“Going viral” denotes that phenomenon which occurs through social media as disseminated through the Internet and that is often, but not necessarily, in the form of a video through which news of an event, or simply the event itself, is received by an exceedingly large and exponentially growing number of people within a short duration of time. To “go viral,” as the name implies, is to spread through cyberspace with the rapidity of a virus replicating itself throughout a population. An event or story is recorded—again, often as a video, but it could just as easily be an audio clip or some brief text containing a remark, quote, or gaffe—posted on a popular Web site or social medium such as YouTube or Twitter, and saturates the entire Internet within a matter of hours. Given that laptop computers, electronic tablets, and smartphones enable consumers to instantaneously gain access to Internet news with an expanded degree of mobility, flexibility, and speed, it is now possible for an event to go viral in a matter of minutes. The source of a viral story or video could be anywhere; it could initially be posted by a candidate, a campaign operative, a member of the press, or any private citizen with the access and skill to use the Internet accordingly. Once an event goes viral on the Internet, it is often repeatedly reported in the broadcast media, as more television news outlets are drawing stories from the latest viral videos and tweets circulating through social media. Once the incident is circulating through both the Internet and the twenty-four-hour news cycle, it quickly becomes nearly universally known to the general public. One can easily surmise what this means for presidential campaigns.
Arguably one of the more famous examples of a political episode going viral would be Howard Dean’s “screaming” incident in the aftermath of the 2004 Iowa Caucus. After having lost in Iowa, Dean, who had been considered the front-runner up to that point, in an attempt to bolster confidence among his supporters, at one point cut loose with an ear-splitting scream that went viral on the Internet and was replayed numerous times in the twenty-four-hour television news loop. In the 2006 Virginia senatorial campaign, former governor and incumbent senator George Allen, the Republican nominee for the open Senate seat, publicly and deliberately referred to S. R. Sidarth, a young Democratic campaign tracker who was shadowing Allen’s events, as “macaca,” which was immediately recognized as a racial slur, although Allen denied that this was his meaning or his intent. This story and image went viral and proved damaging to Allen’s campaign—he lost his seat to challenger Jim Webb in a tight election—and to his long-term career, which for many of his supporters within the party included the possibility of a run for the White House. During the 2008 New Hampshire primary campaign, a short video of Sen. Hillary Clinton showing vulnerability went viral on YouTube after first being broadcast on television. In the Campaign of 2012, numerous gaffes went viral, among them Gov. Rick Perry’s “oops” moment and Gov. Romney’s “47 percent” remark. But it’s not simply gaffes that go viral: The president’s “horses and bayonets” jibe during the third debate spread rapidly through the Internet. Less flattering to the president was viral video capturing a comment made while mistakenly assuming that he was off-mic, in which he assured the president of Russia that he would enjoy “more flexibility” to act after his reelection. In the early stages of the 2015–2016 campaign season, celebrity billionaire and GOP candidate Donald Trump’s observations and remarks had inundated both the Internet and the cable news cycle. His imprudent remarks about immigrants, his proclivities for blunt language and dramatic statements, his taunting of other candidates, and his rude posture toward television anchorwoman and debate moderator Megyn Kelly, as well as his perplexing treatment during a press conference of another broadcast journalist, Jorge Ramos, have dominated social media over the Internet as well as both broadcast and print media.
Since the advent of television coverage, presidential campaign moments have been spread across the media with greater rapidity and to a larger extent, which could offer the temptation to present retrospectives of famous campaign moments that might be exhibited as precursors to “going viral,” episodes such as Sen. Edmund Muskie “crying” at a press conference during the 1972 New Hampshire primary, and breaking news about Sen. Thomas Eagleton, the 1972 Democratic nominee for vice president, having received in the previous decade electroshock therapy as a psychiatric treatment for depression and debilitating stress. In the case of the former, Sen. Muskie, during an outdoor press conference conducted during a light snow, displayed emotion when answering unkind allegations about his wife that were in fact disseminated by dirty tricksters working for incumbent president Nixon’s campaign, and he appeared to choke up and blink back tears, a moment that was seized upon by his opponents to impugn Sen. Muskie’s character: A man who would so easily come to tears is not the man for the White House. Interestingly, when President Reagan cried at the funeral for the lost astronauts of the Challenger disaster, it was also a moment that “went viral” but an example of tears shed to the opposite effect, in this case conveying the president’s sincerity and sensitivity.
Other examples of “viral moments” that circulated prior to the Internet might include Vice President Mondale riffing off of a popular hamburger commercial as a pointed criticism of a rival candidate; or an annoyed Ronald Reagan, then a candidate for president, refusing to yield the microphone at a primary debate in 1980; or sadly comical images of a helmeted Gov. Michael Dukakis riding atop an army tank. As viral moments they might seem anachronistic prima facie, as they preceded both widespread use of the Internet and the twenty-four-hour news cycle, but they did quickly reach a wide audience and were familiar to the general public, elements of what it means to go viral. If a comment or incident is widely disseminated, like a rapidly spread rumor, then it qualifies as having gone viral. Probably the most famous example of a forerunner of a viral image or message is the familiar “Daisy Girl” television ad produced by President Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 election campaign. The ad was so inflammatory that it was shelved after just one broadcast, but that one broadcast nearly instantaneously stirred a national discussion, and it succeeded in influencing the manner in which many voters reacted to the president’s Republican challenger, Arizona senator Barry Goldwater. Some researchers have suggested that the “Daisy Girl” ad was one of the first instances of something going viral—in this case, due to media coverage of the ad and the controversies and discussions that ensued. Moments such as these do illustrate that modern media, at least with the ascent of television followed by the popularity of the Internet as a source of instant information, has been colored by the manner in which information about a candidate’s statements and conduct, both good and bad, reach a wide population among consumers of the news and users of social media. In a real sense, even before television, the old-fashioned rumor mill could influence how a public official was perceived. President Warren Harding earned a reputation as a womanizer (and father of a child out of wedlock), with the consequence that both he and his presidency were dismissed as shallow, ineffective, and—owing to the Teapot Dome scandal (unrelated to his personal foibles)—corrupt. But historians have more recently rehabilitated the reputation of the Harding presidency, the president’s own personal issues notwithstanding. While President Harding’s reputation did not spread virally, the dissemination of stories about his personal conduct might qualify as an example of a “viral” story that preceded even television. Interestingly, President Kennedy’s infidelities were well-protected secrets during his short lifetime, an example of journalists deliberately withholding information about a public official, and yet those who knew the president were aware of his proclivities and habits.
“Going viral” can work to a candidate’s advantage or disadvantage. In the examples above, Gov. Reagan’s refusal to yield the mic benefited his image as a strong, determined, indomitable leader, while Gov. Dukakis’s effort to visually convey that same kind of toughness while riding in a tank was risible. In some cases an incident gone viral, while stirring considerable coverage and exercised conversation, has little to no effect in the final analysis. For example, Gov. Romney’s “47 percent” remark, while infuriating to his critics, in the end was inconsequential to his campaign. In other cases, going viral has a double effect, both good and bad. In the current case of Donald Trump, many of his untoward comments have gone viral, causing considerable furor with regard to his image and conduct while at the same time perplexingly drawing new supporters. Trump is adept at turning negative press to his advantage like no other presidential candidate before him, surviving controversial remarks that would have destroyed the campaigns of most candidates. This ability to turn bad press to good is again reminiscent of that most famous forerunner of the viral video, the “Daisy Girl” ad, for much of the agitation about that television spot was critical of the Johnson campaign for using Cold War terror tactics to slur the opposition, but even though Johnson received criticism, it forced a reexamination of Sen. Goldwater’s stance with regard to how the military should be used, and to what extent the United States should go to win conflicts abroad, especially the war in Vietnam.
As YouTube and other social media outlets are used more deliberately by campaigns at all levels, viral videos, rapidly breaking news stories, remarks from candidates (including announcements, controversial claims, and occasional gaffes), and political messages will continue to gain the attention of Internet consumers. With the creation of YouTube’s Election Hub, for example, political campaigning appears to be entering a new phase in the dissemination of information. Now that the Internet has become a popular disseminator of information, the management of the media is no longer the province of experts, no longer directed by professional journalists or serving professional campaign operatives alone. The Internet enables anyone to post news of an event in their own way, and anyone’s video or tweet can spread with rapidity and ubiquity in ways that have no real precedent. In the age of the Internet, “going viral” illustrates what happens when “the press” becomes anyone with a camera, and it is but one more result of the introduction and continuing growth of online political communication, and it will no doubt remain a fixture of presidential campaigning into the foreseeable future.
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