Somehow I missed this, but the LA Times’ Mark Z. Barabak did a piece a few days ago on the rise of the Internet in politics. The article starts out with Donnie Fowler, a veteran Democratic strategist who has started a new company, Cherry Tree Mobile Media, to promote mobile communications in political campaigns.
To Fowler, a veteran Democratic strategist, the next big thing is the small screen on the cellphone in your purse or pocket. In just a few years, he said, the tiny device will allow you to access the Internet in all its vastness, as though you were seated in front of a computer.
Although the piece is ostensibly about the rise of podcasting in politics, it really focuses on the wide array of Internet-related tools that candidates use.
In the latest creative wrinkle, politicians are podcasting — White House hopefuls Gen. Wesley K. Clark, John Edwards and Sen. Bill Frist are among those regularly offering their downloadable ruminations — and turning up on Flickr, MySpace, YouTube and other photo- and video-sharing Internet sites.
It’s still early days when it comes to web-based politicking and as much as the 2004 presidential election was affected by bloggers and the Internet, the 2008 race could take campaigning to a whole new level.
Come 2008, who knows? Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona wowed political savants in 2000 by raising $7.5 million on the Internet for his White House bid. Four years later, Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts raised $82 million online for his presidential run. “We’re still only at 10 o’clock in the morning on the first day of the revolution,” said Phil Noble, one of cyberspace’s political pioneers. “Pay real close attention, because tomorrow it’s all going to change again.”
(Hat tip to the463 blog.)
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 1:38 PM | Print | Comments (1)
The international blogosphere has been up in arms this past week because the Indian government blocked for a period of time all personal blogs. The government said it was a technological error — it had intended to block only a few blogs with “impertinent pages” containing “extremely derogatory references to Islam.”
The blog sites in question, including blogspot and typepad, are apparently back up.
It really does seem as if a technological error occurred. The government issued a statement shortly following the blockade blaming the ISPs for the black-out.
“Because of a technological error, the Internet providers went beyond what was expected of them which in turn resulted in the unfortunate blocking of all blogs,” the official said.
While the seeming snafu has been rectified, it has spawned a lot of anger toward the government and at least one web-based watch-dog group, Bloggers Against Censorship, has been formed. The group says its effort “is aimed at nothing less than ensuring the Government will never again do something like this.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:01 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The New York Times’ John Clark has this interesting trend piece today on how Hollywood is taking its cue from the Internet, both in terms of finding new talent in the fresh crop of innovative vcasters and listening to web audiences for script suggestions.
One online filmmaker, producer of the viral video MySpace: The Movie, David Lehre, became a hot Hollywood target when his 11-minute movie turned into an Internet phenonmenon. Hollywood has a lot to fear from web-based entertainment.
Some people say that the film industry has more to fear than just being late to the party. If the Net begins spawning films - and not simply helping to market or deliver them, as has happened to date - studios’ grip on the business of putting pictures on screens may be challenged.
“Their nightmare is a direct feed from moviemaker to audience,” said Walter Kirn, a frequent contributor to The New York Times who has been serializing his novel “The Unbinding” on www.slate.com and saw one of his other novels, “Thumbsucker,” adapted to the big screen. “Their only trump cards are that they are pools of capital for making expensive things. Otherwise they are cut out of the action.”
Not only are the studios signing up web film makers to deals, but they’re also, at least in the case of “Snakes on a Plane,” which has become a cultural phenomenon based on its web previews, rewritten scripts based on Internet feedback.
Yet Web users have already shown that they can bend a movie to their tastes. The most obvious instance has been New Line Cinema’s coming film “Snakes on a Plane,” which was the subject of endless Internet interest, mostly spoofing the title and its self-evident premise. New Line decided to play to this audience by incorporating some of its ideas, requiring a week of reshoots and a change in ratings from PG-13 to R.
It’s not clear if Hollywood can harness all this creative energy, however. Moreover, it’s not clear that web-based videos will really siphon away some of the studios’ lucre.
Yet Mr. Kirn insisted that the medium would leave a deep imprint on any entertainment that it generates. “The Net is a self-consciously anti-authoritarian audience,” he said. “They are spit-ballers, defacers, vandals, skeptics. It’s a class without a teacher. The movies that will succeed on it will have those properties.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:58 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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