“An historical phenomenon … the Internet and its technologies are playing vital roles for candidates and

their campaigns, the mainstream media, and voters and citizens”

Laura Gordon-Murnane: published in November/December 2007

(Gordon-Murnane (2007) p19).

Tressa Reed: February 18, 2009: Online Politics

Mainstream news sites are using more and more videos, pictures, and audio to cover the 2008

Presidential Election

“42 % of voters look to the Internet for information about issues and candidates in the upcoming

presidential election, with the Internet a considerably more popular information source than newspapers

among respondents between the ages of 18 and 34” (Gordon-Murnane (2007) p.20)

• DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES

BARACK OBAMA https://donate.barackobama.com/page/contribute/dnc08splashnd

Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson

• REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES

JOHN McCAIN http://www.johnmccain.com/

Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo, Fred Thompson

All the campaigns have a website but not all have a blog

Talking Points Memo (TPM) http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

DailyKos.com http://dailykos.com/

White House Blogger

Candidate Websites &

Social Networks are very successful tools to raise

money using the Internet

CNN–YouTube held a Republican debate on September 17, 2007

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FswauQk_po

CNN held the first CNN–YouTube Democratic

Debate on July 24, 2007

The following slide is CNN–YouTube Democratic Debate

• News

• Interactive tools: comments to the reporters, comments on news blogs,

• Sharing tools: Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, del.icio.us, email, mobile, and RSS alerts

• Election guide tools (information about the candidates),

• Candidate fundraising activities

• Campaign issues

• Calendar of scheduled events

• Polls

• Surveys of the candidates

How well did mainstream sites provide for the 2008 presidential campaign?