Watch out. Just because a campaign is using social media or getting a lot of support online, doesn’t mean it’s really grassroots. Claims of money raised via the Internet, as well as tallies of small donations versus large donors, or other newer metrics of public participation like Twitter retweets or YouTube views, don’t prove anything. Such signs offer hints that a candidate or movement is resonating with the public, nothing more. If anything, campaigns often want to encourage the appearance of being “grassroots” while obscuring where the real money and power resides. The political media needs to be skeptical of this have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too approach; too often what is said to be “grassroots” would be better described as “grassrootsy.”
December 10, 2011