The Internet Won the State of the Union, Which Can’t Possibly Be Good for Democracy

Last night’s State of the Union address erased any doubt that what’s being broadcast on TV is the most boring part of watching TV. President Obama’s speech, like most modern-day political oratory, was scripted, tested, and neutered. The juicy stuff—the real window into the state of the nation—was playing out in the instantaneous reactions and spin reverberating through the social media echo chamber as the president spoke. While it’s certainly entertaining, does the split attention add anything of value? I think not.

The second screen phenomenon has been growing unabated, thanks to millennials’ multitasking, attention-deficit media consumption habits. Recent studies on how people consume television have found that a majority of viewers have a smartphone, tablet, or laptop out while sitting on front of the tube that they’re using to comment on the program in real-time, whether to connect with friends who are watching the same thing or just send your opinion out into cyberspace. 

It seems inevitable it will be the future of television—both in the form of publishers enhancing what’s on TV with related content, and viewers following along with the audience’s response during the show. Networks, advertisers, social media companies, and the plethora of TV-companion apps all have skin in the game, but in politics, the stakes are much higher than ad revenue and ratings. When the online conversation around a political event steals the spotlight away from the event itself, is that a good thing for democracy?

I don’t own a television, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the full experience of last night’s address—the content of the speech thanks to livestreams posts of the full text, and also the version of the event as it was sucked down, chewed up, and spit out by the internet as a series of GIFs, listicles, Vines, twit pics, quotes, and hashtags.

Thanks to Vine, I watched Michelle Obama getting in the car on the way to the event, and walked into the Capitol building with Sen. Mike Crapo. 

On Twitter, I got choice sound bites and quotes in 140 characters as soon as they left the president’s mouth, and the internet was even kind enough to condense the 7,000-word speech into just three-word summaries.

On Instagram, by way of Storify, I even watched west wing staffers writing the speech in the weeks leading up to the event.

There were livestreams all over the web, naturally, including on the White House website. In fact, the Obama administration sent out emails before the SOTU trying to persuade people to watch the speech online, where it could control the second-screen circus. Obama is smart about this kind of thing. In his bid to retain viewers’ attention, the administration rolled out an “enhanced” livestream of the speech, through which the hardly captivating image of the president behind a podium was augmented with charts, visuals, and data relevant to what he was talking about—all shareable on your social network of choice, of course.

But the White House wasn’t the only one trying to control the conversation. Twitter reported 750 tweets were sent out from members of Congress during the speech, to say nothing of partisan spin machine that revved into full gear afterward. “It used to be the case that a president mainly needed to worry about courting a few TV pundits and newspaper columnists,” Eli Pariser, co-founder of Upworthy and former head of MoveOn.org told NPR earlier this week. “But that matters less than it used to, and the organic online conversation matters a lot more.”

The second screen makes it harder for politicians on both sides of the aisle to stay on message. On the one hand, this is a relief from the government’s canned talking points. On the other hand, the “organic conversation” on the web usually isn’t shaped by the smartest or most valuable comments, but the most outrageous ones. Last night that was Rep. John Boehner’s facial expressions (always a favorite in political circles) and GOP Rep. Randy Weber, who went a bit too far and tweeted that Obama is a socialist dictator.

Twitter still dominates the second screen space. It counted 1.7 million total tweets about the State of the Union just during the speech last night, and created an interactive visualization of how people reacted in real-time to the president’s words, based on keywords and hashtags. (Live nationwide events like this one are easy pickings for the social network’s PR team.)

The State of the Union according to Twitter

The graphic gives a glimpse into what topics resonated with what parts of the country, and which parts of the speech got the biggest reaction from the twitterverse. Taking the temperature of the audience during a big political address is nothing new, but making that data available to the general public adds an unwieldy meta aspect to it—like looking at a mirror in the mirror.

As the gap between TV and the internet closes, the second screen as physical thing could become obsolete. I expect we’ll see more split screen experiences like Obama’s “enhanced” SOTU—the live event playing on one side and a rapid-fire stream of commentary and reactions next to it.

For sports events or award shows or Game of Thrones, this would be overstimulating and annoying at worst. But TV is also the still where most people get their news, and embracing the second screen could distract from the actual substance of the broadcast. In an era where more Americans voted on the winner of American Idol than in the presidential election, this doesn’t bode well for the future of an informed citizenry.