It's amazing how urgently everyone tries to come out with their What-It-All-Means-For-The -Future-of-Technology -and-Politics-and-The-World post-election analyses... Mannnnn, we were all too busy celebrating to provide anyone with coherent commentary! But that didn't stop at least a few outlets from running poorly-argued "MySpace and YouTube changed everything!" conjectures before election night was even over.
Well, Colin Delany over at epolitics put together one of the best analyses I've seen as of yet for what we can learn from '06. (Alan Rosenblatt's thoughtful response is worth a read too.)
And the good editors at Personal Democracy Forum have been inviting thoughts and reactions from different folks on technology's role in the midterm elections (vs. '04 and '08) in three different feature articles, also worth checking out.
We were asked to throw our thoughts into the ring as well (thanks, PDF), so here's what I ended up contributing to their final roundup:
Biggest change? The center of gravity in online politics is shifting from campaigns to citizens, where it belongs.
In '04, major election campaigns lead the way by using technology to build massive supporter networks, which they then engaged in a range of volunteer activities both online and off. With a few exceptions, candidate campaigns initiated almost all of the major online activity -- from creative online fundraising efforts to self-organized meetups and house-parties. Many top political bloggers even joined the ranks of official campaigns.
This year, we saw the first signs of citizens and third party organizations taking the reigns away from the campaigns. We're beginning to realize, collectively, that we can use these new social tools to influence politics without the campaign's direction. We learn quickly, for example, that we can capture a video of Sen Allen making racist remarks during a campaign stop and post it to the web within minutes. Better yet, we know that the network of bloggers, blog readers, and YouTube watchers has grown large enough and is well-connected enough to create an online ruckus so loud that the national media is compelled to cover it.
We're also creating and sharing local voting guides with one another, just like we do iTunes playlists, or placing our Fantasy Congress bets. While at the polls, we're taking photos and notes for The Polling Place Photo Project, a national experiment relying on a distributed network of citizens to build a national picture of voting in America through basic technology. If we saw any problems or dirty tricks at the polls, we could capture a video and upload it to the grassroots Video the Vote collection. Or else we'd complete the VoterStory voter complaint form, whose success depends on the number of distributed websites that agree to host the form.
By 2008, I'm hopeful that the growing online population will more fully realize its power to use the 'net as an organizing vehicle and to influence elections. If that happens, more candidates will be forced to engage with the medium in earnest rather than use it as an additional distribution channel for campaign ads or press releases.
Eager to get some reactions -- do you agree, or is this argument somehow flawed?
