September 11, 2000
Political parody sites pack a serious information punch, study shows
All kidding aside, Web sites that make fun of the presidential contenders do an effective job of educating ? as well as amusing ? a growing segment of the electorate, according to a new University of Washington study.
Parody sites such as http://www.gwbush.com, which reports 300,000 hits per month, pack their informational wallop by drawing on candidates’ actual biographical foibles, political inconsistencies and rhetorical gaffes, says study author Barbara Warnick, University of Washington professor of speech communication.
“People derive real information from these sites,” said Warnick, who closely examined eight of the sites ? five skewering Bush and three mocking Gore.
The parody sites studied by Warnick were dreamed up by amateur political partisans in 1999 or early 2000, and some of their content recently was appropriated by new attack sites created by the political parties themselves.
In contrast to the disorganized, “hobbyist” nature of the parody sites that Warnick found in a similar cyberpolitics study of the 1996 campaign, the most popular sites spoofing the Bush-Cheney and Gore-Lieberman tickets are listed by the major search engines, frequently updated, and loaded with flashy graphics and products to buy.
And Web parodists now can routinely fling visual and audio barbs, such as a photo of the Gores’ supposed family dog “Risky the Tax Scheme,” or this lampoon to the tune of “Georgie Girl”:
“Hey there, Georgy Bush
There?s a spoiled rich kid deep inside.
Bring out all the dirt you hide,
And oh, what a change there?d be.
The world would see
The true Georgy Bush.”
Growing technical sophistication also enables some of the bogus sites to closely mimic candidates’ real Web pages, tweaking the nominees through their own predictable habits of speech and well-known weaknesses.
“Bush (nicknamed ‘Shrub’) was generally portrayed as immature, a daddy’s boy, clueless, unintelligent, inexperienced, hypocritical, and a rich kid,” Warnick wrote. “Gore (also referred to as ‘Tree’) was viewed as a bragger, a liar, stiff, hypocritical, and without substance.”
And sometimes, Warnick pointed out, high-tech ridicule simply means letting a candidate show himself via bona fide, but carefully selected, news clips.
At http://www.algore-2000.org, for example, viewers can click on Gore’s 1996 convention speech emotionally denouncing the tobacco industry’s role in his sister’s cancer death, juxtaposed with a pro-tobacco campaign-stump speech that he had delivered after her death.
Bush, meanwhile, is quoted in gwbush.com taking bizarre liberties with English vocabulary, as when he criticizes affirmative action quotas that “vulcanize” society.
With nearly a quarter of Internet users now using the Web to find information on the presidential races, according to a recent Gallup poll, these very effective parody sites could expose lots of voters to the aspirants’ records, strengths and weaknesses.
“Visitors to the sites could learn a good deal about candidate biographies, most of which is true,” Warnick said, “and have fun at the same time.”
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Warnick can be reached at her office (206) 543-4860, home (206) 706-5946 or via e-mail at barbwarn@u.washington.edu. Her biography and a list of publications are available at http://www.depts.washington.edu/spcom/
Web sites studied:
http://www.gwbush.com
http://www.bushlite.net
http://www.georgybush.com
http://www.bushcampaignhq.com
http://www.youcrazy.com/georgewbush
http://www.allgore.com
http://www.algore-2000.org
http://www.bradley-gore2000.com
