Miscellaneous

Secondary Sources or Scholarly Articles

Editors, The. "Campaign Stops: Strong Opinions on the 2008 Election." New York Times. 2008
External source
While some of them are simply strong opinions, other have a more neutral scholarly approach to new media in the election.

Sappenfield, Mark. "More Politicians Write Blogs to Bypass Mainstream Media." The Christian Science Monitor March 24, 2005
External Source
This article discusses why politicians are turning to blogs. Basically, it talks about how politicians are using blogs as a "cyberspace soapbox" and are recasting their image online despite how they may be framed in the news media. When a politician creates his or her own blog, they can create their own message and images without any outside media influences so blogs have their advantages.

News, ABC. "ABC News Joins Forces with Facebook." ABC News. December 16, 2007
External source
ABC News and Facebook have partnered to provide coverage of the 2008 presidential elections. The partnership will allow for Facebook users to discuss the campaign and receive updates on what is happening in the race.

Broache, Anne. "Information Overload in the Facebook-ABC Presidential Debates?" CNET News.com. 2008
External source
The article looks at how Facebook users have benefitted from the ABC-Facebook partnership. It notes that Facebook users were posting messages on the "Soundboard" so quickly that it was almost impossible to read everything. However, many users and Facebook staffers themselves were satisfied with the wide, active participation.

Broder, John M. "Edwards Learns Blogs Can Cut 2 Ways." The New York Times. February 9, 2007.
External source
Covers the role that bloggers are playing in political campaigns on the actual staff of a candidate. Edwards hired two controversial feminist bloggers and chose not get release them in part because of the repercussions he would face from the blogger community.

Cohen, Noam. "Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC?" The New York Times. February 4, 2008
External source
Cohen compares Obama and Clinton's official sites. He claims that Obama's site is more "tech-savvy," while Clinton's is more "cookie-cutter." However, Cohen adds that Clinton's more "hectic" site may not necessarily put her at a disadvantage since her site reflects her campaign stance.

Gillespie, Tarleton. "'Long change' as a antidote to techno-centric thinking." Scrutiny. March 11, 2008.
External source
We could call this “technological determinism,” the tendency to explain social change by pointing to the Internet as the cause, but I think that actually doesn’t help. There are many claims made about how a new technology causes change…

Harris, John F. "New Media A Weapon in the World of Politics." The Washington Post. October 6, 2006
External source
The article notes how certain politicans like Karl Rove have used new media to their advantage in the political sphere. In the past few years, new media has had an integral role in allowing for certain controversies, such as the conflict between John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in the 2004 presidential race, to surface and gain coverage. Harris claims that Republicans have been able to use new media to their advantage, while Democrats have struggled.

Schatz, Amy. "In Clips on YouTube, Politicians Reveal Their Unscripted Side; Rival Posts 'Gotcha' Videos In Tight Montana Race." Wall Street Journal. (Eastern Edition). New York, N.Y. October 9, 2006.
External source
This news article discusses the increasing use of youtube to monitor politicians during campaign races and how campaign staffers are even hired to simple follow opposing candidates to try to capture a reputation damaging, “gotcha moment” on video. It mentions how a user submitted embarrassing videos of Montana Senator, Conrad Burns using the racial slur “Macaca” and making inappropriate jokes about political issues. According to the author, Youtube gives citizens more opportunities to get to know their candidates and puts the candidate under the scrutiny of the public eye basically 24/7.

Pryce, Vinette K. "Giuliani's daughter 'digs' Obama over dad in race for White House." New York Beacon. New York, N.Y. Vol. 14, Iss. 32. Aug 9-Aug 15, 2007
External source
This news article talks about how Guilani’s teen daughter posted her support for Barack Obama on Facebook despite, her father running for President and the controversy it started. Basically, it touches on the impact of being able to voice opinions on social networks and explains how these endorsements can either create liabilities to campaigns or strong positive influences on voter decisions.

Quaid, Libby. "Meghan McCain Has Offbeat Campaign Blog." March 27, 2008.
External source
McCain's daughter, through her new blog, offers an insider's view of the campaign that is offbeat and sometimes surprisingly intimate. While the Web site is about a campaign, it is not about issues and rarely mentions other candidates. Rather, it is intended to make her parents, and politics, seem more real.

Schonfeld, Erick. "The ABC News-Facebook Presidential Debates." Techcrunch.com. November 26, 2007.
External source
This article covers how ABC and Facebook teamed up to broadcast the New Hampshire presidential debates over the internet. Users were able to chat about topics during and after the debate and the hottest topics were included in the televised debate itself. Some statistics are also presented regarding how Facebook users are not representative of the country as a whole (58% are for Obama, whereas polls at that time said 26% actually; 34% for Ron Paul, polls said 3% actually).

Stelter, Brian. "Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On." The New York Times.
External source
The article notes that younger people are increasingly relying on online sources to get news about politics and the election. Younger people also tend to use the Internet to send political information to their friends.

Swinkels, Koen. "Ron Paul and the Role of Ideas in Class Conflict." September 20, 2007.
External source
The article as a whole isn't terribly useful (from what I skimmed), but there's a snippet I thought was interesting:
The switch to alternative media creates opportunities for libertarian bloggers, professors, columnists, economists and TV personalities. They will get more visitors to their own sites and more invitations to speak elsewhere, more air time to get their message heard, thereby in turn exciting more people still. So libertarian theorists will get greater exposure and more job opportunities because of it which helps the whole movement.

New Political Communication Unit. "Politics: Web 2.0: An International Conference." Royal Holloway University of London. 2008
External source
Has there been a shift in political use of the internet and digital new media - a new web 2.0 politics based on participatory values? How do broader social, cultural, and economic shifts towards web 2.0 impact, if at all, on the contexts, the organizational structures, and the communication of politics and policy? Does web 2.0 hinder or help democratic citizenship? This conference provides an opportunity for researchers to share and debate perspectives.

Gillespie, Tarleton. "The politics of 'platforms'." Scrutiny. April 17, 2008
External source
I suggested that there’s a paradox for new media platforms for political involvement, where they may offer up their site as a certain kind of space, but it is the users who end up defining in powerful ways what the site offers and what kind of deliberation it hosts, because each subsequent user arrives at the site filled with their contributions, may only be true because I am thinking about new media “platforms” that have to be offered up first as an empty vessel, a la YouTube or Flickr.

Conference discussing the topic of government involvement online. The E-governance and public participation in particular is very helpful.

  1. Proceedings of the 8th annual international conference on Digital government research: bridging disciplines & domains. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series; Vol. 228.
  2. Proceedings of the 2006 international conference on Digital government research. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series; Vol. 151.
  3. Proceedings of the 2005 national conference on Digital government research. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series; Vol. 89.
  4. Proceedings of the 2004 annual national conference on Digital government research. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series; Vol. 262.
  5. Proceedings of the 2003 annual national conference on Digital government research. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series; Vol. 130.
  6. Proceedings of the 2002 annual national conference on Digital government research. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series; Vol. 129.
  7. Proceedings of the 2000 annual national conference on Digital government research. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series; Vol. 128.

Primary Sources

Meghan McCain's blog
Blog of Republican 2008 presidential candidate John McCain's daughter Meghan McCain.

Websites About Congress
This source gathers online resources about Congress information.

Remix America
Remix America—Where digital culture meets the great American ideas of liberty, freedom and democracy. Sample the American Playlist. Watch great American Remixes.

MetaVid Archive
Free and open archiving of the audio/video congressional record since 2006

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