Cyclical Hysteria

“Extremist” politics and the media feedback loop

— So by now I know that it’s damn difficult to measure the “successfulness” of activist movements. Even today,  despite the data-driven analysis that any digital campaign receives, it’s hard to assess the strides that are actually being made. Time and time again, we find: it’s easy to tally retweets, but much more difficult to count behavioral change – even if we assume that policy changes actually do have a profound effect on the human psyche.

We can flip this story on its head, too: political response (or lack thereof) doesn’t just measure the success of activist movements. Rather, the changes in activism can tell us something about the changes in politics. This is true for both content and tactics.

Let me explain:

The goals of the Civil Rights Movement of the fifties and sixties are vastly different than any human rights battle we’re currently fighting; we’re on to different topics – abortion, capital punishment, etc. This change in content tracks the advances we do have in policy, or in public opinion. This much is obvious. But it gets more complicated.

Activist tactics also show us how politics have changed. In the sixties, broadcast radio showed us what was going on in the world. Now, Twitter and all of the other activist platforms – rather than the trusty soapbox – also enable us to track the changes, as well as to keep politicians accountable – and make their lack of it more transparent.

You could choose to read these points simply as low-hanging fruit. Yeah, these things are largely chalk-up-able to changing information technology. My point is not that this is untrue, but that it’s more important that one might think at first glance. Because essentially, that’s all that activism relies on anyway: spreading the word.

When we talk about politics and activism, it’s impossible to leave coverage out of the equation. In many instances, media attention – be it formal print journalism, “influencer” blogs or verified Twitter accounts – is inextricably linked to activism. Media coverage can be responsible for the success/failures of activism, much in the way it is for politics.

But there’s a convergence of note here beyond the media’s heavy role in both politics and social media. What I will try to argue is that politicians and activists may succeed because something about their particular platform is inherently attractive to contemporary media forms, rather than their platform being of necessary import to the public.

When we think about the current United States presidential ticket race, it’s impossible to ignore the hysteria around Donald Trump. He has become such a caricature of politics, of the Right, and even of himself, and his images and one-liners are proliferated all over the Internet. You can’t log onto Facebook without being immediately inundated with Trump memes.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Bernie Sanders, heralded for his ethical consistency and deep belief in revitalizing the democratic responsibility and privilege that the U.S. supposedly stands for. His outsider card is attractive to many who have lost faith in the political process, and his campaign image is crafted around “We Not Me.”

The media portrayal of Trump and Bernie is not unalike: both have massive hype followings of fat tail distributions: cult-like KoolAid drinkers vs. outrageous bashers and I-think-I’m-so-shrewd-skeptics. Of course, much of this is due to media inflation, a ruthless churn of click-bait for little value to anyone but the fiscal side of digital publication. More on that responsibility later.

For now, I want to draw attention to the relative “success” of Sanders and Trump in the media (especially social media). Perhaps, their ideas aren’t taking flight because of any strategy behind their promotion, but because their ideas inherently lend themselves to the type of media that is currently popular. Both politicians’ rhetoric revolves around big, un-nuanced, sweeping statements meant to ignite an emotional response within their constituents. They believe in provocation. They believe in rawness.

In a sense, then, their ideologies are made for social media (and other snappy, list-based journalistic coverage). They lend themselves into 140-character conversions, having to whittle little away in the process. There’s a feedback loop here, due to no fault of the candidates or the journalists, but simply because it is such an easy transfer of messaging, all the way from Sanders/Trumps’ advisors to idealistic (on either extreme) young hands, eagerly scrolling through their news feeds and feeling inspired to act.

If we view these politicians’ depiction in the media as less of a strategy and more of a product of the types of ideologies that they promote, we see this convergence of media, activism and politics coming full circle: coverage moderates politics and politics relies on coverage. The success of all parties relies on the continued, consistent engagement of the others.

For Sanders and Trump, their success is currently measured by their media mentions because that’s the easiest way to track them, not because it’s necessarily indicative of their propensity to secure the nomination. Whether or not the media has a responsibility to push beyond this is an entirely different issue (it does), but I think we can all stop fussing about why the coverage is so hysteria-latent: it’s been in the messaging from the get-go.

 

#4thofJulyBlackout

I’ve recently returned to Twitter after a 2 year hiatus. (No, not because I felt spammed by the over-posters, but because I was one of them. I was addicted. I began to dream in 140 characters. I simply couldn’t stop quipping.)

I use Twitter to get news, try my hand at freebies, and promote my own musings. And despite my alleged investment in internet activism, I frankly haven’t had the balls to leverage Twitter as a tool to promote an agenda or further discourse. I’ve talked to several friends about this, as well: why do we feel confident sporting Bernie stickers on our Klean Kanteens but shy away from anything more than a verified retweet? Why is it so hard to craft our own message?  It’s a phenomenon that we’ve only been able to answer rather limply: it’s scary to say what you think. And for those of us who still relish the distinctly social aspects of social media, we may fear turning off our followers. I’m smart but I’m shallow, and I’m the first one to admit that there’s nothing like a flopped Instagram to make you want to eat lunch in the bathroom stall.

This being said, I have great admiration for my peers who do tackle politics and activism head-on on social media.

So I got the inside scoop from my good friend Olivia, who developed a hashtag campaign on her own last summer. Olivia’s a senior at Occidental College in Pasadena, CA, and she’s a warrior: she’s triple majoring in Math, Cognitive Science and Computer Science and has championed the #BlackLivesMatter agenda at her school while serving as the president of her sorority and working directly under the Dean. *snaps for time management* *snaps for Theta*

In mid-June 2015, Olivia got especially riled up over the near-daily police brutality flanking the nation. But despite her involvement with established activist groups on campus, she wanted to try her hand at message-spreading. And so she embarked on her very own campaign.

“I just wanted it go viral,” she tells me. “I had no idea what I was doing, I was just trying to get it out there.”

Despite her stated haphazardness, though, Olivia’s process is not unlike the PR firm-designed campaigns that generate revenue: she emailed celebrity activists like Talib Kweli and Jessica Care Moore (buzzword: influencers), built the same message on several different social media platforms (standardization), and developed a hashtag that would become the chorus to her mini-movement: #4thofJulyBlackout.

Olivia’s goal was fairly straightforward: she wanted to get as many people as possible to scrap their red, white and blue and instead wear black on the Fourth of July.

“I was really distraught over the brutality and inspired by the success of #BlackLivesMatter,” she says, “and with Fourth of July right around the corner, I just felt like ‘independence’ wasn’t something we should really be celebrating, because for so many people, it still doesn’t exist.”

She spent the weeks leading up the 7/4/15 posting relevant articles on the social accounts. She watched as the circle of Facebook event invitees grew well beyond people she was connected to, and people engaged with the material she posted.

Surprisingly, Olivia says that she spent much less time on the strategic spread of her message than she did on the rhetoric with which to promote it and respond to the public.

“We wanted to respond to negative comments in a way that would resonate with people, rather than attack them,” she says.

This brings up an interesting limitation of social media activism: nuance vs. scale. It seems there’s no way (time? manpower?) as a small-scale operation to both carefully select your language and blast the internet with shareable content. And in most cases, there simply isn’t the space.

We see this in the current presidential election cycle, too. All of the candidates sacrifice nuance and depth (and often, accuracy) for quantity and rapidity. But still, it works.

I don’t feel dismayed so as to conclude “shit sells,” but I do have to wonder if Olivia’s dedication to intentionality lost her some potential speed. On the Fourth of July, #4thofJulyBlackout was not trending, nor were all pool party attendees proudly sporting all black in support.

But Olivia insists that the process was more significant than the final outcome.

“A lot of people were posting on the Facebook page – a couple dozen from all over the country of all ages and races,” she tells me. “Seeing that reach, and understanding how and why my message resonated with them, was success enough.”

By now I’m identifying a pattern of online activism: it’s circular. It’s borne out of something real and extreme, it rides the hype wave, it yields engagement, and then it passes — but not for long. I’m optimistic for future, if not for the impact of individual mini-movement. Because progress is a historical aggregate, not a time-slice.