Is “Guilt by Association” Dead?
by Patrick Ruffini :: July 20th, 2007 12:49 amIn spite of the advent of Web 2.0, many political consultants still fear user-generated content. Specially, that one crazy comment will be posted in a campaign-sponsored forum or by campaign-affiliated personnel that then becomes fodder for a media or opponent attack. Even with reporters growing more and more savvy, we aren’t completely out of the woods on this yet (as evidenced by the Marcotte-McEwan affair, the netroots’ blackface chic, anything that comes within five hundred feet of Ann Coulter, and stuff like this). I’m actually in the process of writing a white paper on when campaigns should take steps to mitigate the risks of user-generated content — and when they should just calm down and let people speak.
But I do have a strong feeling that this isn’t as big a deal as it once was, because of this:
In case anyone missed it, here’s the backstory. O’Reilly lashed into JetBlue for sponsoring YearlyKos, which Hillary is attending. In response, not only does the Clinton campaign ignore it, or say that Daily Kos’ positions aren’t hers when called on it, but she uses it to launch a full-scale counterassault against O’Reilly. There is the political dimension of currying favor with the netroots. But the fact that she can do this with impunity signals that the media, in the main, now views controversial third party supporters as sort of a yawner, and that the political balance sheet now weighs in favor of standing beside your party’s grassroots.
Naturally, whenever I say this, something apparently happens to prove me wrong. Obama’s “featured group.” The McCain MySpace fiasco. The Edwards blogger issue. Or does it? See, all the examples I just cited were instances where the campaigns, in stuff that they themselves posted or appeared to post, wound up embracing embarrassing content. This was not user-generated content, like a comment posted on a blog or YouTube channel, or MySpace friend #46,894 who appears to be a porn star or a skinhead, but screwups or oversights from the campaigns themselves.
My overall read on this is that the flood of user-generated content is shifting the goalposts for “guilt by association” attacks. Ironically, the fact that there’s now so much of it to sift through makes it easier for would-be attackers to get jaded and move on. If I were to try and launch an attack based on everything bad ever posted on My.BarackObama.com, I wouldn’t know where to begin. There would be a ton of moderately bad stuff, but nothing would stand out.
When it comes to user-generated content on campaign sites, the best defense is a good offense. If you make a robust embrace of the social Web, the press and outside observers will eventually come to discount the bad stuff as a byproduct of the sheer volume of content you’ve made available. If you embrace it only tentatively or not at all, the scrutiny will be incredible — if not unbearable — the minute you open up just a bit, and your mistakes will be magnified tenfold. Why? Because you’re more likely to get your arm chewed off by a Rottweiler that you’ve starved as opposed to one you’ve overfed.
And there is something to be said for allowing bad content — and allowing the good stuff to outshine it. The Obama campaign has certainly taken its share of lumps in this new world (paging Joe Anthony), but does that cancel out $10.3 million raised online last quarter? I don’t think so.
Tagged: hillary clinton 
online politics user generated content
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[…] Patrick Ruffini notes a victory for user-generated content. The press isn’t even covering the story, as there seems to be a growing understanding that an inflammatory comment on a blog doesn’t make a candidate fringe. The Sunday Times Magazine profile of Ron Paul illustrates this well: The head of (a) Pasadena Meetup group, Bill Dumas, sent a desperate letter to Paul headquarters asking for guidance: […]