, and if that means taking some crap, then so be it. I see blogs as a way for plitics to connect better with their electorate, adn if they are afraid/unable ti do so, they probably shouldn't be in politics in the first place! notes from no w here
Politicians face these issues every time they speak in public and are skilled at doing so. Being a member of the Irish Government and responsible for European Affairs didn't stop Roche criticising Klaus in trenchant terms.
That is true as far as it goes, but what makes blogs and other grassroot media different from broadcast media is the possibility of a real dialogue. A courtroom spiel or a sales pitch is a monologue (or, in the case of a courtroom tactic, two or more opposing monologues).
It's not just about keeping away from flame wars, or not divulging confidential information - rules every good blogger should follow. It's about being inflexible, not circumspect.
And an interview situation is much more controlled than a blog dialogue. For one thing, there's only one interviewer - or at most two - so you don't have to repel criticism from more than a couple of directions at once. Second, it is very hard for the interviewer to point out that the person he is interviewing is simply flat out wrong on the facts, or that you are lying to his face - that's against the genre convention that the interviewer has to be "neutral."
Third, the interviewer is on the clock. A blog conversation spans hours or days and it's asynchronous, meaning that each contributor can take as much time as he needs to get his thoughts in order. So it's much harder to parry a point with a glib one-liner that leaves the other guy groping for words. But unlike LTEs, which are similarly asynchronous, the record of the conversation is readily at hand, so you can't simply pour the inconvenient parts down the memory hole.
In short, there are structural reasons that make it much more challenging to get away with giving a sales pitch (or with playing fast and loose with the facts) on a blog (or another grassroot medium) with an even moderately attentive audience than in a newspaper or TV interview, given the same audience.
But once you get people reading and commenting together, there's the potential to influence politicians in the same way that lobbyists do.
The key is voting demographics. Voters are mostly conservative and older, which is why the BNP is running its ridiculous Spitfire+Churchill campaign. They're aiming for the generation which can identify with those, and that won't mean people in their 20s and 30s.
Once that older generation is the one that remembers blogging, a decade or two from now, politics will have to become more interactive. The MSM will have faded and/or fragmented by then, so a simple one-to-many message will no longer be practical.
On the other hand... have you taken a look at a YouTube comment thread recently?
Most blogs include have a culture of their own, and dissenters can always be taken out and shot. Or banned - whichever is easier.
So scrappy free for alls aren't inevitable. You only need good enough moderation for something worthwhile to emerge.
And blogs have a very live reputation. When Kos bans someone, all of the related communities know about it. So there's a feedback feature there which makes it possible for respectable non-flame-ish blogs to coalesce and start having an effect.
All that is required is that the politician shows that he has read and taken some account of some of the main points of a conversation in a subsequent post. In fact it could be argued that the comments space if where the constituents get a chance to have their say and the politician should give them the space to say it in their own way. You can't win with a bunch of people who are just trying to prove they're smarter than you and looking for a chance to catch you out.
You just go to the next post and articulate what impact the discussion has had on your thinking. The guys who want you to endorse every line of their spiel are the guys you don't want to be dealing with directly. You have a very large and diverse constituency to represent and can't allow yourself to be rail-roaded by a few zealots - unless you happen to agree with them! notes from no w here
He's still tweeting (see here), actually does this in person, responds and jokes with his audience and frequently uses Twitter as a test group to ideas / statements / news events.
The Dutch MEP candidates are now also on Twitter, but this looks like more of a stunt. Verhagen has made consistently use of it.
Granted, Twitter is not a blog and it won't go in depth - but it is interactive with people and it's refreshingly open. I must say, Verhagen gets my credits for this.
Twitter as a form of engagement
The BNP using the web to raise nearly £400,000 (successfully, too)
An MEP candidate taking donations by SMS - which is a very, very clever move, because younger people are conditioned to vote and pay for media and content by SMS
There are other new models which new media will make possible. The MSM won't be competing because there's still this 19th century idea of The Writer or The Editor who monopolises your attention with their inherently valuable and entertaining insights and bon mots, set in the shining frame of a magnificent vehicle called a newspaper or TV show.
That idea is dying now. It's being reinvented on blogs, but it's also being fragmented and mutated elsewhere, as people are finding that they're being allowed to talk back.
Not everyone wants to be sold interactive politics as a clearly delineated experience.
But when people are already comfortable with interactive and social media of all kinds, it makes perfect sense to colonise those media with political outposts.
