Candidate Supporters' Use of Gadgets as Symbols Reveal Power of Brands

A thread on the snarky website Fark recently produced a series of illustrations that compare the presidential candidates to one another through their perceived symbolic equals, including some of our favorite gadgets.

But a close look at the illustrations reveal that they are more than a just meaningless, amusing outgrowth of this crazy election. They suggest that people who demonstrate their enthusiasm toward the candidates in this way mirror the enthusiasm of gadget lovers, like Apple fanboys and their iPhone, in their personality traits, obsessions, and political leanings.

This isn't the first time that Internet culture has produced a buzz-worthy meme relating to this year's campaign. Earlier, rapper will.i.am created a popular YouTube video called Yes We Can, which played upon Sen. Barack Obama's theme of change. And everyone from Google CEO Eric Schmidt to online market intel company AdGooroo have declared that the internet (and its younger, tech-savvy partisan users) allowed the Illinois senator to bypass traditional media and claim the Democratic nomination. Recently, the Obama campaign released an iPhone app that helps followers recruit supporters.

UC Berkeley Public Policy professor Jack Glaser told Wired.com in an e-mail that people's feeling of powerlessness in the election process makes them resort "to all kinds of related (but inefficacious) activities." And it's especially true "when they pay close attention" like they are in this election, he said.

Most of the symbols depict Sen. Barack Obama as cutting edge, Sen. Joe Biden as wise, Sen. John McCain as old, and Gov. Sarah Palin as ditzy, and are created by people compelled to express their support.

Still, Glaser says, these are mostly funny "but not too deep."

Psychologist Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia thinks there's something more meaningful to this categorization-type of thinking. He suggests the "Obama equals something" illustrations that involve technology could indicate a trend that is tapping into the power of brands.

In an unpublished study by Project Implicit, a public research project where people explore their own biases and attitudes, Nosek reveals they've found that "liberals are more pro-Apple and conservatives more pro-Windows ... The same is true when the contrast is Open Source versus Microsoft."

For example, Apple's slogan "Think Different" is a decidedly unconventional and authority-challenging statement, according to Nosek. "Apple's brand emphasis on style, hip culture, creativity are all associations that liberals tend to find more attractive than conservatives, and this appeal appears to extend to implicit evaluations of the companies and brands." So it's not a huge stretch to say the same type of people would be equating Obama's barrier-busting candidacy to these same type of gadgets.

Then again, the apparent authority of Apple as a liberal mainstay doesn't always hold true. Famously conservative pundit and radio shock jock Rush Limbaugh is a huge Apple fan, as he noted earlier this year in one of his broadcasts.

All Project Implicit findings are made through the famed Implicit Association Test, which measures the "strength of automatic association between mental representations of objects (concepts) in memory," and was famously profiled in the book Blink as a measure of racial attitudes.

But the makeup and general interest of the illustrations also suggest that they go beyond political associations, especially the ones featuring the iPhone and the browsers.

Sriram Natarajan, also with Project Implicit, says that if the creative interests of the people who posted these were measured, you'd find similar personality types.

For example, a Flickr user from New York named Andrea posted over 100 of the illustrations she liked best from the Fark site to her own photo page, in "a fit of boredom and amusement." A self-described "bleeding heart liberal," her favorite illustration is the one depicting Obama as the iPhone, Biden as a Blackberry, Palin as a toy phone, and McCain as a lost carrier pigeon.

Natarajan says Andrea's reason for posting these is likely due to her savvy understanding of tech culture, even more than just knowing how to upload Flickr pictures. She is likely a "creative individual" and "probably works in the tech industry and very much plugged into pop culture," he said. "It was probably intrinsically rewarding for her." 



Measuring these associations using the Implicit Association Test would be possible only if the people taking the test are familiar with the distinctions between the different gadgets, Natajaran said.

So just like many other internet memes that grow beyond their bounds, these images tell us more about the people creating them than about the content implicit in the original images. They also show that people’s election obsessions easily plug in to their already-established obsessions, observations, and inevitably, their wish fulfillment.

So when a gadget-happy tech insider sees Obama, they're likely to envision a multifaceted, high-tech device that will change their lives.

Let's just hope that if Obama wins, there are no 3G-type, cut-and-paste bumps in the road for his administration.