We Want Media

Hillary Clinton -- the drone leader? The political power of the web and social networking sites such as MySpace has yet again asserted itself the political realm. The 74-second “Hilary 1984” satire video is a stab at her 2008 presidential campaign, depicting her followers as automations.

Ever since 2006, Vermont Governor Howard Dean’s MySpace account was forever distinctive for its use of the Internet to organize supporters. However, that move was a deliberate venture created by Joe Trippi, Dean’s then-campaign manager.

“Hilary 1984” was created by Phil de Vellis, a technician whose company developed Clinton's rival, Barack Obama’s website (who is now fired). Reportedly, Obama did not have a hand creating or endorsing the video.

"This ad's reach blows up any notion that candidates and mainstream media outlets can control the campaign dialogue. Especially online," said Howard Kurtz, the media columnist at the Washington Post.

If you skim The Guardian’s article on this, you’ll see that they quote one traditional media personage and three web media sites (Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, and statistics from TechPresident.com, MySpace’s Rupert Murdoch, and Jeff Jarvis’s PrezVid.com).

The 1-to-3 ratio of traditional-to-web news sources is an interesting look at an article about the growing reach of non-traditional campaigning.