Podcasts and Hammers
Podcasts and Hammers
(The is piece was originally posted to Morph, where there are several interesting comments.)
Ever hear of the hammer theory? Give a child a hammer and suddenly everything else looks like a nail.
Enter Podcasting, another hammer in the belt of political consultants advising candidates on how to use the Internet during campaigns. I can hear the banging of nails coming out of the earphones of the guy next to me on the train already. Well, actually, I think he is listening to U2.
First, let’s clear some things up.
1. Podcasting is nothing new. It is only a new name for something companies like MBN Studios have been doing since 1997. We only started paying attention to it because the long-time practice was given a new name stolen from a hot brand (kind of like calling tissues Kleenex, even if you are using a Puffs).
2. Podcasting is inherently a broadcast use of the internet. Thus, podcasts are about as innovative as the brochure website. The simplest way to use the internet for campaigns is as an information disseminator (brochures, podcasts, news feeds, etc.). The next level up is mobilizing action. But the ultimate application of the internet is to use it to build strategic communities.
Rather than tap into the power of the internet to organize citizens into powerful advocacy communities that can push a campaign into the 21st Century, 20th Century political consultants will latch onto the podcast as a way to give marching orders and clever messages to a citizenry that is becoming increasingly disengaged from politics BECAUSE all they ever get from politicians is marching orders and clever messages. Voter apathy, in many cases, is not about people who don’t care for politics. It is about people who don’t care for politicians that hold themselves apart and above the electorate. It is a rational choice based on the realization that Members with safe Congressional seats and politicians who are afraid to put themselves in front of an un-vetted audience offer nothing worth voting for to people who will never be heard.
But a new breed of candidates, like Pete Ashdown in Utah, who is running against Orren Hatch for the Senate, are tapping into the real power of the internet to bring voters together into a deliberative community, an engaged community, a community that has a personal stake in the outcome of the election. These candidates will rewrite elections as we know them, not podcasts.
Podcasts, while NEAT, are only a small part of the equation. Sure, it is great to be able to listen to all of the speeches a candidate makes on the campaign trail. But that novelty will quickly wear off once voters realize that candidates give the same speech OVER AND OVER again. If podcasts are going to be valuable to a campaign, then candidates will have to get a lot more substantive in their speeches than they have been thus far. And they will have to provide substance on the issues the voters care about, reflecting an ongoing dialogue with voters. And that means they will have to open the channels from the voters to the campaigns and listen to what the people have to say, and then respond with details.
If all this happens, podcasts may become hot in the campaign, but the real story will be: Campaigns are listening to the people and responding with substance. The fact that podcasts play a role in that development will be incidental, and hardly the real story.