Ronda Hauben on Wed, 28 Jan 2004 11:52:47 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> The Internet and the US 2004 Presidential Election? |
Will the Internet and Netizens Impact the 2004 US Presidential Election? by Ronda Hauben ronda@panix.com Online discussions in China and the netizens movement in South Korea have demonstrated the power of the internet For a while Howard Dean's campaign for the Democratic Party nomination in the US seemed to startle political observers.(1) His use of the Internet and his volunteer campaign staff of netizens were succeeding in unexpected ways to change campaigning procedures and practices. Many of his volunteers have been recruited via the Meetup.org online web site, and his campaign staff sponsors a "Deanblog for America" web site that allows readers to comment on his campaign articles.(2) There are other web sites like blogforamerica.com which provide both articles from the Dean campaign and comments by supporters.(3) Dean's campaign also surprised other contenders for the nomination by raising significant campaign funds online. As the campaign for the Iowa caucus votes and then the New Hampshire primary gathered steam, the news media in the US is focusing less on the potential of the Internet to help candidates gain the Democratic Party nomination. Instead the conservative media organizations are encouraging the old means of campaigning that has led the Democratic Party to become increasingly harder to distinguish from the Republican Party. Negative or positive campaign ads on television, leaflets in mailboxes, newspaper and television editorials, and televised debates are forms of campaigning that bring the old guard of the major political parties back on the political stage they have dominated for so long. This is the kind of politics that led to the situation in the 2000 Presidential election where the distinction between the major party candidates was so slim that the Supreme Court was allowed to decide the election. Can the Internet help overcome the barriers to defeating an incumbent in the 2004 US Presidential election? Observers of the role played in the South Korean Presidential election by netizens and the Internet are wondering if the success of their efforts are a phenomena that can be repeated in the upcoming US Presidential election. In 2002, a South Korean netizens movement was able to effectively challenge the political old guard by waging an Internet campaign first to nominate and then elect Roh Moo-hyun as the South Korean President.(4) For rest of article See Telepolis http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/16613/1.html in German Werden das Internet und die Netizens die US-Prdsidentschaftswahlen http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/on/16614/1.html # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net