The Republican field has decided to take it’s next debate to Twitter–this could be interesting. Beyond the novelty appeal of never-been-done gimmick, the concept of engaging in a debate only using Twitter and the 140Townhall platform is likely to result in a variety of interesting observations about how campaigns and messages might be changing across various new media. The types of questions that the tweeting audience asks candidates may differ from those asked in a traditional debate, or even in an online debate (like the Youtube ones have done before). The way candidates answer questions will obviously change, and it could be the case that certain ideas, types of information, or arguments are put forth on Twitter than other forms of debate. But even before the debate begins, it seems like the form—especially the presence of numerous Twitter-based measures of analytics alongside the debate itself, are important to think about, even before focusing on what people do or say.

Debate analytics have always been important to campaigns’ messaging strategies, and recently, they’ve become part of the debate experience for the viewing public. We’ve watched debates that track “public opinion” in real time using little lines that gauge how much people enjoy or are excited by or approve of what candidates say, watched newscasters interview focus groups immediately after a debate, and reports on who won the debate (or which topics) are almost always the lead story the next day. This debate is different. The analytics provided by the 140Townhall platform—those of number of Twitter followers, retweets, and mentions—involve many more variables than the good/bad indicators of a dial test. Continue reading →

In starting this blog, I’m going to just really mess it up straight from the top…by starting with a news story that’s a few days old. Don’t click off the page yet though! I feel like so valuable points were left out of the NRSC RT (National Republican Senatorial Committee retweeting, for non-nerds) hubbub.  So, it seems that faking a RT causes quite a stir. The general discussion taking place over this controversy is organized around one of two poles (or blogs recapping both): accusations of violating Twitters bylaws and the Rules of Engagement more generally, and reminders of the importance (and innocence) of the parodic tradition that dominates both Twitter. Basically, either it’s amusing, or it’s abusive.

But that debate isn’t specific to online media. It happens around speech for god’s sake! By framing the feelings of unease this event created as a disagreement over when/if certain “rules” of messaging can be broken, some other, more online-specific, anxieties get glossed over. While the funny/bad conversation is what occupied most of the public arena, I think this really speaks to larger anxieties over authenticity and authorship, and how those things can be muddied and sometimes all together hidden thanks to the interwebs. Continue reading →

Since a friend was kind enough to recently say I should really “blog more” instead of publicly calling out my luddite self and saying I should really “blog, period,” I’m finally going to start posting my musings on all things tech/politics here.  And I won’t get lazy and abandon it–since I’m publishing that statement on the internet, it must be true.  See the latest posts by clicking here!

I’m Jesse Baldwin-Philippi, an Assistant Professor of New Media at Fordham University and Graduate Director of our Public Media MA program. My research interests lie at the intersection of political communication, civic media, science and technology studies, and rhetoric, and I recently authored the book Using Technology, Building Democracy: Digital Campaigning and the Construction of Citizenship. My work is fundamentally concerned with how engagement with new technologies can restructure forms of political participation and ideas about citizenship, and I’ve previously worked with the Engagement Lab at Emerson College and the City of Boston’s Mayor’s Office and New Urban Mechanics.