The Long Tail Election

Twenty years ago, Wired editor Chris Anderson wrote “The Long Tail” - a story about how “the future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.” Also, twenty years ago, the term “podcasting” was coined thanks to the introduction of the iPod and RSS feeds that could carry audio files.

Today, in these final days before the election, we can confidently say that this prediction has become a reality—not just for entertainment but also for news and politics.

I’ve been pondering this newsletter for a while, and Chris’s piece popped into my mind as I was thinking about how 2024 is being called the TikTok/Influencer/Podcast/Clipping/Shards of Glass election. What these all have in common is the theme that our information environment is more fractured than ever before, and influencers/creators across numerous platforms have proven their power to reach voters. I won’t be shocked if, for the 2028 cycle, we have a candidate announce for president on a podcast (DeSantis did technically announce on Twitter spaces, but that’s different.)

Ben Thompson makes this point in his excellent column from Monday, “I think, though, that the ability to hold one’s own on a podcast is, in the long run, going to be a greater selection effect for President than people might expect.”

The ground is shifting beneath our feet and will continue to do so as we increasingly use artificial intelligence to help us create and curate the information we consume.

I will have much more to say on this as I try to figure out how to recap these last two years. Since January 2020, I’ve been talking about this historic year of elections around the globe, and it is almost over. The amount we’ve all gone through during this time is massive—and it’s only accelerating.

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With only a week left until Election Day, I wanted to share five things to remember as we enter this new phase.

* The information environment is shifting, which presents an excellent opportunity to shape this new reality. I’ve talked to a few folks wondering if their work since 2016 has been for naught because of the amount of disinformation online. It most certainly has not, but this work will need to change. I’m excited about digging into this new ecosystem and how we can mold how it evolves. What strikes me in re-reading Chris’ article 20 years later is that we can predict where things will go; it just takes us a long time for the technology and people to adapt, to accept the new reality, and to grieve the loss of the old one. Where we are today will not be where we will be in four years, as AI will do much more to curate the information we consume. We know this will happen, just not exactly how. That presents a lot of opportunity to start helping shape the future we want. Just look at this paper about how AI is helping to prebunk election misinformation.

* A side thing to watch here is where people go to follow along as results start to come in. Cable channels usually shine here, but Amazon is doing its own Election Night special, as are TikTok users like V Spehar from Under the Desk News. Will people go there instead?

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