Image is everything. Sucks but it’s often true. And nowhere more so than in the political sphere - whereby the image projected via TV/video coverage can frequently sway voters more than any carefully-written manifesto.

This isn’t anything new. Kennedy and Nixon were neck-and-neck in the polls until their famous televised debate of 1960, when the power of these televised images was revealed in post-debate polls.

Political candidates today know the power of image, however whilst they might try to harness this for themselves via carefully-orchestrated campaigns, today the real battle takes place via the stuff they don’t control.

Massive amounts of pro-Obama content on Youtube undoubtedly played a significant role in his galvanising of popular support (and being dubbed the President of Youtube). And Hillary Clinton’s integrity took a severe kicking when various videos debunking her claim to have endured sniper fire in Bosnia racked up millions of views on Youtube.

Video footage can still make or break a candidate’s reputation - except that now the power to capture, edit & distribute content is in the hands of the many, rather than the few. Jamais Cascico has written a really thought-provoking piece examining the potential dangers this opens up:

What happens when not only have the tools of documenting the world become democratized, so too have the tools for manipulating our interpretations of reality?

Cascio predicts that we’ll see a rise in participatory deception - the deliberate propagation of manipulated video footage to discredit given individuals or groups. Although he believes such fakes wouldn’t last long before being debunked, an onslaught of clips propagating a given rumour would nevertheless have a definite lingering effect.

It’s the flip side to the Participatory Panopticon. The Panopticon was Jeremy Bentham’s model for a prison in which all inmates could be watched at all times - and has come to take on the broader meaning of the modern ‘Big Brother’ society where we’re all under constant surveillance. Except that in the participatory panopticon, we’re the ones voluntarily undertaking the surveillance - constantly watching everyday life, capturing it, and posting it online. And rather than ’surveillance’ (from above), this has been termed ’sousveillance’, or watchful vigilance from underneath.

The online attention market wields massive power - so it doesn’t seem unlikely that the Panopticon should evolve into a Decepticon - I just wonder how long it’ll take before this becomes a fully-fledged reality…

[ Open the Future: the Participatory Decepticon - via PSFK ]