Youtube-Seeing and Believing

I am a big fan of Jamais Cascio, the futurist who writes for Worldchanging and Open The Future. His work--especially when it pertains to security concerns--is always thought-provoking. His post "The Participatory Deception" touches on something that I've written about in this post and my essay for the emerging Michael Tanji compilation--new media and deception.

Cascio sees in the democratic potential of viral video a new potential for deception. With so many users utilizing cheap, easily pieced-together video and audio editing technology, it is virtually inevitable that hoaxes will be utilized for political advantage. Granted, they may be detected, but not before causing a good deal of trouble. I see the Obama "stealth Muslim" email hoax as a good example of this trend.

Some cautions though: hoaxes, like any other form of social engineering, are very dependent on the bias of those who perceive them. Crowdsourcing, localization, and customization of news in the United States is creating a political economy of the media designed to make news a lifestyle--i.e reading only what you agree with or makes you happy. More ideologically inclined political deception's impact is going to be dampened because a good deal of it will only be taken seriously by those already inclined to agree with it. The "stealth Muslim" hoax in itself is a great example of this. The people who took the emails to heart were unlikely to vote for him to begin with, and it had little strategic impact on the election.