New forms of "imagined community" during the campaign?

We took a long walk and got a lot of fresh air yesterday. As a result I started dozing off right as SNL got started, so I completely missed watching Sarah Palin's appearances in real time. Thanks to Twitter (which I've just started to use and still don't really totally get), this morning I got a whole new set of perspectives on the event of watching it with other people. I'm getting an education in finding things online by having started to Twitter, because people post links that take me to new sites. Cool!

But Holy "imagined community," Batman!

If you missed it too, and you want to check out the clips, AND see videos of all the other candidates' SNL appearances this year, you can find them at Mashable.com."Millions of viral views" is the title of the post. One of the stories of this year's campaign is going to be the way that digital media has altered our experiences of participating as an audience in political discourse and political action. Not only can we see videos of events filmed by the mainstream media, we can watch those of citizens journalists, like Chuck Olson and Noah Kunin on The UpTake, and other folks who just posted their cell phone videos of rallies or speeches; we can watch vlogs or YouTube posts where folks give their opinions; there are all the mashups, parodies and songs; and when we watch a debate, we can chat, liveblog, or tweet in real time, feeling ourselves to be part of a group with people we know through their online personae. I'm sure some very smart people are going to help us analyze all of this. Right now, I'm just trying to get up to speed on all the various ways in which we are co-participating as more than passive viewers in a collective experience of knowing ourselves to be part of the citizenry.

The interactive, participatory, and productive potential of these experiences is evident when Michele Bachmann (MN Congressional District 6) appears on TV, ranting for ten minutes about investigating the patriotism of Congress, the video clip is reposted on YouTub and then on blogs, and as a result, her opponent El Tinklenberg receives over $100,000 in donations from people who find her to be the new McCarthy. Awesome! because she is a hateful demagogue and he is a decent human being with a track record of working for the public good, especially in transportation issues, which we so desparately need!

The arguments or discussions in blog comments that I've observed, or in which I've participated, are another way that political discourse is being created, and where we see people interacting who might not do so IRL. But a very important part of these experiences is also the story-telling that validates these expressions of opinion. When people share their stories of conversations when door-knocking (at 536.com) for example, or of the emotional impact of John McCain's scare quotes when he said "health for the mother" on those who have had to terminate a pregnancy due to health risks or the death of joyfully awaited child in utero (at dooce's site) these stories have an impact on people's ideas.

Colin Powell was going to endorse Obama anyway, but he specifically mentions Bachmann (although not by name) and her rant as the last straw. (but he has a lot to answer for).