Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man has probably been a reference in every presidential campaign and debate since it was published in 1964, but with every major advancement in media technology, it becomes even more relevant.
The idea that the message is not merely the content, but also the mechanism for delivering the content, is especially important in an era where there is a plethora of options for transmitting a message.
How Technology Shapes Politics
For example, Twitter launched in 2006, and by the time the 2008 election season was in swing, Twitter had about 2.5 million unique users, according to ComScore. That rose to over 20 million in the next year, but importantly even when it was just 2.5 million unique users, the platform was already a major influence in U.S. politics.
On Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2008, John McCain and Barack Obama took the debate stage at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. The next day, Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter blogged about the event with graphs showing the Twitter activity at pivotal moments in the debate.
Quickly, candidates understood their messages were being carried not just in the debate medium, the televised event medium, but also the social media medium. This inflection point in many ways echoed the first-ever televised presidential debate in 1960. Richard Nixon was, by most accounts, well-spoken and well-prepared, but sweating and appeared haggard. In contrast, John F. Kennedy looked healthy and vivacious.
Seeing, not just hearing, the candidates made a difference. Politician Bob Dole recalled the impact of seeing the candidates to a PBS reporter.
I was listening to it on the radio coming into Lincoln, Kansas, and I thought Nixon was doing a great job. Then I saw the TV clips the next morning, and he … didn’t look well. Kennedy was young and articulate and … wiped him out.
What Nixon was saying was overshadowed by the way he looked and that was only made possible for millions to see because of television cameras.
The Power of Social Media
In much the same way the lesson of the television camera became a new force in politics, the power of social media influenced a new generation of politicians. Barack Obama, with over 100 million Twitter followers, was the first president to respond to questions via Twitter and has been called “the first Twitter president.”
Social media campaigns have become important tools for elections since 2009. Donald Trump joined Twitter in 2009 and had over 88 million followers when his account was banned. Like traditional news media, social media can also be a source for critique of the candidates.
While presidential candidates can’t completely control how and where their campaigns are covered, they can control how and where they announce their candidacies. This makes the medium they choose for this important message especially important in understanding how they want to project their image.
In this debate season, it’s interesting to look at the mediums each candidate chose to announce their presidency and how the grammar of those mediums best supports their messages.
The Importance of Image
The most obvious example may be Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who announced his run on Twitter Spaces (now X). Technical glitches aside, DeSantis chose a platform that is itself facing controversy. As an article in The Atlantic put it,
Ever since Elon Musk announced his intention to acquire Twitter, take the company private, and introduce a new era of free-speech absolutism, users have been threatening to leave the platform—a threat that has been likened to those made by liberals during the 2016 presidential election to move to Canada.
What was it about Twitter that made DeSantis want to align himself with the platform? There are many possibilities—perhaps he wanted Musk’s endorsement, maybe he was hoping to capture the influence Donald Trump had enjoyed on Twitter, or maybe he was sending a message about free speech, or maybe he was making a point of not being afraid to step into the fray—whatever it may be. One thing is certain, it was not a happenstance.
Several other candidates took a more traditional route, announcing their candidacies at events in their own states or states with electoral influence. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced at a Town Hall in New Hampshire; North Dakota Gov. and former Microsoft executive Doug Burgum did it during a speech in Fargo, North Dakota; former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson declared he was running during a speech in Bentonville, Arkansas; Mike Pence had his formal campaign kickoff in Ankeny, Iowa; Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina made his candidacy public in a speech at Charleston Southern University, a private Baptist college and Scott’s alma mater (which also happens to be in his hometown of North Charleston).
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley took a different route and made a video announcement. Her message, “time for a new generation” was transmitted in a newish way: Joe Biden also announced via video message. An advantage to this method is the editorial control—you may not be able to manage the humidity in North Charleston (or the snowstorm of Amy Klobuchar’s 2020 announcement), but a pre-recorded video allows for many takes and optimal settings.
Another interesting announcement came from biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who broke the news on Tucker Carlson Tonight. Like DeSantis’ medium of choice, Ramaswamy chose a platform that may have been more influential than anything he said when he announced.
As the debate season gets underway, it will become clearer what each of these candidates stands for and how the mediums they have chosen reflect their messages.
As Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out these mediums are not just a transmission mechanism, they bring with them a culture—and tapping into that culture is part of the strategy.
By D.R. Thompson
McLuhan Galaxy 
AI & the Future of Education by University of Toronto Professor Paolo Granata
Paolo Granata is the director of the Media Ethics Lab at the University of Toronto. What makes us human in an age of AI? Professor Granata believes that AI – a new medium, a new language, a new information environment – holds the potential to enhance human agency and to reimagine the future of education.
The Media Ethics Lab is a research hub at the University of Toronto that studies the ways that digital media practices and emerging technologies are marked by ethical issues and decisive political, societal and cultural questions: http://mediaethics.ca 00:00
Intro 00:48 From the Gutenberg Galaxy to the Turing Galaxy
03:48 AI is not a Tool, it’s an Environment
05:00 Content matters, but context more so
08:00 Algorithmic learning vs Heuristic Learning
So, here’s the thing: it’s not just about ChatGPT doing homework for students. The real danger is that we created a system where students must become like ChatGPT to successfully complete a course. The fact that students may be tempted to use IA tools to breeze through their coursework is the concrete evidence of the limited demand for creativity. In many disciplines students are not required to use their creativity or imagination to pass a course, they have to just follow the recipe, executing the algorithm given to them. This is not nurturing intellectual growth: this is just manufacturing educational conformity.
It seems we have created a system where similarity is rewarded, and originality is often overlooked. Is this what we really want education to become?
Filed under: Academic, AI, Commentary, Education, Ideas, information, New Media, Scholars, Students, Technology, Video | 2 Comments