debates

As Michael noted yesterday, it can be frustrating just how much of our national discourse still, even after the enormous demonstrable progress in recent years, operates under the constraints of the myth of widespread civic disengagement and apathy among young voters. Like many readers of this site, I get tired hearing these kinds of myths repeated, along with the kind of concern they engender, in the whispered, just-between-you-and-me fears of older relatives.

Which makes me all the more glad to have a visceral sign of young voter interest to point to while assuaging said relatives, and that's the debate watch parties we've seen for the first Presidential debate through Drinking Liberally, which included young people (and young-at-heart people) packing bars, auditoriums and coffeeshops throughout the country, all just to watch that supposedly not-so-cool televised debate with a bunch of their peers. In New York City, no less an authority than Comedy Central described it as "insanely crowded" when we filled DCTV with 200 engaged, overwhelmingly young voters; in Salt Lake City, they teamed up with Young Democrats of Utah to fill the local tavern to the brim; and in Denver, over 150 progressive Coloradoans found their way to the Skylark Lounge. It was a great night.

Though not everyone thought it would be so - when the first Presidential debate was announced as being on a Friday night, some were skeptical. As NPR's Day To Day made clear, Friday night is widely seen as

a time often reserved for dates, sporting events, or the beginning of a weekend getaway.

Which brings up the question - why not make watching the Presidential debates feel like a night on the town?

As DL's Executive Director (and my colleague) Justin Krebs noted,

"Watching political events has become sort of like watching sporting events in New York and around the country...State of the Union nights have become regularly accompanied by drinking games, and the debates are no different."

If we can get people across the country to gather together to watch a football game together, we can get young people to gather together to celebrate retaking their country together. As we prepare for tonight's Biden-Palin debate, be it by playing Palin Bingo or agonizing over debate prep, we can all drink to that.

This week, MySpace officially launched MyDebates, their destination site for the Presidential debates. I've written before about how these look to be a regression to Web 1.0, and I won't rehash that here other than to say that, after perusing their new site, my opinion has not changed (and probably won't until we actually see these debates in action).

However, I did come across one item on the MyDebates that's at least worth toying around with. Like myriad other websites, one of the function of MyDebates is a user quiz on the issues to help "undecideds" determine how they should cast their ballot. MySpace is taking the extra, more interesting step of aggregating all of that issue and voting information, breaking it down by age and gender, and allowing users to display that data via a flash map. It's pretty cool.

Here's a look at how 18 - 34 year olds are going to vote, according to Myspace:

Here's a look at men within that age demographic:




Now the women:




It's tempting to draw conclusions from this - southern women are more conservative than southern men, women in Alaska dont' like Sarah Palin, etc. Of course, there are all kinds of problems with this, and the map tool is more like a neat demographic toy than a serious data set. We have no idea how many respondents there are (at this point, judging by the amount of "friends" MyDebates has, probably not many), and those respondents in the data set are both self-selecting and limited to MySpace users. As such, this isn't really representative of MySpace, let alone the whole country.

I imagine that once the debates get kicking, MySpace will have respondents numbering in the tens of thousands. It would be awesome if they could open source their data or team up with a pollster to draw out some reliable information about the youth electorate, or at least the overall MySpace community.

I've written in the past about how the upcoming presidential debates seem to be stepping back from the viewer-participation models we saw in the primaries. Well Current TV and Twitter are trying to (somewhat) alleviate that. The two participatory media properties are looking to join forces to give viewers (somewhat) more of a say when Obama and McCain square off. Via Mashable:

Twitter is continuing to find its way into mainstream media, the latest example being today’s announcement that they have teamed up with Current TV to include Tweets in the cable network’s upcoming coverage of the Presidential debates. The Tweets – which will be selected by Current TV and Twitter staff - will take the form of an overlay on screen. To participate, viewers will need to use “#current” in their tweets during the debates, the first of which airs next Friday – September 26th.

The partnership with Current TV follows a slew of recent integrations of Twitter into mainstream media. Rick Sanchez has been reading Tweets and interacting with his growing Twitter audience on-air for CNN, while political network C-SPAN made heavy use of the microblogging tool during the recent Democratic and Republican conventions.

It's no MTV/MySpace Dialogue, and neither Obama nor McCain will ever see a word you Tweet, (and what's up with the fact that Twitter and Current will filter the Tweets?) but hey, it beats watching Wolf Blitzer for an hour and a half . . .

Update: At the Washington Indpendent, Ari Melber confirms that a proposed interactive forum hosted by Google down in New Orleans is likely scrapped.

Micah at Tech President beat me to it, but I just want to echo that the proposed partnership between MySpace and the Commission on Presidential Debates, announced this morning, represents a step back from the innovation that we saw during the primary process.

This morning, MySpace and the Commission on Presidential Debates announced a partnership designed (theoretically) to bring Web 2.0 to the normally stodgy and uninformative Presidential debates:

MySpace and the CPD will jointly launch ‘MyDebates.org’ – a new website which will house online tools to promote deeper levels of political engagement with viewers at home. Visitors to the site will have the option of downloading a personalized application which, during the debates, will stream the television event live from the embed location (e.g. within a blog, social network, or website). The application will also provide users with an on-demand playback functionality as well as issue-based tracking, allowing users to track a candidate’s stance on issues they care about throughout the live stream. The full functionality will be available in the days leading up to the first Presidential debate on Friday, September 26.

Additionally, ‘MyDebates.org’ will feature high-quality video streaming and as the candidates are speaking, “issue icons” will light up as candidates discuss specific main topics. Users will be polled periodically throughout the debates with short questions with multiple choice answers (or iconic responses, e.g. thumbs-up/ down). This format will reduce distraction while eliciting specific and valuable feedback.

In short, here's what debate 2.0 means to the CPD:

• Debates streaming on the web.
• A rewind button.
• Embeddable widgets of said live stream
• (Potentially condescending) issue icons popping up all over the screen
• Occasional and simplistic polling that may or may not be used to determine the direction of questions.
• Tagged, searchable and embeddable clips of the debate available the next day.
• 1 debate where the candidates may face pre-screened audience questions.

Notice anything missing? How about greater, unfiltered interaction between the candidates and the audience. Web 2.0 is about social media. Meaning we talk to each other, not at each other. That's what MTV and MySpace had during the candidate dialogues last year, and that's what is missing from this proposal.

During the previous dialogues, questions from the live audience were always unscreened and never dumbed down. The polling was continuous, nuanced (the audience had six potential choices, not simply "yes or no") and was viewable at all times by the live audience, the moderators, AND the candidates. These polls were often used as a guide for follow-up questions, many of which came in over IM from the live-stream audience. It was that feedback loop, coming in over multiple channels, that forced the candidates out of their talking points and into a real conversation sans sound byte or spin. That unfiltered interaction between the candidates and the public is what made the MTV candidate dialogues interesting and informative. That kind of interaction is largely missing from this proposal.

Here's another question. Why do I want to watch these debates on a live stream of crappy quality when I could just watch them on the TV? I didn't watch the MTV Dialogues on line because I wanted to. I did it because I had to (and complained bitterly about how often the whole system crashed, necessitating a reboot of my browser). They were streamed live, but they were not aired live, and there was no other way to participate. I would be more than happy to watch the debate live on TV while participating in polling and other social features using my laptop. Or, wouldn't an SMS-based polling system work much better for a live national audience? The success of American Idol would lead me to believe so.

I will say that tagging and creating a searchable database of clips by issue and by candidate is a useful feature - especially for people to discuss the coverage on their blogs and social networks in the following days - but the rest of the proposal is pure web 1.0.

TPM Election Central is reporting that the Obama campaign has accepted the debate structure put forth by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

This line from the acceptance letter by David Plouffe caught my eye. Emphasis mine:

Due to the late date of the two parties' nominating conventions, and the relatively short period between the end of the conventions and the first proposed debate, it is likely that the four Commission debates will be the sole series of debates in the fall campaign. Consequently, we believe that finalizing the arrangements for these debates with promptness and certainty is in the interests of both campaigns and the American people.

So does this mean that there won't be any YouTube debates? Or MTV Candidate Dialogues (which for my money were the most participatory and informative televised debates of the primary season)?

Did we all just take a huge step backward?

Two pieces of video this morning. First, some footage from last night's debate, which I have not yet been able to watch due to my Monday Night Wire party. This is probably the most lively and honest moment we've seen in these debates so far.

Now cut the tension with this great little satire cooked up by Slate:

Some preliminary thoughts on the ABC/Facebook debates:

• I'm really not that impressed with the integration of Facebook. It's really a sponsorship in name only. If you go on the Facebook site, the polling and debates feel like something to do instead of watching the debate, not a compliment to the debate.
• In this, they seem to be way behind what MySpace and MTV accomplished with their candidate forums. For my money, those events are still the gold standard for a more participatory presidential forum that capitalizes on social technologies and involves younger people in the process.
• The questions that Facebook is polling on are far less substantive than those offered by MTV, as are the answer choices (yes/no or similar dichotomies vs. the six gradations of answer options offered by MTV/MySpace). I miss the Flektor Widgets.
• Facebook users that are on the US Politics applications are overwhelmingly saying that the debates are helping them decide how to cast their ballot, but polling has shown that youth have paid a disproportionate attention to almost all debates this cycle (pdf), and compared to the total number of FaceBook users (and even users of the US Politics application), the number or respondents is paltry (about 14,000 respondents vs. 60 million active users).

• Interestingly, Facebook users are almost echoing the 5-1 youth advantage that Obama enjoyed in Iowa. Compare that to ABC's general poll of the entire electorate:

The first Republican candidate has finally had their turn in the Myspace/MTV dialogues. Tonight Senator John McCain took questions from a live audience in Manchester, NH, supplemented by feedback from the Flektor Polling widget and IM comments from those watching via MTV, MTV.com, and MySpace, in both English and Spanish.

There were really two question on the table tonight - how would MTV an MySpace improve what has to date been the most participatory candidate forums in the campaign; and how would the feedback process developed by MTV and MySpace work when put up against a candidate who's position on a number of issues widely diverged from that of the audience?

On the part of MTV, there were a number of improvements. For the first time the event was simulcast on TV and the web, instead of rebroadcast later in the evening. This timing was also significant in that this was the first debate originally taped/streamed/aired when young professionals, students - everyone who would find this debate interesting and might want to participate online - could be at home to watch. Questions from the online audience were posted on-screen, making them easier to follow, and the moderator Cilizza seemed slightly more aggressive in his follow-ups (this could have been due to the more adversarial relationship McCain had to the audience than previous participants). Finally, in a nod to the growing Hispanic population - which is also a very young population - the event was simulcast in Spanish.

As for the feedback loop, it was definitely in effect, though not quite in the way that I expected. All in all, McCain did quite well. Throughout the evening, the Senator fielded a much wider range of questions than what the Republicans fielded at the recent YouTube/CNN Debate, something the Senator himself astutely noted. On questions about climate change and Darfur, he polled quite well, and by being frank with the audience about issues on which they disagreed (Iraq and troop withdrawals, the only question where more than 50% of the respondents disagreed with his answers), McCain managed to at least keep - if not enhance - his credibility during moments with high-gaffe/negative impact potential.

McCain seems to have skillfully walked a tightrope on the issue of Iraq. If he had become too defensive, or less artfully set up his disagreements with the audience, there might have been a backlash both in the polling and in the tone of followup questions. That didn't happen. Instead, McCain actually gained ground among the viewing audience during the debate, demonstrating a positive, rather than negative feedback loop with the audience.

While I expected a functioning feedback loop between a Republican candidate, and a young audience to create a great deal of pushback and an adversarial relationship with the candidate, in fact the opposite seems to have happened. At the beginning of the debate, the online audience was polled as to their opinion of Sen. McCain on "the issues." At the top of the hour, 60% of respondents either agreed with the Senator or thought they might. By the end of the evening, that number had risen to 72%. That's not bad for an hour's work, and ample evidence that Republicans can gain ground with young voters if they attempt to reach out and speak to them substantively and honestly on the issues - even if that means agreeing to disagree.

An interesting side-note to the evening was a video question submitted by What's Your Plan, a program of The New Voters Project, that seeks to ask all the candidates detailed questions about their policy proposals. When MySpace/MTV announced that they would air one video question from the viewing audience based on an open voting process, the group used a FaceBook group to organize support for their video about climate change.

There are still a few quibbles with the format. There could still be more follow-up questions on each issue, and they don't yet seem to have figured out how to handle cross-issue contradictions (for instance, McCain said multiple times that he would "fully fund" things, but also talked about cutting wasteful spending without talking about how those two positions might be contradictory in a Republican administration). Additionally, Cillizza, the online moderator, didn't inject himself enough into the debate when the candidate dodged, or when the background knowledge of the students was insufficient to really press a follow-up.

All in all though, MTV and MySpace keep upping the ante with these candidate forums, and in terms of creating a more transparent, participatory interaction between the candidates and a mass audience, they continue to blow CNN and YouTube out of the water. With one month to go before the Iowa Caucus, it seems unlikely that we'll get more than one more of these dialogues - if that - before the media crowns victors in both parties' nominating contests. As we enter the general election, these formats should become the gold standard for all future debates and televised forums.

So last week I was on the teevee talking about the Republican YouTube debates. It was a surreal experience, but people tell me I did ok, so I thought I'd post it. It was for the news show of G4, the video game/technology channel.

Hat tip to Micah Sifry over at Tech President for finding out that apparently there is zero coordination between YouTube and CNN when it comes to selecting questions and arranging for audience participation. YouTube has no input into which questions are selected, and no knowledge of which questions will be aired until they appear on the screen. That's why there's so little participation and follow up from the crowd. It's a total crap shoot as to whether or not YouTube invites the correct people to ask follow-up questions.

Totally ridiculous. People's debate my ass. This is a CNN production through and through with a little Web Two-Point-Oh window dressing from YouTube. Here's David Bohrman of CNN explaining the whole question selection process.