This Year the Narrative is Different

In 2004, it was impossible to get the media to take young voters seriously. I can remember the frustration at MFA over the quality of the media coverage and the scarcity of stories about young voters. Sure The Nation and Alternet wrote a bunch of articles, and there was a minor wave of pieces about "Conservative Punks" (an astroturf movement that never materialized), but, for the most part, it was extremely difficult to get the mainstream political press to pay attention beyond publishing a few articles about how much money Rock the Vote was blowing on media buys.

Even after the election results came in, the "apathetic youth" meme kept on trucking, with most major media outlets and commentators pushing that same tired line. So its nice to see that the mainstream media is finally recognizing that A: young voters did turnout in record numbers in 2004, and B: that young voters could play a decisive roll in the upcoming midterm election.

More and more this is the story-line I'm reading, most recently at MSNBC and the Boston Globe. And more and more, the "apathetic youth" meme is relegated to B-level metro papers where the new conventional wisdom has yet to trickle down.

But to call this a new conventional wisdom is, I think, premature. Better to say that the narrative is in flux, and what happens in the next two months will decide how the media covers young voters in the 2008 Presidential cycle. This raises a couple of question:

1. Why has the narrative changed?
2. What does this mean for old players and new players in youth politics?
3. How will the results be interpreted in November

To answer the first question:
I think the press has had enough time to overcome their cognitive dissonance on the issue of young voters. A feat helped along by repeat performances by young voters in discreet locales like West Virginia, Maine, and most recently the Connecticut primary. Some new polls and studies indicating that this increased turnout is a trend have also helped.

But mostly, I think it has to do with the growth of Myspace and Facebook. Most stories I read have somethign to do with the fantastic growth of those social networks - usually the fact that some new politician has signed on and "this will be the next big thing."

Most reporters are probably just following the hype caused by the money - Rupert Murdoch did buy MySpace for almost $600m - but they're right. When FaceBook changed their interface, confronting users with their own lack of privacy, 740,000 members signed up to protest the changes. Over 1,600 politicians now have accounts on FaceBook, and the site has created special ways for users to show their support to favored candidates. There's a lot of organizing and voting power on these sites waiting to be tapped.

What does this mean for new players in the game of turning out millenial voters?

This is their chance to make their mark and build connections with the mainstream media leading into 2008. It's their chance to seize the narrative from dinosaurs like Rock the Vote who, year after year, is the most quoted organization in stories about young voters. This, despite the fact that there is no way to draw a correlation between Rock the Vote's big-media buys and voter turnout. Sure, they register millions of voters every year, but for a decade youth turnout declined under Rock the Vote's watch. It was only in 2004 that youth turnout increased, an increase that can be attributed to a combination of anti-Bush sentiment and the growth of partisan, youth orgs exploiting peer-to-peer tactics. (pdf)

This year offers a unique chance for young organizations to get their own narrative into the media and become the new experts on youth turnout.

What happens after November? If young voter turnout increases over 2002 levels - the last comparable year - then all the narratives that spring up this year will be justified and carry over into the next cycle. Hopefully, we'll be over the hump in laying to rest the apathetic youth meme. If turnout doesn't increase, we'll be back to square one in '07 and '08 when the press starts writing presidential horse race stories. If turnout doesn't increase and Democrats fail to take back a chamber, that loss might be layed at the feet of young voters who chose to stay home. It would also kill the media buzz about social networking as a political tool, probably diverting more attention to Text registration or YouTube.

Everything is in flux, here's hoping for the best.