New Media
The Colbert Clan: 1.2 Million Strong and Counting
Colbert is a South Carolina crowd favorite. (AP).
Twelve days ago, while introducing the new Facebook group "1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T. Colbert," The Trail noted that its creator, Raj Vachhani, didn't include a photo in his Facebook profile. That's a very sketchy thing to do on Facebooksphere -- akin to going to a meet-and-greet party with a big, scary mask on.
Vachhani has now corrected his oversight, he said in a phone interview. Vachhani, it turns out, is 16, a junior at Loveless Academic Magnet Program High School in Montgomery, Ala. and, not surprisingly, a fan of Colbert's Comedy Central show, "The Colbert Report." "It's where I get most of my news," he said.
The political blogosphere has been buzzing about the meaning of Vachhani's Facebook group, which is by far the biggest political group on the site. Within hours of its launch, it had 16,000 members and hit the 500,000 mark by Oct. 23. It reached its target of 1 million three days later and now has more than 1.2 million members.
Each of the presidential candidates have their own profile on Facebook, the social networking site of the moment. Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) has 158,000 supporters on his page, tops among the Democratic candidates, and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), the online star of the Republican field, has 34,000. There are also dozens of pro-candidate and anti-candidate groups. The most popular pro group, "Barack Obama: (One Million Strong for Barack)," has 392,000 members and was created by 26-year-old Farouk Olu Aregbe. Stephen DeMaura, 22, founded the largest anti group, "Stop Hillary Clinton: (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary)," which lists 514,000 members.
But Vachhani's Colbert group beats them all.
"At a political level, comparing Mr. Obama and Mr. Colbert is patently unfair. To join Mr. Obama's group ... requires an explicit statement of political beliefs. Joining Mr. Cobert's group signals that you're a fan of his hilarious TV personality. Of course, there's nothing wrong with this -- but to comapre Obama and Colbert is truly to compare apples and oranges," Fred Stutzman, a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, blogged Monday on TechPresident, the hub of online presidential campaigning.
Added George Washington University's Michael Cornfield, who teaches about political strategy and message development: "Colbert is entertainment and entertainment always outrates politics. People want to be entertained. That's all this means."
Well, maybe.
Facebook has gotten increasingly political in recent months -- and why not? YouTube has its CNN/YouTube debates, and MySpace has partnered with MTV for its live instant messaging forums. Earlier this month, Facebook -- with more than 44 million members, the core group being high school and college age students -- hosted two two-hour seminars for congressional and campaign staffers in Capitol Hill.
On the political Facebooksphere, the key is personalization and activism, both online and off. Facebookers can add a candidate as a "friend" and stay virtually connected to that candidate's campaign, and they can also add more than 190 political applications -- like a 2008 voter registration form -- to their profiles. The most political Facebook profiles show an engaged, involved, informed electorate who share the news articles they read and urge friends to join them in political groups. As Colbert's Facebook group shows, these members tend to get a lot of their news from "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report": funny, satiric newscasts that skewer the hypocrisy of politicians and talk about "truthiness" in these spin-cycling times.
Obama himself said in yesterday's MTV/MySpace forum that the popularity of Colbert and his show is an indictment of the mainstream news media and highlights the public's distrust of such news outlets.
Meanwhile, the whole Colbert-as-president saga -- a native son of South Carolina, he is running both as a Republican and Democrat in the Palmetto State -- is playing out to be a show within a show, politics as theater, Comedy Central style. The popularity of his Colbert Facebook group, Vachhani says, shows how trusted the fake newscaster is. He may be a comedian, Vachhani explains, but he was "ballsy enough" and "gutsy enough" to make fun of White House reporters during the White House Correspondents Association Dinner in 2006.
Vachhani's Facebook group has spawned others, including a District-based group simply called "Stephen Colbert for President!" It has 68 members, at least as of Monday night. Among them is 25-year-old Sara Frances Culp.
Why did she join the group?
"Primary because I love Colbert (and Stewart!), but also because I am so impressed at the lengths to which he has successfully gone -- and will hopefully continue to go -- to prove just how ridiculously ironic the world actually is (Press Corps Dinner, anyone?)," Culp wrote to us in a Facebook message. "Also, I love how much he has done to prove how much can actually be accomplished by the people the 'important people' don't pay attention to -- namely, those who understand that the 'Internets' aren't just a series of tubes."
For Colbert, it's a very good show, and at least 1.2 million people are laughing.
-- Jose Antonio Vargas
Posted at 8:00 AM ET on Oct 30, 2007
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Posted by: mia.seigal | November 7, 2007 7:07 PM
I think that it is great that there are people expressing their political views out on Facebook but on facebook some people do that kind of thing to be funny and catch the wave. But if facebook is mostly high school and college students then many of them mat not even be of age to vote which could possibly cut majorly into the population that are Colbert supporters. Also I don't know about you but based on what everyone is saying on the internet I would not be entirly convinced that running for the most watched office in the country would be the best idea. Plus getting in on the debate this late could be an huge issue for Colbert if the fad continued to grow.
Posted by: pbgodec | October 31, 2007 11:05 PM
Colbert supporters are not passive. As an example a huge number of supporters rallied at USC. Major candidates are now talking about him. Major news agencies, and newspapers are publishing this phenomenon.
No one likes Ron Paul mainly because of his consistent spammers on the web and outdated 1920s policies.
Colbert has more supporters in one spot then all major Candidates. I don't see how you can argue 60, 000 supporters in over 1, 000 sites against 1, 200, 000+ supporters in just one site, when there are other groups out there with amounts pouring in to support Colbert.
Posted by: freedomofthepress | October 30, 2007 1:26 PM
The number of supporters a candidate has on Facebook is interesting, but most of them are passive -- they sign up and are done with it.
The number of supporters on Meetup is much more interesting -- these people meet up in real life, and take constructive action to campaign for their preferred candidate.
On Meetup, Ron Paul now has over 60,000 supporters in over 1,000 groups nationwide -- not just the most supporters, but more than all the other candidates put together.
Posted by: drd6000 | October 30, 2007 12:12 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
Hell I'm about to join the group right now! I love Colbert, huge supporter. Was blogging through some stuff as I do daily and saw this on http://globalgrind.com if anyone was interested, really hot site. But yeah, look where you celebrity can get you man, for real. Sometimes I wonder where some companies and brands would be without that extra celebrity endorsement... You go Colbert!