DLTQ.org

Via Brittany Shoot’s del.icio.us links I found this very interesting personal account by Amanda Marcotte, a woman who earlier headed John Edwards‘ blogging campaign. If you are interested in one take on political smearing campaigns in the blogosphere, I highly recommend the 3-page Salon article.

On her own site, Pandagon, Amanda wrote this on the day the Salon article was published:

… to discuss the culture clash between the more context-heavy, thoughtful blogging world and the soundbite culture of the mainstream media

Back in 2004 and 05, when I was actively trying to get politicians from my own political party to blog and videoblog, I was very hesitant because I did not want to somehow hurt my party by, for instance, videoblogging something that could be abused by others. In the BBC article about my work, this was actually also slightly mentioned. But even though my colleagues trusted me in the way that they did not think I would jeopardize the party - I was always afraid that some bigot bloggers might attack it. Some of the media I took was for instance recordings of what youths representing other political parties were saying to school children during debates. If I had used this kind of footage in remixes portraying for instance the policies of the Norwegian Labour Party, how would that be received? In fact, just a few months ago the Norwegian online newspaper Nettavisen brought an article talking about how members of my youth party were using youtube to smear political opponents (in this case the labour union and the labour party) In the U.S., this is not news at all, but in the context of the smaller Norwegian community, online video campaigns like that are quite new.

Last time around, in 2005, I chickened out of doing a lot of External videoblogging for my party because I did not want any backlash. I guess now that youtube has come around we will have an online community much more used to video on the net. Recordings from different political meetings and gatherings will flourish, and by 2009 there will be a great number of Norwegian politicians who will see video on the net as a crucial part of their campaign.

What will happen then? Will it be the battle of the editors? How will the ecosystem of communication done mostly by young members of the political parties spill out into the more mainstream media?

So, I return to Amanda Marcottes words:

… to discuss the culture clash between the more context-heavy, thoughtful blogging world and the soundbite culture of the mainstream media

I wonder how the culture clash will play out, also in video. I wonder how different video campaigns on youtube, or blip.tv, or elsewhere, will move forward in relation to each other.

About time to get our tools sharpened, because political videoblogging will develop in very interesting ways towards the U.S. elections in 08 and - here on our own little Scandinavian turf - in Norway in 09.