<nettime> The Internet and the US 2004 Presidential Election?

[ronda@ais.org (Ronda Hauben)]

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




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