US Presidential applicants for 2008 have a growing factor to address : the increased usage of the Net. Absolutely 1/2 the folk on Earth are going surfing now, and the US is one of the most wired states in the world. First there are the blogs. Big-ticket bloggers like Wonkette, DailyKos, and Tiny Green Balls have replaced papers and mags as the sounding board for public viewpoint. Most web users are likely to get their reports from the web than from the TV.
TV stories is slow and incessant ; the few corporations controlling the network station lead to a homogenized environment where everyone just about announces a similar thing. But an infantryman can blog right from a war sector and report some development the minute it occurs, without any state control to scrub it up. Readers back home see it mins later, and instantly debate it on their blogs and notice boards.
Social news stories the tale to the masses. Folk ask one another what the applicants are intending to do about the war, and then visitors search the web for the record of this applicant or that and post a link to the reference.
Wikipedia, the net encyclopedia that is free to edit, updates the applicable articles with the new event. All this has happened in one hour, while the TV camera crew is still on their way to the scene. When it shows up on TV, it is cold coffee already.
People are also campaigning and discussing on the web. The Presidential applicants might have time for nothing apart from a minute or two of raising their hands responding to questions, like a game of Simon says. But 10 thousand electorate are having 100 times the argument right on their sites and bulletin boards. There, points are raised, disagreed, sustained or set straight, all without an ordered media pro moderating the debate. The applicants are showing a bigger awareness of the web audience this election than previously. All of them have sites. Many of them have blogs. Actually each one of them have bulletin boards, where followers gather to chat about campaign plan, cheer on their applicant, and keep their applicant informed of developments along the campaign trail. Applicants are giving more attention this year to online polls and surveys, and they speak straight to the web audience. YouTube is figuring prominently. This is a site where any one can upload video clips for everybody online to see. Almost any Senator who announces anything near somebody with a camera telephone ends up on YouTube inside minutes. Donations are also coming in thru Web payment services , for example PayPal. Folks are even registering to vote on the web.
The opening up of the info age has brought the side effect that campaigns may also be damaged in seconds. It is as straightforward as this : you can't get away with a single lie when you are online and are a public figure. The truth always outs, because five hundred armchair detectives are scrutinizing your each word.
Voting records are found and posted, video clips of what truly occurred are there to be viewed. The Web may yet become the new "paparazzi", as it is everywhere, and instant. One of the perilous issues which has already come up is that the Web can be employed for abuse as simply as it may be employed for the truth. Spammers, social reports riggers, and net-based attacks have recently been employed, and the only thing the Net doesn't show is who's behind it all, as the Net brings with it anonymity. Perhaps that gaffe was the action of your applicant's campaign crew, or perhaps it was someone from the other crew attempting to make your applicant look bad. It is easier now to blow the whistle secretly than it ever has been before, but now when you see it, you've got to ask if it is actually true, and what are the genuine motives behind it. For bad, the Net has let the genie of the crowd-sourced media out of the bottle, and it isn't going back.
