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Amber Davisson
Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2011, pp. 101-123
(Article)
Published by Michigan State University Press
DOI: 10.1353/rap.2011.0005
For additional information about this article
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/rap/summary/v014/14.1.davisson.html
Access provided by University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign Library (25 Jun 2014 14:32 GMT)
Beyond the Borders of Red and
Blue States: Google Maps as a Site
of Rhetorical Invention in the 2008
Presidential Election
Amber Davisson
In 2008, Google site users accessed the expanding features of Google Maps to
produce geographic images that challenged the traditional mass media and
interpreted the presidential election through the depiction of alternative forms
of data. These new media maps of the 2008 election demonstrated the varying
levels of inventional freedom that individuals enjoy with new media technologies. When considered as rhetorical objections constructed by new media users,
these maps constitute a collective social statement about the responsiveness of
the electoral process to the act of voting.
Tonight, as the results of this too-close-to-call election trickle in, voters will
find out not just who they’ve chosen to lead them, but where they live—in
“red” or “blue” America. . . . Red and blue, of course, have become more than
just the conveniently contrasting colors of TV graphics. They’ve become
shorthand for an entire sociopolitical worldview. A “red state” bespeaks not
just a Republican majority but an entire geography (rectangular borders in the
country’s midsection), an iconography (Bush in a cowboy hat), and a series
Amber Davisson is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Media Studies at Willamette University
in Salem, Oregon.
© 2011 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved. Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vol. 14, No. 1, 2011, pp. 101–124. ISSN 1094-8392.
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of cultural clichés (churches and nascar). “Blue states” suggest something
on, and of, the coastal extremes, urban and latte-drinking. Red states—to
reduce the stereotypes to an even more vulgar level—are a little bit country,
blues are a little more rock-and-roll.1
O
n the eve of the 2004 election, Paul Farhi, a Washington Post staff writer,
attempted to sum up the culture connotations embodied by the now
familiar red-and-blue map. At first glance, this common depiction
of the results of the presidential election may seem benign, but over the last
three election cycles, this map has demonstrated the ability of geographic
images to advance political agendas while appearing to display objective
information.2 The red-and-blue map is part data and part interpretation.
It represents a series of choices about what sources of election information
to depict, and it provides a primary framework for voters to interpret their
relationship to the election process. Conversely, during the 2008 election
cycle, Google users accessed the expanding features of Google Maps and
Google Earth to create geographic images that provided other options for
interpreting the election through the depiction of alternative forms of data.
The contrast between the red-and-blue map and the user-generated maps
demonstrates the transition from the industrial era philosophy of broadcast
media to the postindustrial philosophy of digital media. Moreover, this
contrast is evidence that the changing philosophy of media structures has
impacted the logic behind media production, which in turn has influenced
citizens’ relationship to the overall voting process. In the 2008 election cycle,
user-generated maps challenged traditional political maps, interrogated
mainstream media rhetoric about a fractured nation, and expanded upon
official campaign depictions of what constitutes participation in the election
process. When considered as rhetorical objects, these maps constitute a
collective social statement about the responsiveness of the election process
to the act of voting.
Industrial and Postindustrial Philosophies
of Media Production
The presidential election maps circulated by the traditional mainstream news
media send the message that the opinions of voters are homogeneous and
geographically bound. The appearance of homogeneity is in part a product of
Beyond the Borders of Red and Blue States
103
the logic of the broadcast media system. According to Lev Manovich, historically, the mainstream media has replicated the logic of an industrial society.3
The advent of large-scale industry meant that goods, which once required
expert crafting and were only available at high cost, could be mass-produced
by machines at much less prohibitive prices. In this society it was possible for
everyone “to enjoy the same goods—and to share the same beliefs.”4 For the
past hundred years, the distribution processes of the mass media have been
based on industrial notions of replication and mass production.5 Broadcast
media has expanded its reach farther and farther, until it has become possible
for most of American society to have the same media experiences.6 At the
same time, the mass media as a vehicle for presidential campaigns adopted
this industrial philosophy and the logic behind it, which in turn made it
possible for campaign teams to translate the beliefs of voters into polling
numbers and to package candidates for mass consumption.7 Because voting
groups are often disconnected from one another, the news media is a primary
source of information about the divisive and shared beliefs associated with
various geographies.8 The traditional red-and-blue map symbolizes the
overall message of the mainstream media by blocking off large areas and
communicating to viewers that everyone who lives within the borders of a
given state shares a similar set of experiences and ideals. According to the
logic behind the industrial philosophy, those shared experiences and ideals
naturally lead to a shared ideology.
Emerging digital technologies represent a departure from the industrial
philosophy and the broadcast media logic that follows from it.9 Manovich
explains that digital technology “assure[s] users that their choices—and
therefore, their underlying thoughts and desires—are unique, rather than
preprogrammed and shared with others.”10 This belief is the core of the
postindustrial philosophy: “Every citizen can construct her own custom
lifestyle and ‘select’ her ideology from a large (but not infinite) number of
choices.”11 The philosophy behind the production of new media has opened
up a space where users can construct media objects that contradict, align
with, diverge from, or expand on the mass media’s depiction of the election.
New media objects are made up, at their base level, of code, which makes it
easy to alter an object without destroying the original. Manovich refers to
this characteristic as “variability.”12
Before digital technology, a media object might have functioned rhetorically
to broadcast one dominant ideology; the variability of digital objects makes
it easy to modify them and create a custom rhetoric. In the modern media
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environment symbols of dominant ideology and these custom rhetorical
objects often circulate through the same networks, creating competing
interpretations of events.13 The competition between various forms of media
forces media users to adapt their rhetorical practices; this leads to innovation,
experimentation, and a heightened state of rhetorical invention.14 During the
2008 election cycle, the tensions among traditional mass media, campaign,
grass-roots, and user-generated maps highlighted the struggle over interpretation of the voting process and demonstrated the impact that the shift from
the industrial philosophy of broadcast media to the postindustrial philosophy
of new media had on the ability of engaged publics to construct their own
rhetoric and inhabit their own worlds through map making.
Mapping the 2008 Presidential Election
The first known maps were made in Mesopotamia around 4,500 years
ago and were used primarily to depict land boundaries and basic physical
features such as rivers or mountains.15 For thousands of years after that, map
making required a considerable amount of expertise and skill. Every map
was made by hand and nearly impossible to duplicate. As maps have grown
more detailed and precise over time, cartographers have had to deal with the
political implications involved in choices of what to depict and what not to
depict.16 Those questions became even more contentious as digital mapping
systems appeared in the 1960s and brought with them claims about how
the tools used to make maps removed the cartographer’s subjectivity from
the process.17 By the mid-1990s, maps could be automatically generated
online with little expertise, and more maps were being distributed through
computers than printed on paper.18 In half a decade, modern technology has
made map making a relatively easy and automated process; some geographic
information systems (GIS) receive nearly one million requests per hour.19
These automated systems seemingly remove agency, which creates questions
about reading these maps as rhetorical objects.
It is easy to accept that maps are persuasive. Even among professional
cartographers, “it is commonplace to say that cartography is an art of persuasion.”20 Jeremy Black points out that “maps are not life-size; they are models,
not portraits, let alone photographs, of life. Most are minute compared with
what they depict. . . . A map is a show, a representation. What is shown is real,
but that does not imply any completeness or entail any absence of choice.”21
Beyond the Borders of Red and Blue States
105
Still, to say that maps are rhetorical might lead some to confuse them with
propaganda. According to John Harley, most cartographers “concede that
they employ rhetorical devices in the form of embellishment or ornament,
but they maintain that beneath this cosmetic skin is always the bedrock of
truthful science.”22 The core of objectivity that is claimed by cartographers
could be one of the factors that distinguish the maps made by experts from
the user-generated maps produced online. However, as Harley explains, it
is important to recognize that “rhetoric permeates all layers of the map. As
images of the world, maps are never neutral or value-free or ever completely
scientific. Each map argues its own particular case.”23
The inherently persuasive nature of maps makes them excellent rhetorical
tools. Computer-generated maps provide the illusion of objectivity, but
even scientific systems are created by humans and always contain elements
of interpretation and choice.24 The maps people see everyday do not
simply display the truth of a given environment, they argue for a particular
understanding of that space. In the case of political maps, arguing for that
truth becomes particularly tricky because the information being displayed
does not link to a set of physical features, such as rivers or mountains.
These maps are based on social scientific data that lack a physical reality.
The rhetoric of expertly produced political maps and user-generated online
maps both contain appeals to the ethos of scientific map making while also
demonstrating the subjectivity inherent in cartography. This essay contrasts
the types of choices made in different forms of map making to highlight
the different forms of persuasive appeal contained in these maps. Both the
expert and the user-generated maps rely on different forms of subjectivity
and objectivity, and as such they communicate different approaches to the
election process.
Most of the maps created by geographic information systems are practical tools to provide direction from one location to the next. However, the
advent of certain Google Maps applications has made it possible to turn map
making into a communal, collaborative process.25 The Google Maps GIS
allows individuals to visualize various forms of qualitative and quantitative
data, such as global health trends or war victims’ narratives, by overlaying
that information onto maps.26 According to Ben Rigby, researcher for
Rock the Vote, with these new programs “Google offers Earth as a canvas.
Organizations like the Holocaust Museum paint this canvas with what are
called layers, which mapmakers use to thematically organize information,
such as images, icons, graphs, charts, and text.”27 This software gives users
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the ability to convey complicated messages through cartographic images
without any formal training in cartography. Moreover, users’ expert status is
expanded by Google Maps’ open application programming interface (API),
which allows for the creation of software and data mash-ups. A mash-up is
created when an individual pulls from two or more already existing works
to create a derivative work; a common example of this is a YouTube video
where a fan selects video clips from a popular television show and sets them
to music.28 The mash-up capability of the Google Maps software permits
users to overlay a map with symbols, images, video clips, and text. The user
can combine the data from Google Maps with data from media sharing or
social networking technologies such as YouTube or Flickr. These mash-ups
make it possible for individuals untrained in cartography to create election
maps that deploy many of the same persuasive techniques as the maps created
by expert cartographers.
The analysis in this essay focuses on four categories of political maps
produced during the 2008 election cycle: the red-and-blue map, candidate
maps, interactive and collaborative maps, and user-generated maps. The
traditional red-and-blue election map frames the election in the mass
media discussions as a divisive moment, whereas campaign maps interpret
the election as a moment of unification under the banner of a particular
campaign and the ideas of a candidate. Both the red-and-blue maps and the
campaign maps provide a primary framework for understanding the election.
The interactive and collaborative maps, designed primarily by grass-roots
movements, invite information from individual users. These maps place less
emphasis on the outcome of the election and focus more attention on the
value of each participant’s engagement in the act of voting. This engagement
contrasts sharply with the red-and-blue map and the candidates’ campaign
maps. Finally, the user-generated maps show examples of individual users
sifting through the wealth of information provided during the election process
and using a Google Map mash-up to give coherence to that information.
Red-and-Blue Maps
The traditional red-and-blue election map represents the mass media’s attempt
to create a unified experience of the presidential election. In the 2000, 2004,
and 2008 election cycles, this map showed the Midwestern part of the nation
as a solid red island surrounded by blue.29 The data depicted gave the impression that the majority of the country was Republican and that the nation was
Beyond the Borders of Red and Blue States
107
divided neatly into sections with sharp political boundaries. This red-and-blue
map symbolizes what Vanessa Beasley refers to as the contradictory aspects of
the American condition: the United States is simultaneously united by shared
ideas and divided by differing characteristics.30 Somehow, “the American
people have learned to live comfortably with their contradictions.”31 This map
depicts the tensions that exist across state boundaries, as Americans work
to make decisions as a cohesive group. For many this commonplace symbol
reinforces the lack of national unification across state lines and interprets the
election as proof of a divided nation. The red-and-blue map speaks of division.
As a symbol of the election, the red-and-blue map is relatively young.
Prior to the 2000 election cycle, several color schemes had been used by
media outlets to communicate voting results, but red-and-blue was the first to
achieve widespread and lasting use.32 Color-coded maps, called choropleths,
are commonly used to depict statistical data.33 The initial use of “red state”
and “blue state” as popular terms is attributed to a report by Matt Lauer and
Tim Russert on an episode of NBC’s Today Show during the 2000 election.34
Since then, the phrases “red state” and “blue state” have entered the popular
vernacular as shorthand for the political and ideological beliefs of certain
geographic locations.35 The combination of visual language, statistical data,
and cartographic representation has given the red-and-blue map of the
United States a lot of rhetorical force. As a symbol of the election, both the
map and the language that follows from it reinforce the industrial philosophy
of broadcast media. It depicts the space as homogenous to communicate the
notion that those individuals living in the space share a common set of political
beliefs. If a state is 51 percent Democratic and 49 percent Republican, it is
colored blue on the map. The red-and-blue map does not depict degrees of
party affiliation; it depicts absolutes. The blue color, for example, constructs
the state and the individuals living within it as Democrats. This exemplifies
one of Black’s primary complaints about mapping politics: “Maps generalize
(both spatially and by category), abstract, exaggerate, simplify and classify,
each of which is misleading. The truth is not only more complex; it is also
the very fact of complexity. The general failure of maps to communicate
uncertainty is serious.”36 The red-and-blue map communicates the mass
media interpretation of the presidential election as an adversarial process
with sharp dividing lines, clear winners, and clear losers. The clarity of the
dividing lines communicates a common experience of the election and the
voting process.
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Alternative maps of the election offer voters a chance to visualize their
relationships in different ways. For example, a traditional choropleth of the
2008 election gives the sense that Obama does not represent the majority of
the American people and that the presidential election was divisive. This is
one potential interpretation of the 2008 election. However, Mark Newman,
a cartographer from the University of Michigan, created a project that offers
alternative choropleths that provide the ability to interpret the election
outside the divisiveness of the mass media depictions.37 One set of maps
Newman employs is the cartogram, which is a map that rescales a space
based on statistical data.38 For instance, Montana is a large state with a small
population and only three electoral votes. On the traditional election map,
Montana appears as a large red, Republican state. This implies that a large
portion of the country is Republican. When the state is resized in Newman’s
cartogram according to its population and electoral votes, it suddenly becomes
much smaller in relationship to more densely populated states like New York.
Overall, as different sets of population data are used in addition to voting
results, the blue areas of the map suddenly appear much larger than the red.
This makes the Obama win appear much more decisive.
The cartogram still depicts belief systems based on states and deploys
state boundaries to separate individuals. However, other maps on Newman’s website use different color and boundary systems to demonstrate
more variation in the voting patterns of each state. One such map displays
the voter breakdown by county within each of the fifty states.39 Spaces are
seldom made up entirely of Democratic or Republican voters, and to show
the diversity of these areas, the red and blue are combined to create shades
of purple. The amount of red and blue in each county is representative of
the percentage of voters from each party. As a result, some areas are more
blue, some areas are more red, and most are varying shades of purple. The
traditional choropleth might make voters feel isolated in the midst of a state
where no one shares their views. With this alternative choropleth, Newman
allows voters to visualize themselves as part of a more diverse population. The
traditional choropleth interprets the election as evidence of a nation divided
and depicts voters as separated from one another both by state boundaries
and political ideologies. Alternative maps like the cartogram represent the
nation as more unified. Maps that break down states by county and vary the
shading display the possibility that the ideology of red states and blue states
is not as entrenched, or as polarizing, as the mainstream media might lead
one to believe.
Beyond the Borders of Red and Blue States
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Many maps in our day-to-day lives do not serve the functions we normally
think of maps serving: they do not point us to a location, help us navigate,
or allow us to understand a spatial phenomenon.40 These maps, instead,
help us to locate ourselves on a more philosophical level, and work to build
our identity in relationship to our location in the world.41 The traditional
choropleth interprets the U.S. presidential election almost as a sporting event
where the goal is simply to capture states and collect Electoral College votes.
In this depiction the individual act of voting is subordinated to larger issues
of overall vote counts. By removing the individual element of the process, the
mass media is able to construct an official version of the election. According to
Pricilla Wald, these “official stories constitute Americans. . . . They determine
the status of an individual in the community.”42 Because voting groups have
traditionally been separated from one another, these media depictions are how
many voters construct the relationship between their vote and the election
as a whole.43 Constituting large groups of viewers through official stories
and defining symbols perpetuates the notion of the shared experience that
is critical to the industrial philosophy of mass media production.
Since 1996, the increased use of the Internet for political campaigning
has made these depictions more contentious. Digital technology allows
users more control over how they are represented. Wald explains that official
stories such as those depicting the election process can afford to be “neither
static nor monolithic, they change in response to competing narratives of
the nation that must be engaged, absorbed, and retold.”44 Individuals are no
longer isolated by geography within the physical space of a red or blue state.
Political participation is happening more often within the borderless spaces
of digital technologies. These technologies require a change in the conception of media audiences as passive: the public is responsive.45 It is critical to
think of the public sphere online as an interactive sphere.46 As a result, the
interpretation of the election provided by the traditional choropleth, which
subordinates the individual vote to larger bodies of statistical data, is no
longer an adequate depiction of the voting experience.
Candidate Campaign Maps
Political candidates’ campaign maps work to re-create the industrial system
online by depicting routes for voter participation in the political process
that can be shared by Internet users across the nation. In the 2008 election,
Obama and McCain both attempted to access the rhetorical power of the
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red-and-blue map to display their visions of the United States. However, unlike
the mass media maps that used red and blue to divide populations, these
maps used red and blue to portray the possibility that the entire nation could
come together under one candidate. Although the maps in this section are
technically digital media, the philosophy that underlies these media objects
stems from the broadcast media format.
The Obama and McCain maps seem to be taking a page out of Rock the
Vote’s manual for using interactive technologies to mobilize young voters.
According to Rock the Vote, being able to visualize other people in your
area who support the same cause you do energizes voters and motivates
them to get out and do something in their own community.47 A lot of times
it is easy for people to participate in online political activity, but they never
make the leap to participating in the real world of politics. Up until 2008,
Internet campaigns had been successful at raising funds for candidates, but
they had been relatively unsuccessful in translating political action online
to political action offline.48 Campaign maps offer candidates the ability to
connect offline and online worlds by linking voters to campaign centers,
getting them registered, and directing them to participate in campaign events.
These maps allowed supporters to personalize their campaign experiences
and connect those experiences to their day-to-day lives. At the same time,
the technology used to create these campaign maps had a rigidity to it that
constituted the user in certain ways and placed strict limits on the variability
of the media experience.
The Obama and McCain campaign maps offer the illusion of a personalized, interactive campaign experience by providing a variety of options for
navigating the campaign images. However, even as the users are having
personal experiences moving through the cartographic image, the nature of
the digital text means that they are following someone else’s thought process.
Normally, when the mind stumbles upon an idea, it will follow that idea to
something similar, and then follow that something similar to something else.
This is the process of association. Manovich argues that the act of hyperlinking
on the web simulates the process of association while actually functioning as
an invitation to interpellation.49 Hyperlinking externalizes that process and
asks the user to follow someone else’s set of associations; “the very principle
of hyperlinking, which forms the basis of interactive media, objectifies the
process of association, often taken to be central to human thinking.”50 The
inherent variability of digital texts gives them an illusion of possibility or
Beyond the Borders of Red and Blue States
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openness, but most users, lacking the skills to access that openness, tend
to experience the text as the designer intended. The links provided limit
the user’s activity to the thought process of the person who programmed
the page. According to Manovich, in digital spaces “we are asked to follow
pre-programmed, objectively existing associations. . . . [W]e are asked to
mistake the structure of somebody else’s mind for our own.”51 As users move
through the layers of a campaign map on a candidate’s Web site, they are
experiencing the campaign in a pre-prescribed manner. The closed nature of
the texts creates a dominant framework for interpreting the election, much
like the mainstream media’s red-and-blue election map.
On the webpage for Obama’s official campaign map, the headlines read
“Obama for America, Across America.” This site allows users to click on
their home state to find state-specific blogs and information about getting
involved. The map appears gray when it is first shown on the screen, but as
the user moves the mouse across the page, each state turns blue. The image
of the blue states reflects the traditional red-and-blue choropleth used during
elections, and it communicates Obama’s optimism that every state could be a
blue state in the upcoming election. The user’s act of clicking on a state and
turning it blue connects user participation with the outcome of the election.
This encourages the users to envision themselves as part of the Obama
win. Finally, the connection between the map and tangible local activities
communicates the path the Obama campaign would like voters to take to
participate in the election. This personalizes the campaign experience and
connects ideology to action. Still, the experience is meant to be personalized
but not individual. The goal is to position the voter as an Obama supporter.
This goal inherently limits some of the variability and mimics the ideology
of mass media texts.
Whereas the Obama site reflects the possibility that every state can be a
blue state, the McCain site offers the counterargument that every state is a
red state. The McCain site features a large red map and allows voters to click
on their state to find a polling station or volunteer site. However, that is as far
as the McCain site goes. The Obama site connects voters to activities taking
place in their area and information about their state, and it connects voter
participation to turning the state blue. McCain’s map told voters where to vote,
but failed to connect voters to one another, or to connect voter action with a
McCain win. The McCain map interprets the election outcome as inevitable:
of course your state will be a red state! This inevitability strongly echoes the
interpretation of the election provided by the traditional choropleth, which
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says states are red or are blue. Rather than telling the story of possibility and
encouraging users to constitute themselves as part of that possibility, this map
speaks to an objective reality and fails to position the voters in relationship
to that reality. McCain’s map may lack persuasive power for Internet users
who like to see themselves as part of the process.
Campaign maps can be a powerful force for translating online political
activities into offline political activities. However, one of the major components of creating a persuasive digital text is understanding how to layer the
information. Barbara Warnick argues that digital texts do not have the same
static nature as traditional texts.52 New media technologies allow these texts
to function like portals, moving the reader from one idea to another. As
individuals move through multiple layers of information they are constantly
constructing their own personal texts from the available data.53 The Obama
campaign site allows users to move through the traditional image of the 50
states to construct a text that personalizes the campaign experience. The
McCain map contains some layering, but it largely functions to inform the
viewer of the outcome of the election without clearly stating the user’s role
in that outcome. The ability to construct and reconstruct text is part of the
persuasive nature of digital rhetoric.54 Still, both maps encourage a static
experience, which mimics a subject position similar to broadcast media.
Interactive and Collaborative Mapping
Collaborative mapping provides an alternative to the industrialized media
experience by allowing voters to dictate their own campaign experience. In
the age of mobile computing, individuals are able to interact with digital
texts from virtually any location. Computers have taken hold in almost every
activity in day-to-day life. Cell phones have become miniature personal
computers, providing users with a host of media options no matter where
they travel. Early on, global positioning system (GPS) devices offered access
to personal mapping on the go, and during the 2008 election cycle Google
Maps was hard at work making their mapping system more accessible for
portable handheld devices. During that election, Twitter Vote Report made
use of this technology in a unique way. Twitter, a popular social-networking/
microblogging site, allows users to post messages of 140 characters or less as
status updates throughout their day. Users add other users to their network
to see each others’ status updates. The 140-character limit makes it easy for
site users to send text messages from a cell phone to update their Twitter page
Beyond the Borders of Red and Blue States
113
on the go. The Twitter Vote Report project combined this technology with
an interactive map from Google Maps to let thousands of site users monitor
their local polling stations and report voting problems.
On November 3, when a Twitter user voted, they could send a message to
their account saying where they voted and whether they had any problems,
such as broken machines, long lines, or registration problems. This information was captured by Twitter Vote Report throughout the day and showed
up in real time on a Google Map on the Vote Report website. As information
came in, new maps were posted to reflect the most recent data. Additionally,
site users could look through previous maps to see how things had changed
throughout the day. This allowed voters to go online and check on problems
at their local polling stations before they attempted to vote. The Twitter
Map was accessible from some cell phones for voters on the go. The ability
to connect to the map immediately from any location empowered many
voters to move beyond the act of casting a vote. This program gave voters
the ability to vote first and then instantly to aid other voters in the voting
process. Additionally, the Google Map that captured all this information
let the users visualize themselves as part of a larger network of individuals
working together to improve the voting process. Twitter Vote Report was not
the only project allowing users to report their experiences as voters. My Fair
Elections created a similar project that let voters rate their experiences at the
polls and explore a map of the United States to compare their experiences
with those of other voters. These programs offered users a chance to move
beyond their role as voters and invest in the larger voting process.
Interactive and collaborative maps facilitate interaction with a digital
document and collaboration with a larger social network. Typically, interactivity online is thought of in terms of user-to-user interactions; however,
it is becoming increasingly popular for sites like Wikipedia and programs
like Google Maps to offer user-to-document interactivity. According to
Warnick, “user-to-documents interactivity in a new media context occurs
when recipients of the message contribute texts and information that
change the content of the site text.”55 This type of interactivity is persuasive
because “users become active cocreators of messages when they customize
site content.”56 As users send text messages about their experiences at the
polls or go online to rate their experiences, they contribute content to a
constantly updated map of the nation. The act of contributing content
to a map is symbolic of their contribution as voters in the space being
represented. The interactive map gives the sense that, although the act of
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voting may take place in an isolated location, it is part of a larger network
of actions taking place nationwide.
The traditional red-and-blue election map subordinates the importance
of individual acts of voting to the results of the larger voting public. As
individuals interpellate themselves in relationship to that message—“I
live in a red state” or “I live in a blue state”—the act of voting may lose its
significance. If a voter in a red state chooses the Democratic candidate, that
individual vote is ultimately unseen on the campaign map, and the message
becomes, “My vote does not matter because I’m a Democrat in a red state.”
The interactive map gives the act of voting an additional layer of significance.
Voters are more than their political affiliation; with this map they are guardians
of the political process. The hegemonic ideologies represented by the mass
media depiction of the election may not be directly contested by interactive,
collaborative maps. However, interactive, collaborative mapping responds to
the underlying notion of the media dictating the meaning of the voting act
by providing voters with a chance to work together to monitor the political
process. Additionally, these maps contrast with the campaign maps because
they do not have the same limited variability. The campaign maps respond
to the user as they move through the texts, but the code underlying these
maps remains the same. This limits the ideological choices of the map’s user.
The interactive, collaborative maps actually change in response to voters.
They have a much higher degree of variability, and offer a space where the
ideology being produced has the ability to come from the bottom up. Users
become active rather than passive participants in the depiction of the space
they occupy.
User-Generated Maps
User-generated, software mash-up maps move their creators from their role as
consumers of a prepackaged election experience to a new role as interpreters
of the election process. Google Maps makes it possible for users to borrow
from the mainstream media and create a custom rhetorical interpretation
of the election. Manovich explains that one of the characteristics of being
digital is being modular.57 Digital objects are built from bits and bytes of code
that can be moved around and reconfigured. If a physical object is ripped to
shreds and put back together, most often one is able to see the cracks and
lines of the original destruction. The underlying code allows a digital object
to be taken apart and reassembled in thousands of different ways without the
Beyond the Borders of Red and Blue States
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seams being visible. For this reason, “a new media object is not something
fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in different, potentially
infinite versions.”58 In recent years a number of computer programs have
been made available for popular use that allow Internet users to take apart
and mash up digital text without learning the complex code behind it.
This particular type of mash-up is termed a “software mash-up” or more
specifically a “web application mash-up.” Mash-ups become a new form of
communication for a new communication environment; “communication,
in this new environment, is the work of appropriating information from
disparate sources into a coherent whole.”59 A software mash-up differs
from the multimedia mash-ups often seen on sites like YouTube in its
level of sophistication. These mash-ups appropriate bits of code or data
from multiple locations to build something new. The presidential election
process yields an incredible amount of information in a very short period
of time. Processing that media as a coherent narrative may seem to be an
insurmountable task. Software mash-ups created with the aid of Google Maps
offer users new ways to depict and interpret mainstream media depictions
of the election process.
As digital technologies are becoming capable of capturing, storing, and
processing infinitely larger amounts of information, the ability to depict data
in new ways is increasingly important. When data is translated into visual
images, individuals are able to “perceive emergent properties such as subtle
patterns and structures . . . compare small scale and large scale features at
the same time . . . [and] help with the discernment of artifacts or mistakes in
the gathering of the data itself.”60 However, for most individuals, completing
this task is only possible when the information is translated into a common
or recognizable form. “Data visualization” is a concession that computers
make to human users; the computer is able to process large amounts of
information without the aid of visual displays. It is the human user who
needs this translation to understand the process taking place. Because such
depictions (“visualizations”) are necessarily a concession, “visualizations
are always partial and provisional and they may entail the application of
a number of different methods until the data gives up its secrets.”61 The
partialness and incompleteness of data visualization is what separates the
“objectiveness” of digital code from the subjective, rhetorically persuasive
image created by the code. Individuals building software mash-ups make
choices about what information will be displayed and what form will be used
for the display. These choices encode the thought process of the creator into
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the map, and that encoding encourages the same form of interpellation as
the hyperlinking process.
In the 2008 election Internet users accessed Google Maps to create mashups representing a variety of different forms of political information. Choosing
what information to represent is one of the primary ways cartographers
communicate political ideology.62 Users pick and choose among the multitude
of data made available during the election to offer potential interpretations of
the election process. By positioning that qualitative data in various ways, the
user articulates a relationship between the information being represented and
the inhabitants of the space being depicted. Miller argues that the mash-ups
enabled by Google Maps allow users to empower themselves by representing
qualitative information about their lives without relying on the skills of a
cartographer.63 The system lets users chart the spaces of their day-to-day lives
without the interference of the mass media.64 Politically, these maps are being
used by individuals to chart their relationship to various candidates and to
the larger political process. Several maps were created documenting Barack
Obama’s campaign. Some of these maps show Obama’s progress throughout
the process, and some of them show the experiences of Obama supporters
from across the country.
On the night of the election, people gathered all over the nation to watch the
results. For Obama supporters who could not celebrate the election outcome
with other supporters, a web blogger who calls himself Mibazaar created a
mash-up using YouTube and Google Maps to document their relationships
to one another.65 This mash-up used videos from YouTube portraying
individuals celebrating the newly elected president and linked those videos
to the individuals’ locations across the country. Being able to see so many
people celebrating Obama’s victory gives one the sense of a country united,
even though the individuals live far apart. The traditional red-and-blue map
interprets the election night as a moment of divisiveness. Mibazaar’s map
tells the story of a nation united in celebration. This alternative interpretation
relies less on previous versions of reality depicted by maps and more on a
version of reality depicted by the videos layered on top of the map.
Another set of mash-ups popular during the election allowed viewers
to use maps to follow the routes of various candidates. Mibazaar created a
map following the route of Obama from his birth to his campaign for the
presidency.66 This map, along with several others available from Mibazaar’s
blog, lets viewers chart the courses of each candidate leading up to their bid
for the office of Commander in Chief.67 Mibazaar combines aerial photos
Beyond the Borders of Red and Blue States
117
of locations, biographical information, and images from candidates’ lives to
give voters a more comprehensive vision of the politicians’ paths. The various
multimedia aspects of the mash-ups make it easier for the voter to identify
with the candidate, and the mapping aspect of the visual display makes it
possible to construct unique spatial relationships between the candidate and
viewer. These maps offer some illusion of objectivity by appearing to provide
basic information about the candidates. However, the user creating these
maps is making choices about what locations and time periods to include
in the telling of the candidate’s story. In making these choices, Mibazaar is
communicating something about how the viewers should position themselves
in relationship to the candidate. These user-generated maps invoke the power
of cartography to communicate political information while appearing to be
objective.
Another example of a mash-up that allowed voters to follow the candidates’
paths was the “Campaign Trail” map created by Michael Geary. This map
charted McCain’s and Obama’s speaking engagements in the final months
leading up to the election.68 The choice of the time period allowed voters
to see where candidates were focusing their attention and get an idea of the
day-to-day life of candidates on the campaign trail. Whereas the maps created
by Mibazaar offer an up-close look at a particular candidate, this map allows
for a more general comparison between the two presidential hopefuls. Both
maps encourage voters to relate to the candidates in different ways. One map
allows the voters to see how their life path relates to the path of the potential
future president, and the other allows voters to see which candidates are
taking an interest in their part of the country.
Software mash-up maps aid voters in communicating their own version
of the presidential election. The celebration map shows that a voter who may
live in a red state is not the only one there who is excited about Barack Obama.
The maps of candidates’ lives and their trails during the campaign allow voters
an alternative way to interpret their relationship to both the candidate and
the campaign. Additionally, the individuals making these maps make use of
the modularity of digital objects to create interpretations of the election that
make it easier for users to visualize election information. The overlaying of
multiple media formats brings together a variety of information to create
the appearance of a coherent history. These software mash-ups demonstrate
the postindustrial philosophy behind digital media by allowing viewers to
choose among different interpretations of an event.
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Summary and Concluding Thoughts
For three election cycles, the red-and-blue map has framed the mass media’s
interpretation of the presidential race and has translated this event into a
moment of sharp divisions. Fortunately, with the aid of emerging digital
technologies, new maps and new interpretations of the election process are
taking hold. Nontraditional choropleths add new information to the traditional
red-and-blue map, making it possible to see the election differently. Newman’s
cartograms include population data, and when that information is included
the red line down the center of the nation shrinks. Newman’s choropleth takes
into account the distribution of Democrats and Republicans in a given area,
and when that information is included the ideological viewpoints throughout
the country appear much more diverse. These maps tell the story of a nation
that is diverse but not divided. Similarly, candidate campaign maps provide
voters with images of multiple potential futures. The cartographic image
of what is possible encourages Internet users to connect digital citizenship
with real-life political actions. These maps pull from the symbolism of the
traditional red-and-blue map and transform the image from one of divisions
to one of unity. Both the choropleths and the campaign maps come through
traditional media channels and offer a top-down interpretation of the roles of
voters during a presidential election cycle. This interpretation falls strongly
in line with the industrial philosophy of broadcast media; everyone should
be able “to enjoy the same goods—to share the same beliefs.”69
Digital technologies allow Internet users to produce images that build
ideologies from the bottom up. These ideologies reflect the variability of
the technology used to disseminate them and provide new interpretations
of the individual act of voting. The applications made available by Google
Maps are being used to build interactive, collaborative, political maps and
design mash-ups that present political information in new forms. These maps
encourage users to monitor the political process. Geographic information
systems are among the many digital technologies users are accessing to
interpret and participate in the campaign process. If communication scholars
are going to understand fully the ways new media are altering participation
in political campaigns, these technologies must be isolated for further study.
It is easy to talk about the new media campaign as a defined thing, but each
of these technologies has a different set of capabilities and a different set of
implications. If we take time to “reflect upon the epistemological codes of
Beyond the Borders of Red and Blue States
119
map knowledge,” these maps have the potential to tell us something about
our history.70 This research needs to be extended to discuss how other new
media technologies are allowing users to respond to traditional media outlets
and redefine their role as voters.
Beyond political communication, this study also demonstrates some of the
contributions rhetorical analysis can make to developing conversations about
how to interpret media history. At times the transition from one dominant
medium to another may seem sudden, inevitable, and unavoidable.71 However,
the adoption of new forms of media, and the transition from one dominant
form to another, are processes often born of a series of political decisions
and with far-reaching social impacts.72 Isolating rhetorical texts produced
during these time periods can offer rich insight into how rhetorical invention
takes place in moments of change, how media users and consumers adapt
to changes in technology, and how these transitions are interpreted in larger
social discourses. These campaign maps demonstrate the efforts of nonexpert
media producers to access an emerging technology to generate rhetorical
interpretations of an event. Analyzed using a rhetorical methodology, these
texts demonstrate how a transition in media may be altering the production
and distribution of ideology. This study is only one example of the potential
for rhetorical work to contribute to the conversations taking place in other
disciplines.
In Lakewood Park, Massachusetts, someone etched a large “W” with a
slash through it into the earth. This image was captured via satellite by Google
Earth, and it is visible on the Internet to anyone who uses the program. The
website Google Sightseeing speculated that the image is a political message
about former President George W. Bush.73 Regardless of its actual meaning,
the message has become a part of Google’s digital map of the world. Early
GIS systems focused on a Western view of mapping that saw maps as simply
spatial metaphors but failed to offer options for representing more qualitative
knowledge.74 Today’s digital technologies offer users a multitude of options
for mapping their political ideologies—even if that means etching their
opinion into the ground. The Internet may be a borderless space, but within
that space netizens are finding ways to connect the abstract with the physical.
It is uncertain how these digital technologies will alter our interpretation of
the democratic process. However, in the alternative maps created during the
2008 presidential election, one can see the seeds of future political action.
Here lies a potential future where users can collaborate and participate in the
political interpretation of the spaces they occupy on a daily basis.
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notes
1. Paul Farhi, “Elephants are Red, Donkeys are Blue: Color is Sweet, So Their States We
Hue,” Washington Post, November 3, 2004, C01.
2. Jeremy Black, Maps and Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 11–14.
3. Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 41.
4. Manovich, The Language of New Media, 41.
5. Manovich, The Language of New Media, 41–42.
6 . Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody (New York: Penguin Group, 2008), 86.
7. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Packaging the Presidency (New York: Oxford University Press,
1996), 23.
8. Jonathan Gray, Television Entertainment (New York: Routledge, 2008), 132–33.
9. Manovich, The Language of New Media, 36, 41–42. Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, 119.
10. Manovich, The Language of New Media, 42.
11. Manovich, The Language of New Media, 42.
12. Manovich, The Language of New Media, 27, 36.
13. Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2006),
13–16.
14. Sharon Cumberland, “Private Uses of Cyberspace: Women, Desire, and Fan Culture,”
in Rethinking Media Change, ed. D. Thorburn, B. Seawell, and H. Jenkins (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2004), 273. Henry Jenkins, “Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars? Digital
Cinema, Media Convergence, and Participatory Culture,” in Rethinking Media Change,
305–8. Debora L. Spar, Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth from the
Compass to the Internet (New York: Harcourt, 2001), 11–12.
15. Michael P. Peterson, ed., Maps and the Internet (Kidlington, UK: Elsevier Science, Ltd.,
2003), 2.
16. Black, Maps and Politics, 11–14.
17. JohnBrian Harley, The New Nature of Maps (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press,
2001), 37.
18. Peterson, Maps and the Internet, 2.
19. Peterson, Maps and the Internet, 2.
20. Harley, The New Nature of Maps, 37.
21. Black, Maps and Politics, 11.
22. Harley, The New Nature of Maps, 37.
23. Harley, The New Nature of Maps, 37.
24. Harley, The New Nature of Maps, 37. Ted Nelson, Geeks Bearing Gifts (Sausalito, CA:
Mindful Press, 2008).
25. Christoper C. Miller, “A Beast in the Field: The Google Maps Mashup as GIS/2,”
Beyond the Borders of Red and Blue States
121
Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization 41, no. 3 (2006): 187–99.
26. Miller, “A Beast in the Field,” 187–88. Trevor Harris and Daniel Weiner, “Empowerment, Marginalization and ‘Community-Integrated’ GIS,” Cartography and Geographic
Information Systems 25, no. 2 (1998): 67–76. Ben Rigby, Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A
Practical Guide to Using Web 2.0 Technologies to Recruit, Organize, and Engage Youth
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008), 119, 187–88.
27. Rigby, Mobilizing Generation 2.0, 188.
28. Michelle H. Jackson, “Fluidity, Promiscuity, and Mash-Ups: New Concepts for the Study
of Mobility and Communication,” Communication Monographs 74 (2007): 412–13.
29. For a specific example of the red-and-blue map discussed in this essay, see Mark Newman, “ Maps of the 2008 US Presidential Election Results,” December 2008, http://wwwpersonal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/ (accessed October 2010). Another example
can be found on the New York Times site at http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/
president/map.html (accessed October 2010). This second example is interesting because
the first screen one sees when visiting the page clearly proclaims Obama the winner.
However, when the viewer scrolls down to the map, the amount of red states makes the
win seem much less decisive.
30. Vanessa B. Beasley, You, the People: American National Identity in Presidential Rhetoric
(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), 26–44.
31. Beasley, You, the People, 26.
32. Farhi, “Elephants are Red, Donkeys are Blue,” C01.
33. David J. Cuff and Mark T. Mattson, Thematic Maps (New York: Methuen, 1982), 36–39.
Representations of the traditional choropleth discussed in this essay can be found on
Newman’s “Maps of the 2008 US Presidential Election Results” site: http://www-personal.
umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/statemapredbluer1024.png (accessed October 2010).
34. Farhi, “Elephants are Red, Donkeys are Blue,” C01.
35. Farhi, “Elephants are Red, Donkeys are Blue,” C01.
36. Black, Maps and Politics, 104.
37. Newman, “Maps of the 2008 US Presidential Election Results.”
38. Cuff and Mattson, Thematic Maps, 33. The cartogram discussed in this essay can be
found at Newman’s “Maps of the 2008 US Presidential Election Results” site: http://
www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/statepopredblue1024.png (accessed October 2010).
39. This map can be found on Newman’s “Maps of the 2008 US Presidential Election Results” site: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/countymappurpler1024.
png (accessed October 2010).
40. Robert M. Edsall, “Iconic Maps in American Political Discourse,” Cartographica: The
122
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International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization 42 (2007):
335–47.
41. Edsall, “Iconic Maps in American Political Discourse.” John Brian Harley, “Maps,
Knowledge, and Power,” in The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic
Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments, ed. D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 277–312.
42. Priscilla Wald, Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 2.
43. Gray, Television Entertainment, 132–33.
44. Wald, Constituting Americans, 2.
45. Peter Dahlgren, “The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation,” Political Communication 22 (2005): 147–62.
46. Dahlgren, “The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication.”
47. Rigby, Mobilizing Generation 2.0, 187–89.
48. Costas Panagopoulos and Daniel Bergan, “Clicking for Cash: Campaigns, Donors, and
the Emergence of Online Fund-Raising,” in Politicking Online: The Transformation of
Election Campaign Communications (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009),
128.
49. Manovich, The Language of New Media, 60–61.
50. Manovich, The Language of New Media, 61.
51. Manovich, The Language of New Media, 61.
52. Barbara Warnick, “Looking to the Future: Electronic Texts and the Deepening Interface,” Technical Communication Quarterly 14 (2005): 327–33. Barbara Warnick, Rhetoric
Online: Persuasion and Politics on the World Wide Web (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2007), 75–76.
53. Warnick, “Looking to the Future.” Warnick, Rhetoric Online, 28–33.
54. Warnick, “Looking to the Future.” Warnick, Rhetoric Online, 36.
55. Warnick, “Looking to the Future.” Warnick, Rhetoric Online, 76.
56. Warnick, “Looking to the Future.” Warnick, Rhetoric Online, 76.
57. Manovich, The Language of New Media, 30–31.
58. Manovich, The Language of New Media, 36.
59. Jackson, “Fluidity, Promiscuity, and Mash-Ups,” 409.
60. Richard Wright, “Data Visualization,” in Software Studies: A Lexicon, ed. M. Fuller
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 78–86, 79.
61. Wright, “Data Visualization,” in Software Studies, 81.
62. Black, Maps and Politics, 11–14.
63. Miller, “A Beast in the Field,” 187–88.
64. Miller, “A Beast in the Field,” 187–88.
Beyond the Borders of Red and Blue States
123
65. Mibazaar, “Barack Obama Victory Celebrations,” November 7, 2008, http://www.mibazaar.com/obamavision.html (accessed October 2010).
66. Mibazaar, “Barack Obama’s Journey of Life,” January 4, 2008, http://www.mibazaar.
com/2008/01/barack-obama-front-runner-in-white.html#links (accessed October 2010).
67. Mibazaar, “Barack Obama’s Journey of Life.” Mibazaar, “John McCain’s Journey from
his Birth Place to possibly the White House,” May 30, 2008, http://www.mibazaar.
com/2008/05/john-mccains-journey-from-his-birth.html (accessed October 2010).
68. http://maps.google.com/maps/mpl?moduleurl=Http://primary-maps-2008.googlecode.
com/svn/trunk/campaign-trail.xml (accessed November 2010).
69. Manovich, The Language of New Media, 41.
70. Harley, The New Nature of Maps, 107.
71. Tarleton Gillespie, Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2007), 67–70. David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins, “Introduction: Toward an Aesthetic of Transition,” in Rethinking Media Change, 1–18.
72. Gillespie, Wired Shut, 67–70. Thorburn and Jenkins, “Introduction,” in Rethinking
Media Change.
73. Google Sightseeing, “U.S. Presidential Election,” November 4, 2008, http://googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=3270&c=&t=h&hl=en&ll=42.55964,-71.887472&z=17
(accessed
November 2010).
74. Harris and Weiner,” Empowerment, Marginalization, and ‘Community-integrated’
GIS.”