Cross-Cultural Blog

This blog entry is part of a Fall 2008 blogging exchange between American University in Cairo and Stanford University's Online Activism class. To read all the entries, follow this thread; be sure read the earliest entries first.

My name is Katie Gera and I’m writing this post as part of a class titled “The Web 2.0: The Rhetoric of Online Activism.” The subject of this blog post will be the way Republican presidential candidate John McCain attempts to establish his credibility on his official website.

The strategies that struck me the most were the “Joe the Plumber” advertisements and the photographs taken with military wives and families on the campaign trail. Using these visuals, McCain seems to be attempting to create two distinct images of himself: the “average Joe,” or ordinary citizen to whom Americans relate on the one hand, and the Navy war hero whom they can admire on the other. Throughout the website, there are numerous references to McCain’s career in the military, many of which focus on his time spent as a POW. These reinforcements of the candidate as a heroic and respectable military man create a sharp contrast against the McCain/Palin campaign’s most recent surge of “Joe Six-Pack” and “Joe the Plumber” themed advertisements. While I understand the need to represent a presidential candidate as a multifaceted individual, I think the newly adopted tactic of “average Joe” commercials indicates that the McCain campaign has become increasingly aware of their failure to perform well in the polls and is now trying desperately to frame John McCain in a new and positive light. In my view, seesawing with his image in this manner has actually decreased both the candidate’s and the campaign’s credibility.

Posted by Stanford: Online Activism at 06:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

This blog entry is part of a Fall 2008 blogging exchange between American University in Cairo and Stanford University's Online Activism class. To read all the entries, follow this thread; be sure read the earliest entries first.

McCain made a choice to choose a woman as his vice president, who may become one of the first female vice president in USA history. There are many reasons behind Mccain’s choice of Palin. McCains opposition had an interesting choice of candidates including an African American and a woman and in order to stand out he was in need of someone who could fill this gap in his campaign and Palin seemed to be the right choice. She would be bringing a relatively 'youthful' and energetic aspect to his office as she is 44 and he is over 70, this incorporation would add refreshment to the office. He is also trying to get the votes of American women who had voted for Hillary. By chossing Palin he wants to prove that he believes in women and their equal capabilities like men. He is not just targeting women through this emancipated view. He is also targeting men by including a female factor. She seems elegant, represent able and could be considered the perfect example of a women pursuing her career and maintaining a successful private life. His choice is believed to be based on many more factors that he believes will be of interest to the American population. Palin being a young, conservative, ordinary woman of five children with a huge success in her career seemed to be a right choice as it created a statement about the American culture. Her many economic and political accomplishments and being the governor of Alaska make her qualified for taking on such a position. But still the question remains... is Sarah Palin the right choice? There is a lot of controversy behind her. Part of the American population still does not totally accept the idea of choosing a female leader. With all this in mind, McCain took a decision to have her as his vice president without realize the controversy that could come from bind her. One example is her 16 year old daughter who is pregnant now, before being married; in this case an abortion wouldn’t be an option as it’s against republican views…could this cause a problem for the campaign. So the question is did McCain really make a good decision when he chose Sarah Palin to be his vice president?

Posted by American University in Cairo at 02:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

This blog entry is part of a Fall 2008 blogging exchange between American University in Cairo and Stanford University's Online Activism class. To read all the entries, follow this thread; be sure read the earliest entries first.

Obama’s website addresses the issue of poverty in America while McCain does not. Each candidate chooses to include or omit this issue since each is targeting a different audience. McCain’s campaign targets older, well-off people, namely upper-class citizens, while Obama targets “the common man,” specifically the lower-and-middle class. McCain does not wish to appeal to Obama’s target group and thus does not address the growing issue of poverty in America. Obama’s campaign dedicates a large part of his website to this issue, which effectively reaches his target audience.
Obama starts his speech by describing a famous encounter between Bobby Kennedy and an impoverished child of the Mississippi delta. This introduction touches the audience on a personal level as well as appealing to patriotic emotions. He states a known quotation by Bobby Kennedy, “How can a country like this allow it?” These words insinuate the audacity of poverty in a country as rich and affluent as the United States. Obama does not fail to repeat these words throughout his speech which emphasizes their emotional effect. Obama mentions facts such as the increase of poverty two fold since 1980 and follows them by repeating, “How can a country like this allow it?” mounting the outrage towards the government who has not taken poverty into account. He attacks McCain’s ideologies indirectly throughout the speech by offering quotes that were said by Dr. King, “Hope is not found in any single ideology – an insistence on doing the same thing with the same result year after year.” These words reinforce appeal to the American patriotism of the middle-class.
As students in a third world country it is interesting to us to consider poverty as a serious issue in the richest country of the world.

By: Silke Martin , Kanzy Kandil, Ihab Awwad

Posted by American University in Cairo at 06:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

This blog entry is part of a Fall 2008 blogging exchange between American University in Cairo and Stanford University's Online Activism class. To read all the entries, follow this thread; be sure read the earliest entries first.

I am writing this blog post as part of my PWR 2 class, The Rhetoric of Online Activism. I will be commenting on John McCain website. (JohnMcCain.com)

John McCain knows he most likely will not be able to sway any Democrats in this election, but might be able to persuade some independents to vote for him. His site seems to engage the already loyal Republican voter while being a collage of his life and adding forays into Obama’s inexperience.

Upon entering the webpage, there are videos of John McCain taking to the audience about how horrible the last four years have been trying his hardest to separate himself from Bush but not the Republican Party. He then goes to show the events of the Vietnam War and how he was not in the “hippie” movement, but in a prison camp in Vietnam for years serving his country. He uses his experiences in Vietnam to show how he puts “Country First” and himself second.

When directed to the main page we see tabs for his issues and then “Photos of the Week” showing McCain and Sarah Palin in images that make them look powerful and distinguished. He then tries to appeal to the “Joe the Plumber” person with the phrase, “Don’t Tax Me for Working Hard”. On the “Issues” page, the site uses images of different things including a fighter jet a picture of a “traditional” American family outside a house. These photos appeal to many people as being “American” and promoting the “American Dream”. McCain displays himself as “Maverick” willing to put the country first and how he crosses party lines to help America, for example the immigration reform bill alongside Democrat Ted Kennedy.

JohnMcCain.com seems to try and appeal to the values of the Republican Party while debunking Obama from everything from his Senate voting record to his inexperience. McCain poses himself as the seasoned and experienced “Maverick” while making Barack Obama seem too inexperienced to be President, and stating how he does not stand up for the American People. I think his site does a great job engaging people who are already going to vote for him but could have done a better job influencing the undecided voter.

Posted by Stanford: Online Activism at 06:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This blog entry is part of a Fall 2008 blogging exchange between American University in Cairo and Stanford University's Online Activism class. To read all the entries, follow this thread; be sure read the earliest entries first.

We are commenting on the Obama campaign website (www.barackobama.com) for our PWR 2 class, The Rhetoric of Online Activism.

Obama’s history as a community organizer has been the target of frequent mockery from the McCain campaign, with VP candidate Sarah Palin joking that “being a small town mayor is like being a community organizer, except you have actual responsibilities.” Despite the overwhelming cheers from the Republican Convention crowd, Obama has used his experience as a grassroots organizer to further the interests of to his campaign. Using his website as his primary tool, he has established a strong base of local volunteers eager to canvass, fundraise, and hold community events to support his campaign.

As soon as visitors access his website, they are immediately confronted by a barage of images imploring them to take direct action in support of the Obama campaign. The opening page of the website asks visitors to “Join the Movement” by supplying their email address and zip code, allowing the Obama campaign to contact them (often multiple times a day), informing supporters on the daily news of the campaign, offering ways to get involved,and, of course, asking for money.

If visitors choose to skip the signup and go directly to the main page, they are immediately greeted by links and graphics telling them how they can get involved in the campaign. Perhaps the most interesting of these is a tab titled “Neighbor to Neighbor, which if clicked on links to a page where visitors are told how they can make an impact for Obama by volunteering in battleground states.

The site says,“Talking directly to voters is the most important way you can help win this election for Barack Obama.” Importantly, the emphasis is on what “you,” a campaign outsider, can do to influence the election. It stresses the importance of everyday Americans in effecting change and empowers ordinary citizens to take some ownership of the campaign. This is where Obama’s background as a community organizer clearly manifests itself in a positive way for the campaign. The strength of the Obama campaign’s volunteer network shows that his years spent as a grassroots organizer was time well-spent.

Mark Garret
Susanna Sheehan

Posted by Stanford: Online Activism at 04:28 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This blog entry is part of a Fall 2008 blogging exchange between American University in Cairo and Stanford University's Online Activism class. To read all the entries, follow this thread; be sure read the earliest entries first.

Hello, we are three students enrolled in an oral communication class considering the role of the Internet in political activism. Our names are Samantha McGirr, Ayis Megiris, and Thomas Fu. Thomas is a registered Democrat, Samantha is an independent voter, and Ayis is independent but cannot vote due to his international status. We recently performed a rhetorical analysis of the McCain-Palin website.

With its straightforward, commonsense rhetoric and layout, the McCain site is designed to appeal to an audience of white, male, undecided voters. Upon entering the site, viewers are greeted by a videotaped McCain arguing that “The last eight years haven’t worked very well, have they?” an observation probably intended to distance himself from President Bush and thus align himself more closely with moderate views. To the right of the video are several buttons labeled with action verbs such as “Learn More” and “Recruit.” Such participatory words give viewers a sense of empowerment, making them feel more invested in the campaign.

Continue reading "From John to Joe: McCain's Appeal to Middle-Class America" »

Posted by Stanford: Online Activism at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

This blog entry is part of a Fall 2008 blogging exchange between American University in Cairo and Stanford University's Online Activism class. To read all the entries, follow this thread; be sure read the earliest entries first.

We are analyzing the use of color on the Obama campaign websites for our writing and rhetoric course, which focuses on the rhetoric of online activism.

The first-time visitor to Barack Obama’s campaign website is immediately confronted with an abundance of blue. The color varies from a deep, royal blue to the light sky-blue of Obama’s campaign logo. What does this color mean? What argument is Obama making?

On the one hand, the use of bright blue as a highlighting color might be an attempt to literally “shed light” on Obama and his campaign; the vibrant yet dignified hue fits perfectly with Obama’s message of hope and change and his calm, collected, and confident public image. Blue is also a reassuring, calming color, perhaps used to enhance his appeal to undecided voters worried about his relative lack of experience. But in comparison with John McCain’s website, which utilizes a solid, monochromatic dark blue, Obama’s site may appear too cheery or superfluous- while McCain is dependable, stolid, and experienced, Obama is a pop-culture celebrity who cares more about exciting imagery than political content.

Both candidates, however, undeniably use blue as a reference to the American flag, and avoid red, with its associations with socialism, communism, blood, and anger (one of us is a Chinese citizen, and is accustomed to websites decorated in shades of red, an indicator of a completely different political system). When red is used, it is almost universally in a negative sense. In a short slide show on Obama’s website attacking McCain’s tax plan, the words “Bush” and “McCain”- obviously negative for a Democratic candidate- are a vibrant red, which conjures up images of “red ink” (a common term for debt), blood, suffering, and (above all) the Republican party, whose supporters are commonly referred to as “red-staters.” Although red and blue are equal on the American flag, they are clearly not equal in the complex political psychology of color that has become ever more important as the internet has come to dominate political discourse.

-Shuolong Yang, Kaitlin Halady, Kevin Baumgartner-

Posted by Stanford: Online Activism at 04:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This blog entry is part of a Fall 2008 blogging exchange between American University in Cairo and Stanford University's Online Activism class. To read all the entries, follow this thread; be sure read the earliest entries first.

So here’s our blog post analyzing Barack Obama's campaign website for our Rhetoric of Online Activism class, written by a group of three students with three different political viewpoints: Libertarian Estevan Flores, moderate Andrew Marantan and liberal (but fiscally conservative) Danny Zuckerman. Despite this variation, because we are all fiscally conservative, we were interested in analyzing how Obama presented his fiscal policy; we found Obama’s “Tax Cut Calculator” feature of his website is designed to serve a political purpose by presenting results differently depending on which candidate the cuts favor.

Continue reading "Obama's Tax Cut Calculator: The Art of Omission" »

Posted by Stanford: Online Activism at 03:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

This blog entry is part of a Fall 2008 blogging exchange between American University in Cairo and Stanford University's Online Activism class. To read all the entries, follow this thread; be sure read the earliest entries first.

Hi, this is Ian, David, and Lexi and we're working on this blog as part of our web-activism class at Stanford University. We're all Obama supporters and this may factor into the way we critically analyze the McCain website.

It seems clear that the website's intended audience is primarily the standard conservative voter. On the front page, for example, there are several links leading the reader to donate and volunteer for the McCain-Palin campaign. Most of the advertisements on the website either attack or make fun of Obama and Biden. McCain also focuses on appealing to typical Republican positions of small government in his warnings that Obama will "spread the wealth around," insinuating that Obama is a "socialist" or backs ideals of a large and uncontrolled government. McCain argues that Obama will raise taxes on the hard working "Joe the Plumbers" of the world - his new go-to icon and talking point.

Continue reading "Analysis of McCain's Website" »

Posted by Stanford: Online Activism at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This blog entry is part of a Fall 2008 blogging exchange between American University in Cairo and Stanford University's Online Activism class. To read all the entries, follow this thread; be sure read the earliest entries first.

The following blog post is a rhetorical analysis of the campaign website for John McCain from the viewpoints of three Stanford students who each identify himself as more Democratic in political persuasion.

Specifically, the focus of this analysis pertains to the apparent generation of a mythical narrative about ‘John McCain’. On the website this campaign tactic manifests itself literally on every page. The photos, the videos, and the written content itself, all seem to have arisen from a romanticized auto-biography. Far more of the content on every page addresses and explicates the history of McCain’s “service” both in the army and the Senate.
On the ‘About McCain’ page one can find the following

Continue reading "Self-Deception: John McCain... the Man, the Myth, the... Novel?" »

Posted by Stanford: Online Activism at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

This blog entry is part of a Fall 2008 blogging exchange between American University in Cairo and Stanford University's Online Activism class. To read all the entries, follow this thread; be sure read the earliest entries first.

We are writing this post in our writing and rhetoric class that looks at the intersection of the Internet and politics. Our group members are Max Del Real, Kelsey Walker and Claire Kouba. While Max is a registered Republican and Claire and Kelsey are registered Democrats, we are all Obama supporters. In this post we are analyzing the McCain/Palin campaign website.

Upon arriving at the site, the first thing we noticed was the option to pick a viewing preference depending on your political standing: “Supporter,” “Undecided,” or “Unregistered.” With this function, the site appears to be catering to multiple points of view – but there is a conspicuous lack of an option for a voter who is opposed to McCain. This reveals the target audience for the site: current supporters and potential votes. It is not meant to change anyone’s opinion; rather it is preaching to the choir (and to those considering joining the “team”).

This “target audience” is confirmed by the fact that all of the anti-Obama arguments are supported by little (if any) substantial evidence. Instead, these arguments are condensed into clever-sounding claims that sound good to those who are already McCain supporters. An example of this would be the “Decision Center,” where the site makes such assertions as “Obama says he would meet unconditionally with the world’s worst dictators, from Ahmadinejad to Castro to Kim Jong Il.” The lack of specific details leaves the reader of such a statement either blindly accepting the flaws of Obama’s foreign policy, or uncertain as to how the website came to this conclusion and why it is such a bad thing.

This sort of appeal to McCain’s base gets his intended audience riled up emotionally and more passionate about his campaign. Using this positive emotional appeal is thus highly effective with those who already agree with him, but does little to encourage actual debate about the candidates and their policies.

Posted by Stanford: Online Activism at 02:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This blog entry is part of a Fall 2008 blogging exchange between American University in Cairo and Stanford University's Online Activism class. To read all the entries, follow this thread; be sure read the earliest entries first.

Hey fellow commrades! This is Karen Nesbitt, Emily Clopp, Christina O’Neal from the States. We are writing from our PWR 2: The Rhetoric of Online Activism… to you! Our main argument focuses around the rhetorical aspects of the official Barak Obama website, www.barakobama.com. In making assesments, biases are fairly common, so we want to awknowledge that we take a more liberal/Democratic stance on issues and are sophomores at Stanford University. We found the general loyout of the website to be straightforward and uniform, but in with a unique asthetic style. The aspects that we found most effective on his site were the initial image of his family shown when entering the site, the cleanliness and flow of the information, and the directs links to aid in being a proactive supporter.

Continue reading "Obama: Yes We Can" »

Posted by Stanford: Online Activism at 02:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This blog entry is part of a Fall 2008 blogging exchange between American University in Cairo and Stanford University's Online Activism class. To read all the entries, follow this thread; be sure read the earliest entries first.

Our class on Online Activism was looking at the websites of Senator Obama and Senator McCain to study what rhetorical strategies they use online. Our group (Olivia, Ricardo and Amanda) decided to examine how the inclusion, or exclusion, of various campaign issues on Sen. Obama’s website shows ways that the Issues section of his website is directed at undecided voters.

Continue reading "To Include or Not to Include: Issues pages on Senator Obama's website" »

Posted by Stanford: Online Activism at 02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm Melissa Leavitt, the instructor for the "Rhetoric of Online Activism" class at Stanford. The focus of our class has been to explore the impact of new media and participatory media on politics and culture. In the coming weeks, the "Online Activism" class at Stanford and a class on argument from the American University of Cairo will be posting entries discussing and analyzing the McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden web sites. Our goal is to analyze the rhetorical strategies and political arguments of these sites, and also to explore how cultural context impacts the effectiveness of these arguments. After the election, we'll return to these posts, and comment on them in light of the election results. We welcome comments on these posts to keep our conversation going!

Posted by Stanford: Online Activism at 10:11 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)