This past Thursday featured what looks to be the first of several “Presidential Candidate Dialogues” jointly hosted by MySpace and MTV. The event, held at the University of New Hampshre, featured former U.S. Sen. John Edwards talking to and taking questions from and audience of up to 300 attenedees, primarily made up of Univesity of New Hampshire Students, MTV viewers, and MySpace users.But that wasn’t all. It allowed for an online audience to submit questions via instant messager and also express opinions on Edwards’ performance. These opinions could be gathered collectively to create a consensus and then this consensus could be reported back in real time to the candidate. The whole lasted for about an hour and had a definite energetic feel to it.
Washington Post political blogger moderated the event along with MTV correspondents Gideon Yago and SuChin Park. I’ve always like Cilizza. He seems to have a pretty deep insight yet maintain a down to earth approach about him. And two veteran pollsters were brought in, John McLaughlin, a Republican, and Geoffrey Garin, a Democrat to handle the polling and online audience response feedback.
But here’s what I liked abut the event itself:
1) The continued dispersement of news and informational media delivery
While we’re beyond the period in which the vast majority of people (or at least those that are not directly involved in politics) get the vast majority of their news from traditional news sources – TV broadcast networks and their nightly newspapers and more recently, news oragnizational websites, we still haven’t quite reached a phase were the fragmentation of media outlets and delivery systems makes non-traditional outlets players. The CNN/YouTube debates held for the Democrats made YouTube a player, but the presence of CNN made it all the more legit.
What’s great abut this effort is that it involves two entities that are neither traditional media nor “news-centric”. Granted, MTV has a news bureau and has gotten involved in the political arena. But that isn’t it’s central mission. And MySpace was barely a blip on the nation’s consciousness at this point in the last election cycle.
Here we have two non-traditional players work together to host a forum in which is both both broadcast and webcast to potentially millions. Traditional media has a slight presence (Chris Cilizza of the Post), but it is MySpace and MTV that not only make it possible, but make it sizzle. And I bet this change is permanent.
2) Interactive audience feedback
While I wasn’t necessarily impressed with how it came out – it was mostly generic positive feedback – I like the idea that feedback can be made possible in real time. As this evolves, it should get more complex and may be used in future presidential debates between the two nominees. Can you imagine a candidate who gets too nasty or one who is constantly avoiding answering a question getting feedback live that he or she is looking idiotic or poor? It will probably happen. A major improvement over the tightly controlled events that we’ve had for the past few decades.
3) Candidate interaction to a targeted demographic in an interactive setting.
This might seem to be a combination of the first two and in a way it is. But this format can now be transferred to other non-traditonal media partners who can reach out to their targeted demographics. This means candidates will have to forego stump speeches from time to time.
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