How online word-of-mouth can change mainstream media election coverage

On Friday, June 12th, Iran had a purportedly free and open Presidential election.  Debates were televised prior to election day, and the primary opposition candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh, stands in clear opposition to some of the views of current President Ahmadinejad.  At present, official news sources inside Iran have declared Ahmadinejad the winner, but Mousavi disputes the results for a number of reasons.

Over the weekend, in an uprising perhaps not immediately noticed by the mainstream press, people at the grassroots started to protest, not only in Iran but around the world.  Despite blockage of various internet sites by the Iranian government, videos of protesters like this, and photos of violence like this began to leak out of the country onto the open Internet.  The power of the photos and messages coming from people inside Iran were then amplified by outsiders using blogs and other social media tools like Twitter.

Two days after the election, some of the most popular "trending topics" being discussed on Twitter involve the Iranian election.  One of them, nicknamed "CNNfail," is particularly interesting.  The notion is that while controversy and violence were occuring in a globally important and politically hairy country in the center of the Middle East, CNN was covering "dumb stories" rather than paying attention.  After catching wind of this meme, however, CNN to its credit stepped up its coverage both online and on TV (while other networks appeared to do less).

What's the takehome message for U.S. politicians?  Word of mouth discussions, whether based in fact or fiction, can be very powerful.  Whereas mainstream media used to dictate to people what was important, now vocal people at the grassroots can to some extent dictate to the media what is important to them. And if they're not satisfied, they'll do their best to fry the news outlet(s) (as happened with #CNNfail).

That is a sea-change in the news coverage business.  Recall the "macaca" incident of Senator George Allen while campaigning for re-election in Virginia? That short video made the rounds on YouTube, then the blogosphere, and eventually became the topic of a series of questions on Meet the Press - and it effectively put the nail in the coffin of Allen's political career (he lost that race to now-Senator Jim Webb). 

Now, the situation is even worse for people putting their feet into their mouths - the viral ability of real-time conversations occuring on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere amplifies the message so quickly it can be hard to respond in a timely fashion.  Thus, it is very important to be a part of the conversation ahead of time, and to monitor it constantly.  It took two days for CNN to change gears - sometimes that won't be fast enough.