The Hybrid Media System

by Andrew Chadwick

  In contrast with the $250 million spent on television advertising, Obama spent just $17 million on internet advertising and McCain a paltry $8 million (Fenn, 2009: 217). While much online space, like a Facebook page, is essentially “free” to fill with content, and online advertising is much cheaper than television advertising, these sums are still remarkably small. In 2008, most internet ad spending was channeled toward banner and video slots and the Google AdWords and AdSense systems. Though the sums spent were small, Google ads were an innovative departure from earlier campaigns, though even here these digital media strategies were integrated into the television strategies. Campaign staff began buying text ads that were automatically generated by Google’s algorithms and displayed alongside relevant keywords that were entered by the public as they searched for information related to the campaign. These ads were also used in key states to attract volunteers. Because Google keyword purchases can be changed very quickly, Google ads were useful for intervening in synchrony with key television events, such as the presidential debates. For example, prior to the third television debate, the Republicans purchased many keywords related to a section of their campaign site they had established to capitalize on McCain’s repeated mentions of “Joe the Plumber,” a reference to a Republican supporter who famously confronted Obama about his tax plans in front of cameras during canvassing in Ohio. The Democrats countered this with a new online form on their site. Launched just a day before the televised debate, it featured a “Joe the Plumber Tax Calculator,” which meant that it was likely to appear high up the text ads list as people went online to search the web after the debate. These techniques were clearly new to campaigns, and yet temporally they did not stand alone, but meshed with the older media logics of the televised debates.

  Obama’s huge financial resources also allowed the campaign to innovate in its television advertising. This further reinforced and renewed television’s role in the contemporary campaign, but these ads also had an important web element. As the campaign moved toward its denouement in early September, and the global financial crisis started to dominate coverage, Obama’s campaign decided to introduce a new series of economy-focused commercials. At an extra cost of some $6 million per week, and in a significant departure from the standard thirty-second television format, these new ads were two minutes long and integrated with further content on the web. These were huge expenditures, but the campaign raised a record $100 million of its $150 million for September online and it could deploy this money quickly. By that stage its e-mail list had swelled to more than 11 million supporters and it was seeing remarkably high levels of engagement, with around a third of supporters having donated and almost all of them having volunteered (Plouffe, 2010: 326–327).

  If the two-minute ads were a departure from tradition, what came next was even more unusual. Six days before election day, at an estimated cost of $5 million, the Obama campaign produced a thirty-minute documentary-infomercial entitled American Stories, American Solutions. This aired across the major television networks (excluding ABC), as well as MSNBC, Fox, Univision, BET, and TV One (Fenn, 2009: 215). The professionally produced film had Obama as its narrator, but it was directed by Academy Award winning filmmaker David Guggenheim. However, as if to symbolically enshrine the principles of community organizing in this decidedly non-grassroots media genre, the focus was on examples of ordinary Americans and their stories of economic hardship and determination. There were multiple references back to the narrative themes of Obama’s previous ads as well as personal testimony from renowned senators and U.S. military commanders. The film contained a detailed description—or certainly more detailed than is usual in campaign commercials—of Obama’s policy agenda. The broadcast’s final two minutes switched to a live transmission of a rally at which Obama was speaking that evening. The film integrated essential components of the campaign’s strategy: community organizing at the grassroots, elite endorsement, liveness, the simultaneous physicality, theatricality, and mediality of representing rallies and crowds, and the symbolic projected power of a campaign that can afford to dominate so much of American prime-time television scheduling with its own media content. An estimated 33.5 million watched the live televised transmission (Fenn, 2009: 215) and the film was streamed live on the campaign website and quickly archived to YouTube (BarackObamadotcom, 2008b). It went on to dominate two days of news coverage as election day arrived. Not since independent multimillionaire candidate Ross Perot’s series of thirty-minute films during the 1992 campaign had such a television onslaught been witnessed by American voters. The documentary-ad had a positive effect on Obama’s favorability ratings and those who reported watching the film were more likely to vote for the Democrat (Kenski, et al., 2010: 246).

  A further hybrid development in the 2008 campaign was the emergence of so-called “press ads”—commercials that were never destined to be aired on television but were shown on YouTube, the main campaign websites, and the temporary microsites. These ads also often found their way onto television, radio, and newspaper news websites (Fenn, 2009; Kaye, 2009: 29–68). As Jim Margolis, Obama’s senior adviser on advertising revealed, campaign staff send these ads to newspaper and broadcast journalists late at night or in the very early hours of the morning to try to gain earned media coverage from a paid media artifact (Margolis, 2009: 130). The files come complete with professionally produced video and graphics and require little if any extra work to made fit for broadcasting. Faced with a shortage of money for television advertising during the primaries, in summer 2007 the McCain campaign decided to temporarily suspend its television spending and prioritize web video (Barko Germany, 2009). To the campaign’s surprise, this tactic had much success, as journalists, especially those working the morning news shifts, were always eager for fresh visual material. The day after the third and final televised presidential debate, which saw McCain make headway with his repeated mentions of Joe the Plumber, McCain’s team uploaded an internet-only ad entitled “Joe the Plumber.” This gave television reporters something extra to add to their post-debate coverage and reinforced McCain’s message in the debate. This remarkably cheap way of gaining broadcast media attention was joined a few days later by a traditional $5.7 million television ad, “Sweat Equity,” which aired 12,750 times in the final two weeks before election day (Kenski, et al., 2010: 229). As Chris Mottola, McCain’s senior adviser on advertising said, “we had to feed the beast, feed the media every day and give them something to cover and something to talk about … It was like leaving bright, shiny objects in front of the media to cover the next day or cover in a cycle” (Mottola, 2009: 111). Anita Dunn, senior press officer for Obama, has gone as far as to say that the regular made-for-television ads were actually less likely to be covered by reporters than the more sensational ones they uploaded to the web and sent directly to the news studios solely to get media coverage (Dunn, 2009: 145).

  In addition to these press ads, the rise to prominence of YouTube during the 2008 campaign generated many “let’s see what’s happening online” side-features on television news. These often showed YouTube ads running inside web browsers that were in turn remediated on giant monitors in the television studios. This kind of coverage further encouraged campaigns to step up their online efforts as a means of capitalizing on television’s insatiable appetite for novelty and the news media’s more general “horse race” frame, which was just as dominant in 2008 as it had been in previous television-era campaigns (Owen, 2010).

  Television therefore remains a powerful campaign medium, not only because the medium is itself still hugely important for reaching audiences, but also because the very nature of television is shifting, as its technologies, genres, norms, behaviors, and organizational characteristics are becoming hybridized with those of the internet. In the hybrid media system, campaign commercials are increasingly part of a circulation, repurposing, and mobilization circuit: made-for-television ads feature on YouTube, made-for-YouTube ads feature on television; both appear a
s paid video advertising on newspaper and television companies’ websites; both link to campaign microsites channeling online donations or other online actions such as petition-signing. And citizen movements also solicit online content that they can repurpose in television advertising: MoveOn’s “Obama in 30 Seconds” competition asked volunteers to create short films that the organization then showed as traditional paid television commercials in the campaign’s final weeks.

  TELEVISION AND THE INTERNET: THREATS AND OPPORTUNITIES

  This hybridity compels campaigns to continually weigh the threats and opportunities presented by campaigning with older and newer media. The rise of cable and the fragmentation of television news audiences has altered campaigns’ perception of television as a medium. The networks are still heavily shaped by time constraints, the cable news channels much less so. Meanwhile, YouTube has become a gigantic video hub whose digital media logic of archiving and repetition has the capacity even to transcend the always-on, real-time stream of cable news. Yet in 2007 and early 2008, cable news channels attracted surprisingly high audience figures for the televised Democratic primary debates and the channels continually pressed state parties to hold more debates. Campaign managers still clearly see televised debates as major campaign events and they now tailor their approach to the broader media system. Cable television news has taken up the slack left by the networks, and the internet provides ceaseless opportunities for debate coverage of varying kinds. There were more than thirty nationally televised candidate debates during the 2008 campaign (May, 2009: 81).

  The power of television as a tool for campaigns to quickly and efficiently move the news agenda was obvious even during the primary’s early skirmishes. There were persistent attempts to use high-profile television appearances to attempt to steer the “national narrative” in Obama’s favor, especially during the build-up to the Iowa caucuses, when there was much traditional media skepticism about his viability (Plouffe, 2010: 75, 91–92). During a televised debate in Philadelphia in October 2007, Hillary Clinton’s failure to clearly state whether she was in favor of providing illegal immigrants with driver’s licenses became a big story for television news. This was followed in quick succession by revelations that Clinton was planting questions with audience members at televised rallies in Iowa. Cable news revealed video showing a questioner winking in sly recognition as she asked a planted question on climate change. The offending clip, taken from MSNBC’s Hardball, was also uploaded to YouTube by “james1053.” (james1053, 2007).

  The national television networks have steadily reduced their coverage of the parties’ conventions over recent decades. Nevertheless, in 2008 there was much anticipation of each party’s gathering, and the conventions still provide excellent opportunities for campaigns to try to shift the news agenda, not least because the 2008 race demonstrated that the audiences for these events can still be enormous. A record-breaking 38.3 million people watched televised coverage of Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic meeting in Denver. Twenty-four million watched Joe Biden’s vice presidential speech. With figures of 38.9 million for McCain and 37.2 million for Palin, the Republicans even managed to top the Democrats. These audiences were much larger than for Bush and Kerry in 2004, who attracted 27.6 and 24.4 million respectively (Kenski, et al., 2010: 131). The big events during the conventions are carefully timed to coincide with key early evening television news bulletins. A good example was Hillary Clinton’s carefully staged 6:30 p.m. interruption of the convention’s formal vote counting process, in order to nominate Obama “by acclamation” from the floor of the convention. Annenberg election study data reveal that, after controlling for standard predictors of candidate preference, the convention acceptance speeches played a significant role in shaping perceptions of the candidates. Both Obama’s and Biden’s speeches improved their favorability ratings, as did those of McCain and Palin, though there were doubts expressed about Palin’s “readiness” to be vice president (Kenski, et al., 2010: 123–148). Televised convention speeches are clearly here to stay. They play an important role in punctuating campaigns, in grabbing the attention of professional media, and in shaping voters’ perceptions of candidates and their campaigns.

  Having said all of this about the positive importance of television, the 2008 campaign was also infused with contradictory attitudes toward the medium. Now that online campaigning has become embedded in presidential campaigns, television may often loom as a less controllable threat. Long-form news shows such as the esteemed Sixty Minutes still have the resources to conduct investigative journalism. Live broadcast format shows such as ABC’s Good Morning America also have considerable investigative resources, but their live nature can also catch candidates and their staff off-guard. Appearances on these shows require time and effort to be spent on preparation and staff must “war-game out how … to minimize the damage,” as David Plouffe said of the “proctologic” exposé in early 2008 of Obama’s previous real estate dealings with Tony Rezko, a Chicago-based property tycoon (Plouffe, 2010: 155). Late-night television comedy shows can slice and dice almost any news footage to achieve satirical effects. Obama’s team responded by tightly controlling the political choreography of his appearances across as many public manifestations as possible (Cornfield, 2010: 213). Scheduled press conferences, such as the one held by Obama in order to defuse the Tony Rezko story, can turn into hostile feeding frenzies. It was not until a meeting behind closed doors with senior staff from the two major Chicago newspapers that were pushing the story had generated two positive editorials that the crisis was defused (Plouffe, 2010: 209–210).

  Then there was Obama’s televised chance encounter with a citizen, Joe Wurzelbacher, while street campaigning in Ohio during the closing stages. Wurzelbacher, or “Joe the Plumber,” confronted Obama with a highly specific question about the effects of the Democrat’s proposed tax increases for those earning more than $250,000 a year. Part of Obama’s response included the phrase “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” This was leapt upon by conservative commentators (Associated Press, 2008). Widely reported as a rare moment of direct, unstaged interaction with the public, and one with concrete economic policy implications, the Joe the Plumber video became a leitmotif of the final weeks of the campaign. But what was initially lauded as a rare piece of authenticity on the campaign trail soon metamorphosed into televised politics as usual. Wurzelbacher was quickly integrated into the McCain campaign assemblage and appeared in several television news interviews, including an exchange with Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America during which he called Obama’s tax plans “socialist.” This intervention was later picked up and repeated by McCain in a radio address (Kenski, et al., 2010: 226). Wurzelbacher also appeared at some Republican rallies, albeit briefly. McCain attempted to capitalize still further by injecting more than twenty references to Joe the Plumber during the final televised presidential debate at Long Island, whose audience numbered some fifty-six million. Investigative reports soon revealed that Wurzelbacher was not a registered plumber and that he was not going to be personally affected by the Obama tax plans, but this did not prevent the Republicans from making headway. By the close of the campaign McCain’s favorability ratings were improving, as were voters’ perceptions of his ability to handle the economy. These were related to the perception that Obama was a “tax and spend liberal”: viewing the final television debate was positively correlated with this attitude (Kenski, et al., 2010: 219, 225).

  The threats posed by the internet to a campaign are similar in some respects to those posed by television. The online environment sometimes looms as a vast, uncontrollable space populated by malicious rumors, ideologically charged bloggers, satirical viral videos, and archival evidence of candidates’ mistakes, all integrated and presented via a gigantic and convenient search interface called Google. But it is now equally obvious that campaigns can use the internet to discipline and control their campaigns in ways that can be difficult to achieve using telev
ision and newspapers. Campaigns often have direct access to the public online, unfiltered by news shows and journalism. They use the internet to bolster their ground efforts through carefully targeted fundraising. They now produce extraordinarily wide-ranging campaign assemblages that fuse technological means of control with the physical human labor required for door-knocking, canvassing, and phone-calling, in what Rasmus Kleis Nielsen calls “personalized political communication” (R. K. Nielsen, 2012). The web allows campaigns to sidestep the media logics of televised events, to construct a campaign on their own terms, with a schedule that they can more easily control. More than ever, campaigns can harvest behavioral data under conditions that they themselves have generated. In short, campaigns have now tamed large swathes of the internet and they have integrated it into a hybrid approach focusing on all relevant media. As I show in chapter 10, this approach intensified during the 2016 presidential campaign.

  Even spikes in online fundraising are now closely linked to important real-time televised campaign events, such as victory and defeat in primary contests, and good and bad performances in televised debates. These older media-driven events provide timely opportunities for campaign activists to intervene using newer media. As with the convention speeches, in 2008 the audiences for these events were enormous. The average television audience across the three presidential debates was fifty-nine million. The vice presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden was watched by seventy-three million, making it by far the most-watched vice presidential debate in U.S. history. Indeed, the Palin–Biden debate almost topped the first Carter–Reagan presidential debate of 1980, which was viewed by eighty-one million. In 2008 all of the debates were made available for viewing in multiple online environments.