Monday, July 30, 2007
Democratization of politics by way of the Web
The Internet continues to grow in use and influence. CNN is now making use of the cultural phenomenon known as YouTube to enable average citizens to ask questions of candidates. The first use came last week with the Democrats. The next test will come with the Republican candidates in early September.
The cable news network sent out a call for people to create video questions and post them on a special area in YouTube. You know about YouTube, the home of such celebrities as Lonely Girl 15 and Nora the piano-playing cat?
Some of the questions were about such pressing topics as space aliens but most were legit with questions on topics from the Iraq war to health care to education. The network ended up with several thousand video questions to review.
Some argued that the review process imposed a top-down review of the questions. Network reps insisted that was not the case. The volume of questions on a particular subject helped determine what questions would be asked. They also felt the need to review the videos to guard against a campaign from trying to stack the questions by flooding the process with their own videos.
The whole process generally follows along the increasing democratization of the election process. Just as we are entering the age of the citizen journalist, we are entering the age of people politics. One person can stand on their relatively inexpensive electronic soap box and share their opinions with thousands if not millions of people on the Web.
The savvy politician has learned to take advantage of modern technology. They all seem to have MySpace and FaceBook pages. They know that the Internet is the way to engage the modern young person. Some of these sites didn’t even exist as recently as 2000. By 2012, we will likely have the majority of our interaction with candidates through some form of Internet social network.
The concept of the video questions placed to candidates the average citizen may be passé by 2012.
Please notice that we have added “Serving the Shore” to the stardem.com Web site. This is a list of volunteer organizations that help the community that has been compiled by our print paper’s community news department. If you want to have your volunteer organization included, drop me an e-mail. It will be listed at the end of this column.
We continue to show increases in visitors and Web page views. From 2005 to 2006, the average number of unique visitors a day increase by 25 percent. That figure increased to 29 percent when comparing totals for 2006 and 2007 current. The average number of page views increased 16 percent from 2005 to 2006 while they increased 24 percent from 2006 to 2007.
Our total page views in 2005 was 5.6 million. That total increased to 6.8 million in 2006. At the current rate we should have 8.9 million page views in 2007 when the year is complete. That total hits for the site in 2007 should be over 50.8 million by Dec. 31.
I left our question on driving courtesy up this week. Drivers continue to get low marks. A solid 88 percent of you feel drivers are less courteous than they were 10 years ago. Based on my own recent experiences on the road, I can’t disagree with the majority. Hardly a day goes by without some driver trying to ride up over my bumper because I have the audacity to try to stay at the speed limit. This most often happens during those pre-dawn hours of the morning while I am traveling to work. Stop signs are yield signs. Parking lots are there to cut through to avoid a red signal light.
A double yellow line means you have to pass faster.
It is no wonder the poll results are what they are.
As always, you can reach me at rpolk@chespub.com.
