The Letterman Distinguished Speaker and Workshop Series kicked off Tuesday with Kathleen Hall Jamieson presenting "Emerging Media and the Path to the Oval Office" to a full audience in the Arts and Journalism Building.
A professor of communications and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, Jamieson explored the effect new media had on the 2008 presidential campaign.
She said significant technological differences separated Barack Obama and John McCain. The Obama campaign mastered newer technologies and used them to their advantage, while the McCain campaign stuck to traditional methods, Jamieson said.
The general population unknowingly played a key role in promoting or demoting candidates in this election through means of the Internet, Jamieson said. Anytime people forwarded the link for a Web site to a friend, she said, they essentially provided free advertising that had a higher level of credibility because it came from a trusted and known source.
"You are all citizen journalists," she said.
Jamieson said the change in media has positive and negative sides. An amazing amount of new information is available through the Internet, but there is also an amazing amount of discord among Web sites, she said.
She pointed to YouTube videos to solidify her argument.
President Obama's "More Perfect Union" speech had four million live broadcast views and more than 5.9 million YouTube views.
Alternatively, the video "Attack on Obama's Citizenship," which questions the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate, had more than 4.5 million views.
Jamieson said this discourse wouldn't normally be tolerated in mainstream media, and it is problematic when such rumors aren't being addressed by national news outlets.
"The Internet gives you the capacity to get on and say anything you want," she said.
She also said humor was an effective means of persuasion during the last campaign, as shown on Web sites such as JibJab and YouTube. Jamieson said this was because audiences are more likely to be persuaded when they are caught off guard and don't recognize the content as influential.
Freshman Jared Barker said he hadn't considered that entertaining political Internet content had an affect on his perspective until listening to Jamieson's presentation. He said Jamieson opened his eyes to the amount of positive online messages about Obama, compared to the majority of negative skits concerning McCain.
Six more speakers will visit Ball State this calendar year, including newsman Ted Koppel.
Roger Lavery, dean of the college of communication, information and media, said this series will serve as a "litmus test" to keep Ball State fresh and current in its fields of study.
"We look for someone who is highly regarded in their area of expertise," Lavery said. "We're hoping they will inspire the students - it might even be a transformative experience."
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