iPlot

Social Media on Election Day

We’re only a few hours away from the US presidential election. There is arguably no other event in modern world history that would deserve more real-time attention. And there is no comparable democratic mass event that would justify more social media coverage. Power to the people!

BlogHerald has put together a great list with The Best Blogs and Social Media Resources on Election Day, many of them micro-blogging services. Micro-bloggers will be what bloggers were in 2004 – the early-birds-catching-the-worm-and-writing-about-it-in-real-time opinion-makers. Funny enough, editorialized blog outlets such as Daily Kos count as traditional media this time, while openly social micro-blogs will dominate the online live coverage and will certainly not miss a beat. Or at least it will be interesting to see if they supersede expert commentary or if they’ll be a vibrant complement, the heart to the brain, so to speak.

Twitter, the most popular micro-blogging service, has launched an official Twitter election stream. Silicon Alley Insider doesn’t find it all too helpful, but still considers it to be valuable background noise: “Scores of TV reporters will be dipping into the real-time Twitter Election stream.” A more practical service might be the Twitter Vote Report, provided by the technology-meets-politics gurus at TechPresident. Users can submit tweets from their cell phones on Election Day and inform other voters about the conditions at polling locations. There is also an iPhone app which lets you rate your voting experience and add an audio report.

The Long Tail has arrived in politics, and on Election Day it will wag the dog.

Palin Speaks with President Sarkozy

This is real (at least the Palin part)

What Do Germans Think of Joe the Plumber?

If Joe Wurzelbacher had already become famous two weeks ago, I’m sure this would have been among the questions I faced when I was recently interviewed by two German-speaking media outlets (the German public radio station WDR and Austria’s daily Der Standard) for their respective stories capturing an ex-pat German’s perspective on the US presidential campaign.

It is widely known that Europeans find US politics half amusing, half alarming. Germans, in particular, not in the least because of their history, mock the need for spectacle and find the “framing” of the political discussion to the expense of a near-total absence of substance rather concerning: how an ordinary plumber from Ohio could receive so much prime airtime and become the last straw in a candidate’s failed campaign, will therefore leave most of them dazzled. Let alone “drill, baby, drill” and Sarah Palin.

At the same, Germans are completely in awe of Obama, and even the notoriously cynical SPIEGEL was inspired to suggest more “excitement in German politics” after the senator’s speech in front of 200,000 Berliners. Germans are also fascinated with grassroots politics and field campaigning to the extent that they are important in the US. No German political party would ever allow more or less unvetted volunteers to make phone calls under their name. There is no “phone banking” in Germany. There is also no real-time focus group barometer during TV debates that spikes when either of the candidates utters the word “tax cut.” And there are no “fact checkers” who check the accuracy of each campaign’s allegations (but remain unchecked themselves, as the Economist pointedly remarks).

While the political culture gap seems to be widening, citizens on both sides of the Atlantic share similar economic woes. The initial Schadenfreude about the implosion of US greed has given way to deep concern about the domestic reverberations of the financial crisis. As Newsweek countered, Germans are sitting in “Glashaeuser” and shouldn’t throw stones. The German government just slashed its growth forecast for 2009 to 0.2 per cent. Klaus, the plumber, might lose his job under these dire circumstances and is probably equally concerned about tax hikes as Joe (although he may have reason to, and Joe, as we know, does not actually under a President Obama). But style and tone are different. If Klaus had said on German TV that he was not willing to apologize anymore for his country and was also in favor of closing all borders, this would have caused a scandal of national proportions. In the US, it was just seen as yet another piece of main street lore, an unexpected narrative of a campaign rich with narratives.

The Choice

If you have spent the last year on an island without TV, radio, and Internet; if you have therefore missed the primaries for the US presidential election, the parties' conventions, the ads, the debates, the scandals, the gaffes, a governor from Alaska, and Saturday Night Live comedy; if you don't know anything about this historic election, the candidates and their campaigns, then there is only one article you have to read: it is the New Yorker's endorsement of Barack Obama as next president of the United States. Read "The Choice" (and why you don't really have one): http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/10/13/081013taco_talk_editors

"My Fellow Prisoners"

Sarah Palin: Ready to be the World's Laughing Stock

Decide for yourself which one is scarier.

Never before in U.S. history has stupidity gotten so much prime air time. "I've seen only one person who's ready to be vice-president," said Paul Begala after the ABC interview, "and that person wasn't Sarah Palin." "This woman is a fuckin' idiot," commented "malboro 1919" on YouTube. Bob Herbert wrapped it up: She's not ready.

I became a U.S. citizen last week, and as such I am deeply ashamed of Sarah Palin.

Campaign Moments

There has been no shortage of YouTube moments during this campaign:

Two conservative commentators on MSNBC, after they're off the air, say what they really think about McCain's VP choice.

CNN's Campbell Brown grills McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds.