web site."
Introduction.
For most of American political history, citizen activism has been naturally constrained by two factors; difficulty of finding information and creating rhetoric and getting that out to a large audience, and difficulty of organizing into interest or voting blocs. Political messaging has been historically the province of members of the political elite and newspapers, with television emerging in the latter half of the 20th century as another powerful medium. But the voice of the individual was seldom heard until the rise of the World Wide Web and the ability of individuals to communicate on a mass level. Organizing was restricted to small grassroots or top-down driven organizations until the Internet and groups like MoveOn.org burst onto the political landscape and provided an early framework for grassroots activism on a large scale, and with the advent of email, these and traditional groups gained the ability to communicate with the click of a mouse. Blogging played a critical role in the development of this new system, building online networks that would expand into usage of diverse technological platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, as well as individual innovations. Candidates also use a variety of Internet platforms to engage citizens.
Ascendency of Internet technology as a medium of political influence.
When looking back on the history of political blogging, it seems as if the starting point was when Matt Drudge came on the scene, his site Drudge Report is widely read to this day . Today it is mainly a news aggregation website, but back in the 1990s it had quite a bit of original reporting as well. The event that put Drudge on the map was when he broke the news that Newsweek had killed a piece on an affair between President Clinton and a White House intern (Weiss, 2007.), without this coverage, the American people may have never learned of the greatest Presidential scandal since Watergate.
Blogging emerged to become a dynamic new medium for both secondary analysis and original reporting, playing kingmaker for some politicians and obliterating others.
Left-wing blogs emerged as a potent political force in the 2006 elections, overshadowing the much smaller Right-wing blogosphere. The progressive “netroots” were a crucial part of recruiting and bringing to prominence people like Sen. Jim Webb and Senate nominee Ned Lamont (D-CT), the former toppling Sen. George Allen (R-VA) in the general election and the latter beating Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) in the Democratic primary eventually losing to Lieberman in the general election (Anne, 2006). The Netroots continued their prominence in the 2008 Presidential election, giving Sen. Obama a much needed edge over Sen. Clinton for the Democratic party nomination and then against Sen. McCain in the General Election (Jukes, 2008). Notably in the Republican primaries, supporters of Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian leaning fringe candidate, organized en masse online to blog and raise money for Paul - that network translated into little votes, but continues to be at least marginally influential politically (Spiegel, 2007). The Election of Barack Obama along with a 10 seat filibuster-proof democratic majority in the Senate (US Senate, 2010.) and a 253 to 178 seat Democratic majority in the House (House of Representatives, 2010.) was considered by some to signal long-term dominance by the Democrats and an end of power for Republicans (Goldman, 2008.); Congressional Democrats had the power to pass anything they wanted on a party-line vote, but with power came a complacency that would lead to a reversal of fortunes between the Online Left and the Online Right. After being taken to the woodshed in the two previous elections, the Republican party set out with a vengeance to rebuild their party’s brand and to catch up and surpass the left’s online capability (Condon, 2009).
The Right-wing effort to build an online presence has been successful by most accounts; in part because of the energy of their activists but reaction to pieces of legislation like the Economic Stimulus, Cap & Trade, Card Check, and Healthcare Reform certainly played a big role. Opposition to this legislation came in large part because of online activism; email alerts with Representatives contact information were sent out before key votes, bloggers sifted through legislation to pick out frivolous spending, kickbacks and unpopular provisions to report to their readers, which then shared this information on sites like Facebook and Twitter.
But before this resurgence there was a tipping point in Feb. 2009 that sparked a movement that has come to define center-right America, and the internet played a key role.
In the “Rant Heard Round’ the World” CNBC host Rick Santelli sounded off for about four minutes on news of a bailout program for mortgage holders, had the clip not been uploaded to YouTube its doubtful that many would have seen it, but once on YouTube it went viral and a remarkable number of Americans connected with the message, a grassroots movement sprung up virtually overnight, organizing thousands of “Tea Party” protests for April 15th - the day federal tax returns are due and gradually coalescing into loose networks of local and regional groups (Reynolds, 2009).
As a ground-up movement with no central organization or planning; technology plays a vital role to Tea Party operations.
When Congress goes into recess every August, Congressmen/women customarily hold town-hall style meetings with their constituents; over the summer of 2009 the issue of health-care reform had emerged front and center in American consciousness as the issue, when the legislators held their town hall meetings, activists were there filming, most commonly with ‘flip’ cameras - inexpensive, small, easy to use, camcorders. Armed with these video recorders they captured a variety of unfavorable footage such as: citizens locked out of auditoriums and even assaulted in a couple of cases, Congressmen/women making statements that seem inconceivable to most, giving answers that alienated many, constituents making statements (largely) in opposition, and in the case of one congresswoman - taking a cell phone call while a constituent was in the middle of a question. After the videos went online and started going viral, they spread to television and cable news outlets as well as sparking newspaper articles and radio coverage (Ham, 2009). A month later, intrepid young activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles posed as a pimp and prostitute and secretly recorded encounters with ACORN (a left-leaning community organizing organization) employees, the employees gave them various illicit advice such as how to set up a brothel with government housing vouchers and smuggling illegal immigrants into the US to serve as prostitutes; this investigation also spread from the Internet to mainstream media, eventually toppling ACORN, a key target of Conservatives (It should be mentioned that ACORN was charged with voter registration fraud in the 2008 Election, leading some on the Right to suspect the legitimacy of Obama’s victory in certain key swing states.)(Carr, 2010).
After the passage of Healthcare reform, focus has largely seemed to shift to the upcoming midterm elections. Although the Tea Party movement largely is much more friendly to Republicans than Democrats, the Republicans get a fair share of criticism, mainly stemming from increasing government spending, deficit, debt, and regulations while they had control of Congress and the White House (Good, 2010). The Tea Party has used the Internet to flex its influence over Republican nomination contests, raising funds for favored candidates, maintaining dialogues on candidate selection, and spreading information between activists that provide the crucial support needed to topple establishment backed candidates (Hulse, 2010). Nowhere could I find the Tea Party’s online strength demonstrated more vividly than on Facebook; as of Oct. 1st the largest Tea Party group - Tea Party Patriots - had more members (475,042) than the Republican Party (181,573) and the Democratic Party (133,590) combined. Time will tell if this movement will last or just fade away like so many other populist movements in American history, but one thing is obvious, its structure and emergence would have been all but impossible in a pre or early-internet era, and maybe the Internet will be the factor that keeps it around.
Technology and Politics are not one-way streets; and although the use of the Internet by citizens to engage in the political process is profound, I would be remiss in not mentioning some of the ways that officeholders or candidates for office use the Internet to engage citizens.
Drawing on personal observation, Candidate websites with information for voters and tools for activists have become the norm. Just in the time I have been researching for this paper, I have encountered google and facebook ads for both major congressional candidates in my district and a negative ad by an independent expenditure group against my congressman. When volunteering for a candidate the campaign had me making calls from a VOIP phone with a web-based data entry interface for entering answers to voter surveys; another activity was making lists of houses for volunteers to take literature to, the lists were printed from an online voter database and we created highlighted walk maps and directions with Google Maps. Technology is as useful to the candidate as it is to the voter or activist, on both fronts it is shaping the political landscape.
Conclusion.
Technology has empowered Americans of all political flavors, and that is a positive development. It arguably provides security for liberty by ensuring a press that is free of the state. When news was largely confined to three television networks and newspapers and magazines, a government influence or dictation of information was plausible. Today, the measures required to control information would be inflammatory to say the least. More than ever before, Americans have the tools necessary to bring accountability and change to their government, to inform themselves or others, to take their future into their hands.
References.
Weiss, P. (2007). Watching Matt Drudge. New York, 40(31/32), 50. Retrieved from MasterFILE Premier Database. (Information Source.)
McDermott, T. (2007, March 17). Blogs can top the presses. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/17/nation/na-blogs17 on 10/1/2010 (Information Source.)
Spiegel, B. (2007, June 27) Ron Paul: How a Fringe Politician Took Over the Web. Wired Magazine. Print. (Information Source.)
www.senate.gov retrieved on 10/3/2010 (Information Source.)
www.house.gov retrieved on 10/3/2010 (Information Source.)
Levey, N. (2008, November 06) GOP tries to shake off hangover. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov/06/nation/na-gop6 on 10/1/2010 (Information Source.)
Condon, S. (2009, February 13) GOP tries to rebuild brand with technology. cnet.com. Retrieved from http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10164018-38.html on 10/1/2010 (Information Source.)
David Carr. (2010, July 26). Journalists, Provocateurs, Maybe Both :[Business/Financial Desk]. New York Times. (Late Edition (east Coast)), p. B.1. Retrieved October 4, 2010, from Banking Information Source. (Document ID: 2091078811). (Information Source.)
Chris Good. (2010, September). Inside The Tea Party Express. National Journal. Retrieved October 5, 2010, from Social Science Module. (Document ID: 2146525021). (Information Source.)
Carl Hulse. (2010, August 29). For Republicans, Could It Be '80 Deja Vu :[National Desk]. New York Times (Late Edition (east Coast)), p. A.16. Retrieved October 5, 2010, from Banking Information Source. (Document ID: 2123653281). (Information Source.)
