Internet And Democracy :: essays research papers

IF THE UNSUBSTANTIAL sound bite is the shame of televised choice reporting, then in changeion overload is the par onlyel pitfall onthe Internet. after(prenominal) spending one interminable day in October reviewing sackcoverage of the presidential campaign, I can verify that the onlineuniverse is indeed infinite, and that politics, not pornography,seemed the most prolific theme. Stunned by thousands of news articles, background pieces,surveys, news forums, transcripts and commentary, thishuman brain nearly screamed for spoon-fed mush. Election sectionson most of the study news sites were so enormous that a personcouldnt possibly offset all the sections and subsections andsub-subsections. About 20 percent of the stuff seemed digestible the equaliser was far more than the average visitant would bearing to chew. But thats the nature of the Internet, isnt it? Throw enough stuffat the wall, and most of it will be used by someone. Let folks pick andchoose their news. If nonentity else, all the fodder provided a number ofready-made high initiate civics reports and fed the repurposingrequirements of fellow reporters. And why not? Airtime and column inches dont exist on theInternet. Theres no need to decide between an interview with acandidates anatomy school sweetheart, a 5,000-word analysis of hisposition on health care or a comparison of campaign platforms. Youcan do all of that and more. This is a good thing, isnt it? Yes. As long as an organization has theresources and ken to distinguish its core coverage from theornaments that surround it. Along those lines, cheers to all of the study news sites for theirefforts at live speech and debate coverage, solid election news andvoting resources. Nearly every news organization with overture to live video streamedit quite successfully during the debates and provided catalogedarchives for future origin (abcNEWS.com even offered a streamin Spanish). Nearly live textual matter transcripts were also available o n mostsites. The innovation award goes to Web White & Blue 2000(www.webwhiteblue.org). Sponsored by the Markle Foundation, theproject was a consortium of 17 major Internet sites and newsorganizations from AOL and Yahoo to MTV and MSNBC. Each day thepresidential candidates or their surrogates would respond to aquestion submitted by a visitor at one of the partner sites. Theanswers and rebuttals could come in any format and were unlimitedin length. Not only did the Al Gore and George W. bush campaigns respondregularly, but also the Reform Partys Pat Buchanan, LibertarianHarry Browne, indwelling Law candidate John Hagelin and theConstitution Partys Howard Phillips. Only Ralph Nader declined to