Mike Chapman, government affairs and public policy specialist at AnthonyBarnum PR in Austin, Texas, tells a fascinating tale of how the new media "injected itself into the process" of the "ultimate insiders' game" in Texas politics: the election of the Speaker of the House. The backround is that the incumbent Speaker, Craddick, faced a challenge from within his own party for the leadership post.
Here's what happened next...
Chapman writes...
"Probably nothing is more 'behind the scenes' in Texas politics than the election of the Speaker of the House. This bipartisan exercise is the ultimate insiders’ game, and is usually decided far from the scrutiny of those who don’t work in and around the capitol. While the mainstream media has always played an important role in state politics, this week the not-so-mainstream social media injected itself into the process.
First, in an online report from the always informative Quorum Report, Harvey Kronberg noted that a mysterious videographer had filmed members of the Texas House as they arrived at a gathering of supporters for the current Speaker (Sunday night at Austin's oldest private club). The following day, the video showed up on YouTube. The film had been edited to a series of short clips of 63 House members, each identified on-screen by name.
Comments on the Burnt Orange Report ... identified ten Democratic representatives among the Craddick supporters filmed the previous evening. Paul Burka, senior executive editor of Texas Monthly, wrote a do-the-math blog post predicting that the Democratic supporters would tilt the outcome in favor of incumbent Craddick...
Craddick indeed did win.
"What interests me most," says Chapman, "is what this intersection of Republicans, Democrats, mainstream media, YouTube and blogs means. I have the feeling that what has typically been an insider's game is only going to get a lot messier and a lot less private very quickly. These days, everything and everyone are on the record, all the time. It will be interesting to see how government responds."
Things will get messier and a lot less private very quickly - and not just for elections for Speaker of the Texas House.
Elections for everything from President of the United States on down to their state senate or county commission will increasingly be impacted by the rise of the social media, as cheap digital technologies like cell-phone video cameras make it possible more and more for bloggers to report and commentate and shoot video and upload it to their blogs and YouTube. With more and mainstream reporters reading blogs to find story tips, and more and more voters and readers turning to the Internet to learn more about candidates and campaigns than they can find in their local daily, stories like Chapman's tale of bloggers, YouTube and the Texas Speaker of the House election will soon be the norm rather than the exception.
November 2006 was the first YouTube election - just ask former Sen. George Allen, or failed state senate candidate Mary Andretti Parker in Tennessee.
January 2007 on to the forseeable future is the era of YouTube government.
Hang on.
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