Why Was The Revolution Tweeted? Social Media, Or Insurgent Media?
William Jacobson believes the Massachusetts revolution was Tweeted, along with its reliance upon other social media applications like blogging, of course. I agree. But why now?
Kos said early on the Right had found their Paul Hackett and I thought it a prescient observation.
Twitter is new, but social media isn't. In some ways, the Right seems to be catching on to what the Left did. But I think it may have less to do with technology and more to do with motivation.
There were tools in place over several years. Perhaps social media is more for insurgencies, than an entrenched party. That would jibe with the sense of playing defense many of us felt during the Bush years. One is less likely to be engaged in reaching out pro-actively, if they're constantly dealing with incoming from the other side.
Just look at the Left out here today and see what their focus is on – defending, or rationalizing away Obama, if not criticizing him. They never even stepped up in Massachusetts in a serious way. The game changer here may have more to do with who is in and who's out, more than anything else. And Twitter just happened along at the right time for the Right to take the lead.
Twitterers are “cracking, popping, drilling and peeling their victims open”
“Bloggers are ‘cracking, popping, drilling and peeling their victims open,’” we wrote five years back, applying blind paleontologist Geerat Vermeij’s “Everyone is mostly affected by their enemies” theory to explain what went wrong with the Democrats. A…