Your turn
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Politicians and political parties play the pieces they’ve been dealt. Visual storytelling helps shape those narratives.
After watching recent media coverage of a state election and federal budget, I concluded what game most closely represents modern politics, Scrabble.
Why not chess?
Chess is an abstract strategy game with no hidden information. Chess is about setting up goals and long-term plans for future play. This is not how modern politics is played. For the most part, politics is now about using the past activity of your opponents to advance your agenda.
Scrabble
Scrabble is a better political metaphor. Everyone starts out with random selections of tiles. They then try to form words that deliver the highest number of points. You look for opportunities created by your opponents, then build on those achievements or mistakes to your advantage using the tiles you have. With politics (as with scrabble), long-term plans seem irrelevant.
Throwback
As with politics, in scrabble, the random nature of having to work with the titles you’ve picked can lead to a dead end. That’s where you forego a ‘turn’, hoping that a refresh will increase your chances. The same is true of politics. Sometimes a party or movement is nowhere, so they have to accept a loss and use the time out of power to ‘pick new tiles’.
'Who's turn is it?'
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Those who are great politicians are not always great in government. To cut through the noise created by artful but base communicators, politicians and parties need to embrace the most common and popular form of communication, visual storytelling.
'Who's turn is it?'
Getty Images/iStockphoto
Those who are great politicians are not always great in government. To cut through the noise created by artful but base communicators, politicians and parties need to embrace the most common and popular form of communication, visual storytelling.
How does this play out in the media?
Media and communications are the game of politics. Politicians and parties are always trying to score points. Traditional and new media play a role in this process. They are the scorekeepers if we want to keep with the scabble analogy; however, their scorekeeping isn't always accurate. In some cases, they may even be helping one side cheat.
Share your pieces
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Journalists are hungry for new stories and new perspectives. Help them tell those stories by providing access to the visual assets they need to capture and hold attention.
Share your pieces
Getty Images/iStockphoto
Journalists are hungry for new stories and new perspectives. Help them tell those stories by providing access to the visual assets they need to capture and hold attention.
Should politics be a game?
The reality is that representative democracies have probably always been a bit of a game. However, that doesn't mean that this game cannot be used to deliver objective and meaningful outcomes for people and the planet. There is a way of delivering real change, not just point-scoring.
Having the scorekeeper on your side
The media are as (if not more) motivated by page views than the substance and agendas of politicians and political parties. In a recent survey, 70% of journalists said they would share a story based on a trending storyline. In the same study, 68% of journalists said they would share a story based on an image. This research indicates that journalists know that images and videos are how you capture and hold readers or viewers' attention. The lesson here is that if you want the 'scorekeeper' on your side, start using visual content in your media engagement strategy.
Master the game
Whether you see the game of politics as Scrabble or Chess, if you want to master the game, you need a newsroom solution that allows you to use all of your pieces to generate more wins and make more advanced moves. To do this, you need a Lookatmedia™ newsroom solution.
