UCC: The Next Big Thing in Elections

A strong presidential candidate meets the elderly who live by themselves in early December with the 17th presidential election just 10 days away. Once he sits with them in a warm room, he starts dozing off while listening to one of them telling her story. It was just for a second or two and the candidate has been trying to keep to his grueling campaign schedule in bitter cold.

But the damage is done. A paparazzo, who was hired by the presidential hopeful’s rival, has been following him for nearly a year and videotapes the very moment.

A few hours later, websites featuring user-created content (UCC) are showing a video clip titled, “A Presidential Candidate Makes Life More Miserable for An Elderly.” Afterwards, he comes under constant criticism for denying minimum attention to an elderly whose only hope was to have someone listen to her by dozing off.

The above story is not a true one, but a very likely one during the presidential election this year.

In the U.S., UCC has already cost a politician an election victory. Then Senator Conrad Burns (72, R-Montana) lost last year’s Senate election in November. The fact that he dozed over a farm bill hearing in August delivered a fatal blow to his re-election campaign.

The moment he briefly fell asleep was captured by his rival candidate’s paparazzo, who immediately distributed the image on YouTube, a free video sharing website. Within several days, more than 100,000 visitors clicked on and posted it on other blogs.

Farmers who comprise most of the Montana electorate were enraged, saying, “How could he fall asleep at such an important hearing?” In an era of Web 2.0 when Internet users are the agent of generation, distribution and consumption of content, Burns invited himself a political disaster.

Political commentators predict that a “UCC tsunami” will hit the upcoming Korean presidential election. Given Korea’s IT prowess, their prediction seems more accurate than ever.

No major party has yet to nominate their presidential candidate. But presidential hopefuls have already begun their “campaign war of UCC” with the intention of delivering a “single deadly blow” against their competitors.

One of these candidates noticed that two men were following him and videotaping every single one of his campaign activities since November last year. He assumed them to have been hired by one of his rivals, but could do nothing about it. He just says, “I have to watch out 24/7.”

Aware of their UCC danger, former Seoul mayor Lee Myung-bak, former Grand National Party leader Park Geun-hye, former Prime Minister Goh Kun, and former Gyeonggi Province governor Sohn Hak-kyu either recruited UCC experts or plan to make smart use of UCC.

Campaign strategists drew an idea from a popular comedy program in which the comedians repeat idiotic but funny gestures while slapping their foreheads. Once the program gained some popularity, the producers had viewers film their own gestures. The most hilarious one is the one that receives the biggest applause from the audience. Once the best one is picked, the comedians have to imitate the filmed gestures.

A political strategist said, “We intend to make good use of the same method.” Applying the method to a political campaign, the campaign managers can have voters make UCC of the speech gestures they consider the most suitable for their candidate, post the footage on the official campaign website, and vote for the best one. Afterwards, the candidate can film himself or herself using the gesture. According to the strategists, such events can boost interest in the presidential candidates.

Unfortunately, these events are expected to have both positive and negative effects. YouTube became a source of political power because its UCC featured politicians’ mistakes, a method of modern negative campaigning. Once UCC becomes an easy and explosive tool for negative campaigning, the upcoming presidential election could end up one filled with “images and sentiments,” not reasonable consideration of policies or assessment of the current administration.

There are, however, very few legal and institutional countermeasures against the potential danger of UCC in an election.

On PANDORA.TV, a popular UCC site in Korea, nearly 4,500 UCC clips appear everyday. But only 40 are monitoring and filtering these video clips.

The National Election Commission (NEC), too, has trouble preventing online mud slinging using UCC.

Lim Seong-kyu, head of cyberspace campaigning team at the NEC, said, “Legal online content created by voters represents encouragement and expression of their support posted on the websites of their favorite candidates during the campaign. Even cutting and pasting of the UCC to other websites run against the election law. But the fact is that it is practically impossible to stop Internet users from cutting and pasting, almost a daily routine for them.”

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