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Sunday, June 2, 2019

Internet And Democracy :: essays research papers

IF THE UNSUBSTANTIAL sound bite is the shame of televisedelection coverage, then information overload is the parallel pitfall onthe Internet. After outgo one interminable day in October reviewing Webcoverage 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, discussion forums, transcripts and commentary, thishuman brain nearly screamed for spoon-fed mush. Election sectionson most of the major news sites were so gigantic that a personcouldnt possibly process all the sections and subsections andsub-subsections. About 20 percent of the stuff seemed digestible therest was far more than the average visitant would charge 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 tack together andchoose their news. If nothing else, all the fod der provided a number ofready-made high school civics reports and fed the repurposingrequirements of fellow reporters. And why not? Airtime and column inches dont hold up on theInternet. Theres no need to decide between an interview with acandidates grade 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 vision to strike out its core coverage from theornaments that surround it. Along those lines, cheers to all of the major news sites for theirefforts at live speech and debate coverage, solid election news and pick out resources. Nearly every news organization with access to live video streamedit quite successfully during the debates and provided catalogedarchives for future reference (abcNEWS.com even offered a streamin Spanish). Nearly live text transcripts were also available on mostsites. The innovation a ward goes to Web White & Blue 2000(www.webwhiteblue.org). Sponsored by the Markle Foundation, the aim 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 control panel and George W. Bush campaigns respondregularly, but also the Reform Partys Pat Buchanan, LibertarianHarry Browne, Natural Law candidate John Hagelin and theConstitution Partys Howard Phillips. Only Ralph Nader declined to

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