"The medium is the message"
-- Marshall McLuhan --
Excerpt from Bernie's July 3rd email: So over the course of the next few weeks we will be releasing a series of policy proposals to address the major issues facing our nation. We’ll be discussing these issues at a number of nationwide organizing meetings taking place on July 29th.
In support of the upcoming July 29th #FeelTheBern National Campaign Meetings, I created a 3 part diary series on
Media Literacy. This diary is the second in the series:
The theme of this 3 part diary series is Media Literacy:
- PART #1: ‘Clintonian Triangulation’-vs-Bernie's bold decisive stand #TBTF[#July29 #MediaLiteracy 1of3]
- PART#2: Bernie:“I believe change takes place from the bottom up” #5ViralAds[#July29 #MediaLiteracy 2of3]
- PART #3: Bern:‘People will make their own judgments about Hillary’#Listening[#July29 #MediaLiteracy 3of3]
Media Literacy (or 'media education') is a repertoire of competencies that enable people to analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres, and formats.
The power of the viral meme and social media as a transformative communication media is poignantly illustrated by the worldwide awareness today of the #occupyWallStreet hashtag/meme.
How social media fueled Occupy Wall Street
The hashtag revolution trickled down one tweet at the time, giving birth to a movement
The #occupyWallStreet hashtag had been posted slowly, about 15 to 20 times over a 3 week period, starting with a single tweet on July 13, 2011. But then, on August 5, everything changed.
The rising popularity of the movement can be traced back to hyper-local tweeters. Tweeters who focus solely on using twitter and social media to keep an eye on their local community, and often message them with calls to action. These users give their community a level of attentiveness, that not even local papers can beat, and are at the forefront of what is happening in their community.
#occupyWallStreet sprang to life due to one post by one person with 2000 followers on twitter, but those 2000 followers happened to be locally socially active social media users within NYC.
And within 24 hours, Trendistic reports that the hashtag represented nearly 1 of every 500 hashtag used in New York.
[...]
From there on, the Occupy movement spread like wildfire across the nation, with a strong base of support coming from Oakland, California...
Inspired by Bernie's belief that
"Change takes place from the bottom up " ...and inspired by Bernie's campaign embodied in his bold decisive
Policies, Principles & Positions ...and inspired by the clear stand Bernie takes on critical controversial issues ...inspired by Bernie's passionate vision of a
Political Revolution --- I created five(5)
Infographic Viral Ad images
(included below) under the #HashTag theme: #MediaLiteracy as a vision for an online VIRAL CAMPAIGN STRATEGY to supplant Main Stream Media's (MSM) dominant control of the political narrative in this nation.
The purpose of these five ads is two-fold: (a) To educate people on the importance of Media Literacy in the 20th & 21st Century (MSM-vs-INTERNET), and the nature and power of a Viral Campaign Strategy (why we can win and why we are winning), and (b) To inform the public on Bernie's Campaign Policies through a series of Hashtag/memes, because the policies are what matters.
Viral Ad Outline:
(1) MEDIUM: #Pyramid Infrastructure (Info #TopDown)
(2) MEDIUM: #Virtual Forum (Info #BottomUp)
(3) MEDIUM: #Viral Messaging (Organic #Narrative)
(4) MEDIUM: #Meme Messages (Campaign #Policies)
(5) MEDIUM: #Social Media (Campaign #GOTV)
BERNIE: Let me also tell you what about what we’re trying to do, which is different than conventional campaigns. I believe that change takes place from the bottom up, that no serious political movement --- whether it is the civil rights movement... whether it is the woman’s rights movement... whether it is the environmental movement... whether it is the gay movement... whether it’s certainly the trade union movement --- those movements do not start from the top on down, they start from the bottom on up. And that is what this campaign is about.
I am gonna give you just a few examples of what I mean by that... how change takes place really takes place, especially among the young people. I want you to understand this.
A few years ago in Washington you had virtually every Republican and some Democrats, unfortunately at that moment, the President of the United States, talking about cutting Social Security (SS) benefits through a thing called “Chained CPI.” To my mind, as the founder of the “Defending Social Security Caucus,” I thought that was absurd. I thought that at a time when we had millions of seniors trying to live on twelve to thirteen thousand dollars a year, instead of cutting SS, what we should be doing is talking about expanding SS. Well, guess what happens? Some of us, myself, Elizabeth Warren, others, have been talking about this issue. We worked with senior groups all over America. A couple of months ago, I received a petition from two million seniors, talking about expanding SS, not cutting SS. And guess what happens? And this is what grassroots organizing is about. The poll in the WSJ, a few days ago --- the question is:
“Do you support expanding SS benefits by lifting the cap on taxable income, so the wealthier people contribute more into the system?”
By a 61% to 20%, the American people say, “Expand Social Security!”
Point being that when you talk common sense to the American people, they respond. That’s how change takes place. Now you’re gonna have Republican candidates for President coming to New Hampshire and telling you why they think we should cut SS benefits. But they are now way out of touch with the American people.
Let me give you another example of how grassroots activism makes change:
A few years ago, just a few years ago, not so many years ago, three years ago maybe, working people and some of our unions said, “You know what? Americans cannot survive on $7.25 an hour minimum wage. That’s wrong.” And what they did, and I have had the opportunity to be on demonstrations and picket lines with some of these people, many of them young people, many of them are people of color. I remember being in North Carolina last year with just incredibly brave young African Americans who are making $7.25 in McDonalds and other fast food places. Anyhow that movement began, and then you see, cities saying “they are gonna raise the minimum wage”, “states saying they are gonna raise the minimum wage.” And then this poll comes out... And democrats in congress as saying, “Let’s raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.” ...but this poll comes out, WSJ, saying... The poll, you know what it says? By a 48 to 38 majority, the American people, say, “Let’s raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour!
What’s the point? The point is that when people at the grassroots level start moving on issues, that are the right issues, that make sense to the American people, change comes now. So the Democrats in congress are talking about $10.10, they’re way out of step. We have got to go to $15 per hour. And that is what the American people want.
* VIRAL CAMPAIGN STRATEGY: Media Literacy *
INTRO
This strategy was inspired by the clarity of Bernie's vision embodied in his concise legislative policy proposals, and by the desire to promote those proposals as a series of #Hashtags ("MEMES") that would ideally trend on twitter, or at the very least, provide short succinct viral messages that will be easily / readily identifiable in a twitter feed, facilitating searching and cataloging all instances where a candidate mentions a topic. #Hashtags are a starting point, a "bucket," if you will, to help people keep track of who, said what, when and where. In order to achieve this, I felt that we needed a concerted VIRAL MEDIA STRATEGY. Concise HashTags/Memes help people distinguish Bernie from candidates who seem intent on using artfully crafted speeches filled with platitudes, yet deftly avoid taking a definitive stand on key issues, (or if they do mention it, but only to appease and give the appearance of "listening" but with no real stated intention to follow-through), the most obvious immediate examples, of course, being Hillary's silence/words on TPP, Too Big To Fail(TBTF), and Glass Steagall legislation. We need to keep track of what candidates are saying: (1) When do they speak about an issue? (2) How do they frame it? or (3) How often they mention and whether they stress it or not (etc...) Think "functional database" types of questions, because we need to hold candidates accountable.
The following Hashtags represent the initial germination of this strategy which has been brewing within my head for a while, they are not necessarily comprehensive, nor are they how Bernie might group them, they are merely MY personal starting point to illustrate the issues, potential groupings and how I frame them in my thinking:
Our #ECONOMY --> #IntegrityMatters
#TPP #TooBigToFail (#TBTF) #GlassSteagall #FairTaxes #LivingWage #InfrastructureInvestment (#JobsAct)
Our #FUTURE --> #HonorMatters
#ClimateChange #ExpandSocialSecurity #FreeEducation #ImmigrationReform
Our #GOVERMENT --> #EthicsMatters
#PoliceBrutality #MassIncarceration #MassSurveillance #NetNeutrality
Our #POLITICS --> #HonestyMatters
#CampaignFinanceReform #MoreDebates #NoCorporateMoney #NoLobbyists #NoNegativeAds #VotingRightsAct
The goal is to use trending #HashTags to drive the political narrative
forcing MSM to
dance to our tune, not us dance to theirs... and more importantly,
force candidates to take clear positions on policies, or if they do not, to make sure the public knows that they do not
("Silence speaks volumes!") I believe we can and
we already are doing this with the #FeelTheBern meme...
MSNBC's Eric Levitz writes about the [grassroots] activists spearheading Bernie's social push:
Bernie Sanders may trail Hillary Clinton by double digits in New Hampshire, but he leads the Democratic front-runner by more than 4,000 “points” on Twitter.
Between June 25 and July 1, the most popular hashtag associated with the Vermont senator’s presidential campaign, "#FeelTheBern," was tweeted an average of 6,800 times-a-day, while “#hillary2016” garnered 2,700 tweets, according to Topsy, which tracks activity on social media.
...but we need more, a lot more
...we need a tsunami. We must ensure that Bernie's policy messages are heard, recognized and understood, far and wide, early and often, all across the internet.
* Media Literacy [Page 1 of 5] *
COMMUNICATION MEDIUM: Pyramid Infrastructure (Info Top-Down)
The campaign is about Media Literacy/Media Education and understanding the limitations inherent to conventional MSM (tv, radio, print) communication technology.
Media Education is the process of teaching and learning about media. It is about developing young people's critical and creative abilities when it comes to the media.
The opposition has billions of dollars, but they're using MSM, which is a 20th Century antiquated communication technology. We have a (fast growing) grassroots army -- a true populist movement -- and we have the internet with its ubiquitous social media viral messaging medium, a 21st century next generation transformative tool, a disruptive communication technology, where the narrative cannot be controlled by any one single source, so it can't be bought. In the previous generation they could control the narrative, because media was a "top-down" pyramid paradigm/scheme --- where discussions are scripted, providing: limited feedback, limited peer-review, limited critical analysis, and limited dissenting viewpoints.
* Media Literacy [Page 2 of 5] *
COMMUNICATION MEDIUM: Virtual Forum (Info Bottom-Up)
The campaign is about media education and understanding the nature of the Internet, and why it is distinctly different than all previous communication technology.
Media literacy education provides tools to help people critically analyze messages, offers opportunities for learners to broaden their experience of media, and helps them develop creative skills in making their own media messages. Critical analysis can include identifying author, purpose and point of view, examining construction techniques and genres, examining patterns of media representation, and detecting propaganda, censorship, and bias in news and public affairs programming (and the reasons for these). Media literacy education may explore how structural features—such as media ownership, or its funding model—affect the information presented.
To Hillary's credit, she has the right idea, but her approach to online social media is flawed:
['Grassroots movement working': Bernie Sanders gains on the Clinton machine]
The former secretary of state often communicates her policy positions via Twitter, rather than speaking to reporters or voters. While Sanders held a question and answer session on Thursday with over 100 voters in the gritty industrial city of Fort Dodge, Iowa, Clinton spoke at a private fundraiser in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a resort town on Cape Cod.
Hillary's approach is flawed, because her strategic messaging is "TOP-DOWN" --- She mistakenly thinks she can use it to avoid "Question & Answer" discussions
... she uses it to avoid responding to our concerns. She uses it like a
microphone when what it really is is a
two-way radio. She
should be using it to LISTEN and
hear people's concerns, rather than her "listening tour" charade where she met with pre-screened fans and was insulated from questions from "unpleasant" questions about her allegiance to corporate donors and what promises she had to make them. She could have easily spent 5 to 10 hours a day reading twitter and facebook comments,
or even better, reading DailyKos diaries & comments, and thereby gotten far more substantive feedback about the concerns of progressive democrats, without ever needing to leave her home. She still can ... and should.
But that's not how she uses twitter, Hillary uses twitter to insulate herself from the community, but twitter was never meant for that, in fact, quite the opposite, and her attempt to use it in this manner makes her look somewhat silly, since this goes against the very nature of the internet and its social media culture, which is, by its very definition and intentional design, a tool specifically created to ELIMINATE insulation and FACILITATE "Question & Answer" discussion, but on a truly massive world-scale: to connect EVERYONE-TO-EVERYONE (many-to-many). Any serious twitter/blogger user knows this. This is its defining feature, its attraction. This is why people use it, namely, so that THEIR voice is heard.
* Media Literacy Page 3 of 5] *
COMMUNICATION MEDIUM: Viral Messaging (Organic Narrative)
The campaign is about media education and understanding the nature of the Internet, and why it is distinctly different than all previous communication technology.
The campaign is about the communication media tool inherent to the Internet, the #HashTag (meme), and understanding its power.
A meme is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture". A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.
The internet empowers the community to have a voice equal to, if not GREATER THAN, the candidate. Hillary doesn't get that, which is evidenced by her apparent failure to hear the concerns of the people and by her failure to respond to those concerns. All she seems concerned with is merely advertising HER scripted triangulated poll tested parsed messages.
Hillary's failure to appreciate the social nature of the online culture and its grassroots (activist) community is, I would suggest, the real reason why the online culture didn't respond well to her in 2008, and why it does not appear to be responding well to her today, in 2015. The internet is a bi-directional communication medium, or rather, an OMNI-DIRECTIONAL medium, not "top-down" (i.e.: one-to-many).
BERNIE: "I believe that change takes place from the bottom up."
The internet was created to support grassroots "bottom-up" organizations. The internet supports
self-organizing community structures, fostering
self-propagating viral memes, making it, first and foremost,
the tool of the grassroots activist: (a) to communicate WITH each other, and also, (b) to communicate TO the candidate
...not merely FROM the candidate to the community. This is why we will win this media war. This is why OUR "messaging" (memes) must dominate and control the narrative, because WE OWN THIS TURF.
The grassroots movement owns the online world... so let's make it SING!
* Media Literacy Page 4 of 5] *
COMMUNICATION MEDIUM: Meme Messages (Campaign Policies)
The campaign is about using the tool of the #HashTag (meme), as a mnemonic, to communicate Bernie's policies, principles and positions.
A mnemonic, or mnemonic device, is any learning technique that aids information retention. Mnemonics aim to translate information into a form that the brain can retain better than its original form. Even the process of merely learning this conversion might already aid in the transfer of information to long-term memory.
* Media Literacy Page 5 of 5] *
COMMUNICATION MEDIUM: Social Media (Campaign GOTV)
The campaign is about using the tool of the #HashTag, as a Meta-Tag, to gather support, to organize and to mobilize.
In information systems, a Tag (or Meta-Tag) is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an Internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are generally chosen informally and personally by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending on the system.
The corporate oligarchy has TV, RADIO, & PRINT to
control the narrative, and billions of dollars to spend ensuring that control, but those are an
antiquated communication medium. We have a massive grassroots movement, but we wouldn't have that movement without the internet and the nature of the internet is
social media. And since the internet is the dominant communication medium of the 21st century, we do have an advantage, but only once we become conversant in its viral nature and proficient with its viral protocol. This is necessary if we want to wrest control away from the corporate oligarchy and address the massive issues facing our world today. What this means in practical terms is that we need to use this new evolution of communication media in a symbiotic manner to include the viral media #MEME.
I certify that I own all rights to any photos, images, designs or materials used in this work and I am publishing them under the CC Licensing using my secret pseudonym #FREE, (feel free to use it too) --- Please provide candid feedback and if inclined, distribute far and wide --- I do not work for the campaign, this work is merely my effort to help Bernie win the election. As a Database Engineer (systems thinker) by trade, this is just how I think. Hope this helps. |
#FeelTheBurn
{signup donate}
#volunteer #organize #mobilize
#GOTV #2016PRIMARY
|