Have Video Camera, Will Travel

Prof. Steve Taylor was the Humanities-Social Science Lecture presenter on Oct. 26. He read from his upcoming novel. Many MC101s were in attendance.

Trackers are people armed with inexpensive hand-held video cameras who follow politicians on the campaign trail. They are generally in opposition to the candidate they are tracking. The camera is used to record unflattering or otherwise politically-damaging moments.

What makes things different this year, says a Los Angeles Times article, is that the trackers now have the ability to quickly edit their videos, make them embarrassing as possible, and put them on YouTube. For example, Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) is being tracked by Kevin O'Brien, who posted this unflattering video. More serious political damage was done to Sen. George Allen (R-VA) after a tracker captured these insensitive comments.

An earlier, audio-only, pre-YouTube version of using the Internet to politically-damage a candidate is the now-famous Dean Scream. Early in 2004, then-Gov. Howard Dean (D-VT) had just placed a disappointing third in the Iowa Presidential Caucus. He sought to energize his supporters with a fiery and upbeat speech, but captured on audio it came off somewhere between manic and hysterical.