Print This Post Print This Post

Nov

4

The Participatory Class: Political blogs come of age this election year


But I think what they’ve written could apply to many of us who’ve been blogging the elections and explains the reason why traditional media outlets, my host for these posts – The Ruckus – included, as well as my host for election night, NPR, as well:

Here in the battleground of all battleground states, the people in charge of this soon-to-end presidential campaign are Chris Myers and Katie Stoynoff.

But Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama have never heard of them.

Myers, 33, is a lifelong Republican. Though he’s always been wary of McCain’s “Straight Talk Express,” he got onboard the moment it made room for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. “McCain could not have made a better pick,” says Myers, who lives in Toledo. On his community blog, Swamp Bubbles, where Palin is often maligned, Myers is her biggest defender.

Stoynoff, 32, meanwhile, is a die-hard Democrat. “Must have been born that way,” she jokes. Raised in the small town of Green, just outside Akron, she signed up with Obama’s campaign on Feb. 10, 2007, the day he announced his candidacy. That afternoon, Stoynoff logged on to Obama’s social networking site and formed an online group, Akron for Obama.

Though they share almost nothing in common politically, Myers and Stoynoff are part of a growing set of Americans, “a participatory class,” as Lee Rainie of the Pew Internet & American Life Project calls it.

Online social networking sites — socnets, from community blogs to YouTube — are changing how the members of this class get their news, whom they trust to provide it and how they act on it. Whatever the source, they comfortably and routinely comment on the news, reproduce it, then forward it to relatives, friends, co-workers and, yes, strangers.

The relationship between candidates and their supporters has shifted, too. Supporters see themselves less as agents of campaigns but as independent of them.

The concluding graphs of the article show that the reporter gets it, as do the blog authors:

Myers and Stoynoff are only two examples of the expanding “participatory class.”

In 2000, about 20 percent of Americans went online to interact with the presidential campaign, according to Pew. Four years ago, it grew to 37 percent. Earlier this year, Pew released a study saying that 46 percent of Americans have used the Internet to get their news, watch videos and share their thoughts on the race. By the end of the longest presidential campaign in U.S. history, Pew’s predicts that figure will top 50 percent.

“That’s a milestone, a major breakthrough, and it has changed and will continue to change the way we think about politics in this country,” he says.

But is the Web creating a more informed citizenry, or just a meaner, nastier one? Palin and Obama, to name just two, have been the victims of anonymous e-mail chains. One falsely claims that Obama is a Muslim. Another is a fabricated list of books that Palin supposedly banned from her local library; Palin had no such list.

“Here’s the thing about the Internet: You, and only you, can believe what you want to believe,” says Myers, the Republican. “You can go on Google and find Web sites that say Obama’s a Muslim or a Buddhist or Palin supported this or that. But can you trust those Web sites? I, for one, don’t pay any attention to online rumors. It’s like junk food.”

Adds Stoynoff, the Democrat: “It’s a lot easier to be mean and nasty online than in person. You can be anonymous, and often there are no consequences. That’s the bad side of the Internet. But the good side is — and the good side far outweighs the bad side, I think — people can find each other and people have access to more information than ever before. People can make up their own minds. If so many people online hadn’t made up their minds on Obama, I’m not sure he would have made it this far.”

Normally, I don’t publish such long excerpts, but it’s wonderful to read an article that does seem to get what the Internet interaction can be about.

Bookmark and Share

By Jill Miller Zimon at 8:35 am November 4th, 2008 in Blogging, Campaigning, Elections, Government, Ohio, Politics, Social Issues, Tech, Utilities, Voting, WH2008, Writing 

Comments

Comments are closed.

"));