Week Four Reading Reflection/ Essay One (10/21/08 Digital Electioneering)

Digital Electioneering

Digital media are now an important arena for candidates and what we learn from the readings can help us understand what situation we are in and what the future would be shaped.

 

The 2004 Presidential Election Story

 

 

We explore Kerry-Edwards and Bush-Cheney’s political campaigns in 2004 presidential election in the conclusion chapter in Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy. It is interesting to look back to the 2004 presidential election story at this time and see how the trend has become more conspicuous. This reading implies the coming force form the blogosphere. Voters don’t passively receive messages from the traditional mass media anymore, but also be actively voice their personal opinions on the agendas during the election campaigning period. Their opinions can influence the path of the political campaigns. In this chapter, we can see that some bloggers questioned about the authenticity of the important memos which was brought up during the campaigning over the Internet. Their suspicions raised the debate over the authenticity of the memos and turned away the attention from the content which was unfavorable to Bush. The blogger’s discussion over if Bush was wired in the Presidential Debate also distracted the public’s attention from their policy to Bush’s physical conditions.

 

Is the blog a channel to express the public opinion or a just another political campaign tool?

I personal think that such expression is contributive to the democracy because these opinions are the expressions of the public opinion which is crucial to a democratic society. The public opinion expressed on the social media definitely is beneficial to our democracy; however, the usage of social media is important. How to utilize the Internet or the social media to express our public opinion needs to be learned for the users. The credibility of the bloggers should also be examined. I suggest that there can be discussion leader during the campaigning, who can help people identify the important policy issues and build effective communication between candidates and the voters. People can only benefit from the Internet in political campaign through this way.

 

The practice of the web campaigning

On the other hand, after we understand that voters now go online to follow the presidential election, the candidates shouldn’t miss their opportunity to express themselves and communicate to their supporters online. Web campaigning will be an important role in the political campaigns. Candidates can benefit from the adoption of web campaigning studies. We also have an overall idea about the adoption of web campaigning practices from the reading assignment. This research divides the web campaigning practice into four factors which are informing, connecting, involving, and mobilizing. Informing practice is the most popular one which has the highest adopting rate when mobilizing gets the lowest rate. This data reveals that there are still much room for political campaigners to put effort on because the mobilizing rates suggest indicates the degree of the involvement. The voters’ involvement could be raised higher by better communication applications and web campaigning tactics. I would say that the involvement is the key point to determine if the Web campaigning is effective.

 

 

 

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