New Media thoughts

Reading Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life makes me realize that new media (or, more specifically, web-based media that are user-initiated) are tactical (in Certeau's definition of the word), whereas old media are strategic. (For definitions, see above.) Blogs, twitter, etc. are a microcosmos, while the web itself is a cosmos or, more aptly, a commons. Reality shows and programs like Britain's Got Talent are attempts (and they are perennial) to capture the bottom-up, demotic nature of new media and harness it for old media's purposes. Old media purveyors are constantly trying both to fence in the commons and charge rent for it, and to create commercially-viable platforms for essentially demotic content. Obama's healthcare initiative exemplifies the binds that arise when top-down initiatives attempt to co-opt the crowd. Obama's brilliant campaign, which owed much to Howard Dean's earlier one, was much more tactical about new media, in part because it was all going his way. It would be better to use the crowdsource aspect of new media to throw the debate open and reshape the initiative (perhaps through the use of interactive queries - surveys that invite you to join an ongoing community) around people's actual preferences. Even the legislation might build in the potential to revisit its basic assumptions as healthcare reform plays out in real time.