For years US fundamentalist Christians, "family values" activists and their ilk have a tradition of gaming the media to give their campaigns and opinions more impact. It used to be things like "phone call trees" (call the TV station complaints line then call five co-conspirators and tell them to do the same thing) and letter writing campaigns to complain to politicians and the media about certain issue. The strategy was based on the equation of "for every complaint / letter we receive, there are a few hundred of our viewers / constituents who feel the same way".
Now Michelle Malkin, the US social and political conservative commentator, has been urging her "righties" readers to register for Digg and get voting on stories.
What does this say? Aggregators and news communities like Digg are becoming influential and so they are attracting mainstream political activist attention.
It’s good that influential commentators of whatever political colour are telling people to get involved, but given the history of media manipulation how long before there is a scandal when "righties" attempt concerted actions to sway the Digg effect in their favour.
In fairness, "righties" have always justified these tactics because of a perceived liberal bias in the media. As Michelle Malkin caveats most of her sweeping generalisations about online communities (along the lines of techies are liberals and libertarians, they don’t have jobs so they’re more active online) – is that true? I don’t know…
See the comments on Digg to see the debate there… they sound more or less welcoming to the "righties" who want to join the throng…
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.