Digital Democracy Reflections
Early this year I started to see a trend in the 2008 Presidential election and noticed that more and more people were tuning into politics like never before. Younger people began to mobilize in voter registration efforts and really identifying what issues they wanted addressed from any of the candidates. This was truly a moment in American history that defined what America prides itself after: democracy. The meaning of democracy according to wikipedia is a “form of government in which power is held by people in a free electoral voting system”.
When I first applied for the Digital Media program at the University of Washington I noticed that Digital Democracy was a class offered due to the election timing and surge of digital media applications. It didn’t take long for my political science background to start looking for ways to join the class and learn more. So I dived in and still very grateful that I did so.
Digital Democracy is a fitting title for this course because it provides a greater understanding of what has been improved and reaffirmed from previous elections whether on the local, state or Federal level. This course presented a open discussion of what was happening during this election and Kathy Gill was the moderator and informer. A skilled writer and advocate of digital media and its usage she informed her students on what has changed since the last election and what to possibly expect in upcoming ones as well. We discussed topics such as digital electioneering, digital advocacy and e-government practices that provided solid blueprints of how many campaigns have utilized the Internet to mobilize voters and supporters. Our reading came from two well written books that were also fitting for the current events taking place. Joe Trippi’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” provided many inside stories of what a campaign manager was able to do with little resources but a huge following and guerilla tactics. In “New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen” Philip Howard wrote about how local political elections and lobbying are carried out with the development of sophisticated organizations that are maintained with the usage of the Internet. Howard wrote how the nature of political consultancy is more than just polling and media relations, if requires strategical thinking on all levels. The voters have to be informed and each candidate wants to be able to control their message so that their target voters are not mislead about key issues. With each political campaign their is a strategy to raise money in order for the organization to survive and compete with their opponents. We witnessed with the 2008 election the Obama campaign raising over $600 million dollars in fund-raising with a large portion of it from online donations.
My short reflection of this class will be expanded with further examples in a actual essay that I will be posting very soon.
sources: Howard, Philip. New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen. 2006.
Trippi, Joe. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Updated edition 2008
