Anyone with a political project finds himself speaking, at some point about “mobilization,” which is to say determining who is on your side, who might, under certain conditions, be on your side, how to weigh those who might under those conditions be on your side (as opposed, of course to those who are or might be on the other side) and, of course, how to create those conditions by which they might be on your side along with increasing their weight. The question, then, is what’s the best way of talking about this. The default discourse is derived from liberalism and democratic discourse, and in particular, the language of PR, advertising, polling, and so one which identifies “issues,” which can ultimately framed in terms of some law or court decision, the demographics and underlying “beliefs” of those who care about those issues, and so on. All of this is designed for winning elections, and appealing to donors who are necessary in order to win elections, and frames media discourse and leads to the creation of think tanks and other institutions aimed at studying and modifying public opinion. The basic question is also something like “what can I say to the person with profile X to make it sufficiently likely to make the investment in persuasion worthwhile that that person will vote for candidate Y”? We can easily imagine a dollar per vote calculation underlying efforts at communication.
The Bearer of Sovereignty
The Bearer of Sovereignty
The Bearer of Sovereignty
Anyone with a political project finds himself speaking, at some point about “mobilization,” which is to say determining who is on your side, who might, under certain conditions, be on your side, how to weigh those who might under those conditions be on your side (as opposed, of course to those who are or might be on the other side) and, of course, how to create those conditions by which they might be on your side along with increasing their weight. The question, then, is what’s the best way of talking about this. The default discourse is derived from liberalism and democratic discourse, and in particular, the language of PR, advertising, polling, and so one which identifies “issues,” which can ultimately framed in terms of some law or court decision, the demographics and underlying “beliefs” of those who care about those issues, and so on. All of this is designed for winning elections, and appealing to donors who are necessary in order to win elections, and frames media discourse and leads to the creation of think tanks and other institutions aimed at studying and modifying public opinion. The basic question is also something like “what can I say to the person with profile X to make it sufficiently likely to make the investment in persuasion worthwhile that that person will vote for candidate Y”? We can easily imagine a dollar per vote calculation underlying efforts at communication.