The 2008 Viral Politics

I stumbled across this article from USC's Online Journalism Review while researching for my podcast. Since Obama Girl and the Soprano's spoof, people have really taken notice of the impact and popularity of viral politics. The article talks about the 1984 Apple Super Bowl ad that stars Hillary. The famous commercial continued in popularity with the new twist because Web citizens found that she was saying one thing and doing another online, said Rasiej from the article. "She claimed it was a debate, but the questions were all preselected and filtered." Rasiej believes that Clinton's campaign managers wanted to capitalize on the online community but "didn't understand" that the dialog has to be free and open to gain the trust of the Internet community. Four million viewings later, Clinton's campaign has "woken up" he said. It's interesting to see how these videos are generating so many viewings and comments. What I've found is that the majority have feedback from viewers who don't like the candidate and bash them several times. This creates an online conversation between people to debate their favorite things or dislikes about each candidate.