First, a little background: Kanye West was apparently rude to someone (I say someone because we only really care about Kanye) at the MTV Music Video Awards. Kanye apologized. Then, President Obama was recently quoted as saying that West is a “jackass” on ABC’s Terry Moran’s Twitter feed. Don’t worry this is not a celebrity gossip blog entry.
It used to be the only thing a politician or public figure had to worry about was a “hot mike,” but if Obama’s little gaffe teaches us anything, it’s that one should watch out for those with itchy twitter fingers.
Twitter, unlike many social media apps, is instantaneous and somewhat irretrievable. There is typically no editorial process, or making certain that a comment was off-the-record, as it was in the instance of this particular Twitter misfire.
But Twitter is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the digital world’s incursion into private spheres – just ask Michael Richards, Saddam’s Executioners or even stranger, the thief caught on Google Streetview. There are fewer and fewer “private spaces” for everyone, not just politicians.
We in the U.S., have a great fear of a surveillance state – I would argue it is already here and run by the people rather than the government. To ascend the ivory tower for a moment, this looming reality can be connected to an idea invented by philosopher Jeremy Bentham (who still occupies a seat at University College London) and later picked up by Foucault, that of the panopticon.
I cannot help but be reminded of the first televised war – it created new obstacles and made it much more difficult for leaders to manage public opinion. Is this entire new media a boon to democracy and the public because it keeps everyone honest? Or will this new, loose, pastiche of a medium strip leaders and public figures of their aura and make them less and less palatable to the public?
If the show Big Brother has taught me anything (I cringe as I write that), the answer is “no”. I keep coming back to Marshall McLuhan’s revelation that the medium is the message. What is social media’s message?
Listen to Obama’s gaffe here.
