Coronel warned two-faced politicians, “No matter how much money you have, how much organization, no matter how much technology you have, if you don't have this sincerity, you wouldn't have won either.”
That´s right!
2010 voters should be critical, creative new media consumers
Maria Althea Teves, abs-cbnNEWS.com/ Newsbreak | 08/27/2009 11:47 AM
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Pinoys should take note of lessons from the Obama presidential campaign and the Iran protests when using new media in the 2010 elections.
This was the message veteran journalist and co-founder of Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism Sheila Coronel at a lecture organized by the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, August 26.
New media is changing the way the world does journalism, Coronel pointed out. “It is also changing who produces journalism, who consumes it.”
Gone were the days when journalism was the exclusive arena of journalists. Nowadays, she said, everybody is a journalist. “It is as simple putting up your blog and disseminating information.”
But despite its many wonders, technology, Coronel said, “does not solve our problems. It should be the people.”
It is an organizing tool, she said, to mobilize people into political activism—just like what happened in the Obama campaign. But it also has its pitfalls, such as the hard lessons learned by Iranian activists who used Twitter to organize protests against the outcome of the June 12, 2009 elections.
The Obama template
Those who volunteered to help in Obama’s campaign were able to inspire more followers because they narrated how they were drawn into supporting him, Coronel explained.
Obama also touched a lot of Americans because of his personalized e-mails, she added. It included the name of the recipient as well as a closing remark with his name signed.
“Could you imagine?” receiving personalized email from Barrack Obama, she asked the audience.
US President’s win could be partially associated to his exposure in new media even though he was considered an underdog. “Obama out-texted, out-emailed, out-youtubed, out-flickered, out-facebooked every candidate in the US,” she said.
She said she would not be surprised if politicians running for the 2010 elections would follow Obama’s new-media template as it proved to be successful.
Hard lessons from Iran
In contrast to the way the Obama supporters deftly navigated the world of new media, the Iranians, on the other hand, were using the Internet for the first time to promote activism, Coronel said. “So they were making a lot of mistakes.”
The first pitfall of the online-activists of Iran was using social networking site Twitter to promote protests, Coronel said.
“Twitter is not particularly helpful for planning a revolution,” she said. It was through Twitter that the Iran government was able to track down street protests.
Because it was the first time for Iranians to use Internet as a mobilization tool, a lot of amateur, online-activists spontaneously posted rally venues through Twitter.
“Authorities could be reading those messages as well,” she laughed.
Aside from exposing street protest plans to the government via Twitter, “naïve activists used Twitter to threaten cyber-attacks on government Web sites,” she said. Coronel added that this was used by government as an excuse to crack down on Internet use.
“Everybody gets the same Twitter feeds,” she said, and the government is no exception.
She said that another mistake was publicizing proxy servers. Proxy servers are ways to go around Internet censorship.
“Activists said, ‘log in to those proxy servers’,” she said. Because of this, even the proxy servers were banned by the government.
She said that the government also used the Internet for disinformation and propaganda. “They try to both manipulate and restrict the Internet (content),” Coronel warned.
Through the mistakes made by Iran’s activists, we could see that the “government can counteract power (of the people) through censorship,” she said.
And because there are no editors in networking sites and blogs to ask the writer to verify information before publishing, rumor and false information can spread quickly.
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Consuming messages intelligently
Although the Internet is a powerful tool for rousing political activism, readers should also be wary of contents of blogs.
Unedited messages are not only seen online, worse is that politicians have been very good in manipulating messages and images to their advantage so “we have to consume messages much more intelligently,” Coronel said.
How the politicians present themselves and who they say they are may not necessarily be completely true, she cautioned.
Image and message consumers should ask: “Who created the message? What is the purpose of the message?” The whole point, she pointed out, is “to fool you into voting for them.”
More importantly, a voter should ask: “What techniques were used to get audience attention?”
In America, the Washing Post assessed political ads to find out what images were used to attract a viewer. Coronel said that the “movie star technique” proved to be an effective means to lure viewers in the Philippines and in the US.
We have to be wary of the images politicians present to people because “characters, framing of shots and music are all factors to fooling you into voting for them,” she said.
Viewers must also be diligent in checking the statements proclaimed by politicians. “What facts were omitted?” is the question you have to ask yourself, she said this will guide you to verify how truthful politicians are.
She used as an example the Politifact website, which checks and gives scores to statements politicians make. The higher the percentage, the more honest the statement is.
If a politician says “I am poor, you have to check whether that official gets money from the government,” she said.
New media vs. spin
“The advantages of money and spin and manufactured images and messages could be balanced out by citizens, on their own, using media and technology to educate voters and mobilize voters,” she said.
Although in the Philippines, broadcast media is still “king” with 95% penetration in the Philippines, the middle class and youth who use new media will be influential in election discourse.
She cited how broadcast giants ABS-CBN and GMA have been tapping citizen journalists through new media.
New media such as social networking sites, which are widely used by the young, urban, well-educated, middle-class Filipino trend-setters, could be used as an alternative space to promote advocacy.
SMS messaging, she said, would be key tools for information-sharing and mobilizing. “Not only will voters benefit from this, but also those running.”
A P180,000 ad in newspapers and television could be translated to 180,000 messages of politicians sent to different people. E-mailing is an even cheaper way of spread advocacies.
But sincerity in the message delivered is the key to capturing voters’ hearts. “The message that you deliver, people are able to see through insincerity,” she said.
Coronel warned two-faced politicians, “No matter how much money you have, how much organization, no matter how much technology you have, if you don't have this sincerity, you wouldn't have won either.”
That´s right!
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