Profile: David
Karpf
University of Pennsylvania
Dave Karpf is a doctoral candidate in the University of Pennsylvania political science department, as well as a Fellow-in-Residence at the Miller Center for Public Affairs in Charlottesville, VA. He is scheduled to defend his dissertation, "Power Laws and Internet-Mediated Organizations: the Emerging Landscape of Collective Action" in June '09. Dave's primary research interest is in novel forms of political association that are brought about by the lowered transaction costs of Internet-based communications, including community blogs such as DailyKos, and new "progressive generalist" interest groups like MoveOn and Organizing for America. Dave also serves as Fifth Officer on the Sierra Club Board of Directors, an organization which he has been involved with for 13 years. His previous research, "Understanding Blogspace" was published in the December '08 issue of JITP.
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Presentation Date:
4/16/2009
Presentation Time:
11:15am
Paper Title:
Macaca Moments Reconsidered…
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YouTube Effects or Netroots Effects?
Abstract:
This paper explores “Macaca moments” – high profile candidate gaffes that are captured on YouTube and receive a cascade of citizen viewing, leading to substantial political impacts. Such moments are widely taken as indicative of the way that YouTube is changing politics. Through a detailed comparative case analysis of the original “Macaca moment” – George Allen’s controversial statement in the 2006 Virginia Senate election – and the most often-cited such incident in the 2008 election – Michele Bachmann’s verbal misstep on Hardball with Chris Matthews – the paper discusses the varying impacts of YouTube itself versus the “netroots” political community. Though there is great similarity between how the 2006 and 2008 moments involved YouTube, the substantial differences between how the netroots engaged with the larger campaigns led to widely divergent outcomes. The paper seeks to bring political organizations back in to the study of online collective action, and is one of the first academic works to treat the robust political community at DailyKos.com as a topic worthy of examination in its own right.
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