debates

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.

Last night I helped live-blog the CNN/YouTube debate over at Tech President. Here's my rough thoughts on how it went down:

• Overall, CNN continues its fine tradition of infantilizing its audience, this time also managing to take the internets down with it. After an opening montage about how they carefully weeded out all the crazies and "unserious" questions, they proceeded to waste the first five minutes on a ridiculous song about the candidates that asked no question and made no substantive points beyond caricature. What followed was a freak show (Bible Kid, Confederate Flag Kid, etc) of issue advocates mostly lobbing softballs and non questions to the candidates (what' kind of gun do you own?!?). To wrap up, CNN almost topped the Diamond and Pearls incident of a few weeks ago with the most important question of the evening: Red Sox or Yankees? Surprisingly, there was no Mac vs. PC question. CNN: The most trusted name in news? More like CNN: We think you're dumb.
  
  

  For more on how CNN spectacularly failed the audience and demeaned the internet as an information resource and media outlet, I recommend checking out J-Ro over at The Seminal.

• Let's all pause for a minute and remember that this debate was postponed two months becausethe Republican candidates were scared of the internet. Granted, such an up close look at their base was indeed scary, but they really had more to fear from Chuck Norris in the audience. I think with the power of his mind he cowed the other candidates into either mumbling incoherence (Thompson) or clouded their minds, giving Huckabee cover while Romney and Giuliani sliced and diced each other and every topic under the sun.
• Huckabee was the clear winner tonight, and it came at a time when his star is rising in Iowa. He really came across as a true compassionate conservative, particularly on issues like immigration and poverty. If he holds similarly "compassionate" views on the environment (stewards of the earth and all), then Huckabee truly is the most dangerous candidate in the GOP race. I can see the Huckster pulling the GOP away from its radicalism of the last 7 years, and appealing widely to moderates, progressive evangelicals, and even younger folks who mostly don't even know who he is yet. Huckabee might be the only candidate that actually could beat one of the Democrats in November.
• Did everyone notice that the debate was sponsored by Big Coal, and not a single question out of 5000 submissions was about energy policy or the environment?
• YouTube and CNN made a big deal about this being "the people's debate." So it was a pretty big shock to see a question from Grover Norquist, uber Conservative advocate and tax lobbyist. Why didn't they just get Bush, Cheney or Rove to ask the questions?
• Thompson almost had a breakout moment when his campaign bucked the trend with their 30 second video. Most campaigns air uplifting bio vids or humorous shorts, like Edwards, Dodd, and Giuliani have done. Thompson instead used his time to attack his two biggest competitors. It was interesting because it jolted the debate off-script. Cooper had to delay a commercial break to let Huckabee and Romney respond, and it briefly put them on the defensive and gave Thompson control of a supposedly uncontrollable debate. Too bad Thompson isn't nearly as good as his campaign. He seemed asleep the rest of the evening and failed to capitalize on this.
• Apparently only three black people in America care what the Republicans think, and only two were willing to sit in the audience and allow CNN to carry on the long-standing Republican tradition of using a few black folks as props to highlight their committment to diversity.
• Finally, how could I not mention the gay Brigadier General. Republican heads across the nation exploded from cognitive dissonance over that one. A few points to make here - this was geniunely the best question of the evening, and the General shamed every candidate on that stage with his rebuttal. I was shocked that the audience booed the general - I guess they don't support the troops. I loved Duncan Hunter's response, which boiled down to "our young men and women in the military are all conservative (not true, particularly among enlisted men and women), and they're bigotted, so we can't allow gays to be out in the military." Second point - this was the only substantive follow up from a questioner. Again, I thought this was the people's debate? Third point, I don't want to be a tin foil hat guy, but what's up with his mic getting cut? Fourth and final point, CNN failed to disclose that the General was an active volunteer in the Clinton campaign. Is it me, or does CNN really really suck at this debate thing?

Overall, this was a step backwards from the Democratic debate. Less hard hitting, less participatory, and the CNN editorial filter did an even poorer job of vetting the questions and moderating the discussion. I give the evening a D. These debates can't even hold a candle to what MySpace and MTV have been doing with their candidate "Dialogues." Speaking of which, John McCain is on deck for Monday . . . that should be interesting. It will give us the first chance to see how a Republican fares against the Flektor live polling, and, because of McCain's views on Iraq, we may actually see an information feedback loop from question to poll to user-generated follow-up that really pushes back on what the candidate is saying.

MTV's "dialogues" with the candidates are starting up next week, beginning with John Edwards on September 27th. As we reported here just a few weeks ago, these dialogues have the potential to be the most interactive and informative debates thus far in an election cycle that's seen some decent innovation in how candidates and the public interact. Streamed live over MySpace TV and MTV.com, the debates offer the chance for viewers to provide instantaneous feedback and ask new questions in response to answers provided by the candidates.

The kind folks at Mashable have produced this early glimpse at the MTV MySpace Widget that will allow viewers to rate the candidate's responses in real time.

I have somewhat unreasonably high hopes for this debate, though there are a few minor SNAFUs that are giving me pause.

First, a video on MTV's website describing how to participate was unembeddable here on the FM site (even though MTV supplied an embed code), and information on the event is no where to be found on the MySpace Impact page. I understand that participation requires placing a candidate in your top 8 friends, but beyond that I'm still a bit mystified as to how I submit a question via MySpace. I'll probably end up trying through the MTV website as this seems the least confusing option (though I'm not sure if the candidate rating system is available both at MTV and MySpace, or just on the social networking site.

The announcement of the moderators is also giving me The Fear that this will be a less than successful event: Gideon Yago, whose political coverage never particularly impressed me as hard hitting, is one of the moderators along with SuChin Pak, an MTV news reporter of whom I've never heard of (even though thanks to my girlfriend, I watch a lot of MTV), and Washington Post reporter Chris Cillizza. I've got a hard time seeing Yago or Cillizza really push these candidates on their answers, something that I think is a requirement for these dialogues to be really worthwhile. SuChin Pak is a wild card in this equation.

The third strike is the day and time of the event - Thursday at noon? Whose got time to watch a live debate on MySpace in the middle of the day? Students are likely in class or roaming campus, away from their computers, and young adults will be at work. These debates should have been held at 7 or 8pm, when everyone is home and has time to sit in front of their computer. The point of making them interactive is to encourage participation, but MTV is discouraging participation by scheduling the event in the middle of the work day.

Despite this, I remain cautiously optimistic. I hope these events will be groundbreaking, though they could easily just fizzle out. We'll find out next Thursday at noon, when John Edwards takes the stage in the first of this live series.

The details of the much blogged about MySpace/MTV candidate forums were released today, and the potential is huge. Much as we all love to loathe Rupert Murdoch, and bash MTV for crappy political coverage, the two look set to hit a couple home runs this fall.

Taking criticisms of both the traditional debates (nothing but 60 second sound-byte marathons) and even the much heralded YouTube debate (too much of a filter between candidates and questioners, no follow-ups, mostly sound-bytes), MTV and MySpace have hit up an interactive format with the potential to pioneer a whole new way of doing candidate debates/forums.

Starting on September 27th and running through December (with John Edwards as the inaugural guinea pig in this new experiment), the two companies will host individual candidate forums. Running one hour in length, the forums will potentially provide viewers with a substantive glimpse into the positions and qualifications of the many candidates for both parties' nominations. Trumping even YouTube in interactivity, the forums will be held town-hall style in front of a live audience on yet-to-be-determined college campuses. Questions will be submitted live via IM, text messaging, and email. Most intererestingly, the event will employ continuous live polling, allowing the audience to rate candidates' responses (and allowing a competent moderator to properly follow up when candidates dodge, obfuscate, or just plain don't answer the question). At the end of the event - which will be broadcast on MTV, MTVu, MTV.com and MySpaceTV - all footage will be available for remix and reuse.

While this still leaves open the question of who actually gets to select which questions are presented to the candidates, the potential here for a new kind of candidate/voter forum is pretty high. If MTV and MySpace can establish a working feedback loop in which voter-generated questions are presented to the candidates, the audience rates the answers, a competent moderator incorporates that feedback into a follow-up question, and the audience itself is then led to ask different questions based on the candidate's response, we might actually find ourselves in the midst of a national, truly participatory, debate.

As a format that would be both informative and empowering for voters, it would stand in stark contrast to our current debates, which are disempowering in the passivity they enforce on the audience and the maddening way in which they actually make the electorate dumber by allowing candidates to obfuscate their positions and filibuster their time with non-responses. The national press corps has let us down in their role as moderators, abdicating their responsibility to pin down the candidates in the name of time constraints. If MTV/MySpace's forum runs properly, there will be nowhere to hide. After that, being able to remix the video content is just gravy.

This comes just as MTV announced it would hire 50 vloggers (video bloggers) - one in each state - to cover the 2008 election. I've criticized the Choose or Loose campaign in the past for being nothing more than an ineffective broadcast media campaign, but MTV truly looks to be innovating in the field of election coverage this year. It's going to be exciting to watch all of this roll out.