This blog covers "how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web, and vice versa," as well as looking at the effects of voter-generated content, social networking sites etc. For example, the attention paid to the number of friends a particular candidate has on a site like myspace is particularly interesting when thinking about the Howard Dean campaign and its inability to translate as an e-candidate to a real-time political contender. The contributers seem to represent a fairly broad political spectrum, and are ostensibly against "partisan" arguments. The bloggers include the Internet director of Dean's 2004 campaign and the e-campaign director for Bush-Cheney 2004.

This is my primary source of information for researching the ongoing efforts of the hopeful presidential nominees for the 2008 election. In particular, I'm curious to compare John Edwards' efforts to those of Howard Dean and speculate a bit on whether or not popular e-candidates have a shot at competing against campaign giants (with massive campaign contributions) like Obama, Clinton, Guiliani and McCain.

 

This blog covers "how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web, and vice versa," as well as looking at the effects of voter-generated content, social networking sites etc. For example, the attention paid to the number of friends a particular candidate has on a site like myspace is particularly interesting when thinking about the Howard Dean campaign and its inability to translate as an e-candidate to a real-time political contender. The contributers seem to represent a fairly broad political spectrum, and are ostensibly against "partisan" arguments. The bloggers include the Internet director of Dean's 2004 campaign and the e-campaign director for Bush-Cheney 2004.

This is my primary source of information for researching the ongoing efforts of the hopeful presidential nominees for the 2008 election.  In particular, I'm curious to compare John Edwards' efforts to those of Howard Dean and speculate a bit on whether or not popular e-candidates have a shot at competing against campaign giants (with massive campaign contributions) like Obama, Clinton, Guiliani and McCain. 

 

This chapter analyzes five cases of online politics, including the use of the internet by Bush and McCain in 2000, the phenomenon moveon.org, Web White and Blue and the “instant response meter” developed by Speakout.com. The moveon.org case study discusses the evolution of the wildly successful organization which proved to have a mobilizing capacity beyond all expectation. It summarizes its strategy of providing a voice for those unheard during the Clinton scandal as well as using the Internet to broaden the early donor pool. The article mentions in the last few sentences that there is no conservative counterpart to the MoveOn model, perhaps because “grassroots action works better in opposition – and the conservatives are in power.” I think this is a valid point and worth examining in relation to the Democratic takeover in the midterm elections although at the moment it seems too early for a conservative backlash.

As the chapter points out, Joan Blades and Wes Boyd (the founders of MoveOn) are not political candidates. They (in the vein of many environmentalists or human rights organizations responding to a specific problem) started their site/online petition as a reaction to the Clinton impeachment issue and grew to become a kind of brand of endorsement for selected democratic candidates. Also, they bundle donor choices to make sizable contributions to a slate of candidates. Would any one candidate be able to mobilize the kind of broad support this portal of the people harnessed?