WHY was Obama’s campaign SO effective? I recently ran across two quotes that answer that question and have much broader implications for the future of digital media. The first was from Pamela Rutledge, in her article ‘How Obama Won the Social Media Battle in the 2012 Presidential campaign’. She summed it up this way, “An effective social media campaign is based on the psychology of social behaviors NOT the current technology” (Rutledge, p. 2013). Mybo.com was able to take advantage of new technologies surrounding online social networks in order to enable Obama supporters to connect and build social relationships. The second quote was from the Handbook of mobile communication studies, chapter 17 by Howard Rheingold. He eloquently puts it this way:
Communication technologies and literacies possess a power that has, on many occasions, proven mightier than physical weaponry — the potential to amplify, leverage, transform, and shift political power by enabling people to persuade and inform the thoughts and beliefs of others.
Obama recruited a variety of tools that allowed his supporters to easily find and inform undecided voters. Continue reading →
Your attention is what every advertiser wants, not necessarily because they want to change your mind, but simply because they want to reinforce opinions you may already hold. Repetitive attention to their product breeds familiarity and can steer individual choices at a later time. The use of imagery builds this cognitive phenomena quickly. Continue reading →
An interesting web capability called Churnalism was recently introduced in the United States, brought to us by the British Media Standards Trust. In short, just as plagiarism software operates, the Churnalism site will compare journalism with known press releases and attempt to identify the source of the information. This capability will also allow the user to determine if quotes have been taken out of context. It should be a great way to detect churn and spin while increasing media literacy.
A late Christmas gift appeared at the house today which was wrapped in a bit of media psychology irony. Jacques Elull’s “Propaganda, The Formation of Men’s Attitudes” arrived in an Amazon wrapper emblazoned with a bold advertisement for the militeristic action video game “Call of Duty, Black Ops II.” Somehow the juxtiposition between “The Formation of Men’s Attitudes” and the media content in “Call of Duty” struck me in regard to the amount of militainment Americans consume on a regular basis these days, wether they choose to or not. It’s no wonder that at a cognitive level we are so “accepting” of so many of the activities we witness taking place in the world today. What’s a little desensitization matter in the long run (the diminished emotional responsiveness to a negative or aversive stimulus after repeated exposure)?
The Holy Grail for advertising may be being that provider that can give a brand the ability to seamlessly interact with individuals while in both an offline, and online environment – a rich media psychology topic. In this way, messaging may become more personal and interactive, comprised of a single narrative that crosses between worlds – real and imagined. For the provider, it also enables the ability to offer market players, and other interested parties, the highly attractive proposition that individuals can be steered toward certain locations and behaviors that benefit the market player’s business (or at the very least, generate more data for some such as Google). By doing such, the provider establishes one narrative, like a game scenario, mapped onto the real world where the membrane of hyper reality can include any and all brands – as merely a name, all the way to personifications, or icons of brands, or causes that a player can interact with. Edward Bernays could only have dreamed of such ability while writing The Engineering of Consent which describes how to psychologically manipulate a population to want things they do not need (Bernays, 1947).
Once a player accepts the game, he or she may find themselves within a world created by the advertiser which unfolds a hyper reality composed of any number of cues and stimulus, incentives and directions, all benefits which on one hand keep users interested, and on the other ensure revenue for clients. Google’s new mobile platform offering, Ingress, may be just the start of such a behavioral “soft control” endeavor which can envelope a user in an augmented reality game designed to move the player around to key locations within actual cities, similar to geocaching.
“What’s also interesting, if Ingress and similar games gain traction, is the potential for subtle content delivery…//…Advertising takes minimal effort – an energy hotspot appearing in a large retail store, for example, or in-game events that include industries or companies dealing with the effects of this new energy source. Businesses could even appear as “sponsors” of one game faction or the other, lending their good name to the virtual cause. It’s not hard to imagine a situation where consumer goods purchased outside of the game world confer bonuses inside; this already happens with the release of popular titles like Call of Duty and Halo 4″ (Bonderud, 2012).
References
Bernays, E. (1947). The Engineering of Consent. The Annals of the American Academy, 113-120.