As voters, we used to have to rely on the information
candidates for office fed us - in their TV spots, mailers and print
ads. - or on what the press chose to report about each candidate.
More and more, the 'news' about candidates has turned into endless
analyses of how much money a candidate raises, who s/he was, is
or might be intimate with, and how well her/his campaign is spinning
a set of carefully nebulous issues.
Since the mid-nineties, politicians, activists and
techno-utopians have hailed the digitizing of information about
politics and candidates (at all levels) and its distribution via
the web as a dramatic step towards a fully participatory popular
democracy. Can this swelling information stream break the deadlock
of traditional parties, 'anointed' mainstream candidates like Gore
and Bush, the skill of the spinmeisters, and the raising of hard
cash (lots of it) as determinants of electoral behavior and deciders
of elections? You decide.
- understand how a new medium is co-opted into (or challenges)
the business of politics
- investigate the role of a new medium in the political process
- examine the potential for, and limits on, voter choice in
the contemporary democratic process and its relationship to
the availability of information
Guidelines
For this assignment, we should like you to investigate the potential
(or the reality) of the web as an alternative venue (for all voters)
for information about candidates' opinions, their actions and their
associations.
I
Choose a candidate, or an issue important to you in the upcoming
elections, and investigate in detail the quantity, quality and usefulness
to the voter of the information you discover.
II
Now think about the process through which you gained that information.
How does it differ from the process of gaining information via the
traditional media of TV news reports and advertising, mailers, print
news stories, print ads. etc. How is your role different/the same?
How is the information you uncover different/the same?
III
Now widen your focus. What obstacles might other voters find
in this search? How does a conscious search for information shift
(or start to shift) your relationship to the political process?
How might it influence the relationship of other voters in the country
to the political process?
IV
Now think about whether knowing more actually translates into
being able to influence to the political process more.
