“I Got a Crush on Obama” is an amateur produced music video, created by the group, Obama’s Girl. While the video is unique, in that it portrays a girl who has fallen for Sen. Barack Obama, it is not the only politically based YouTube video that has gained mass popularity. In fact “three of the dozen most popular videos on YouTube this month [March] are about Barack Obama, not Paris or Lindsay or Britney,” reports David Carr in a New York Times article, “More Than a Sound Bite, This Clip has Some Teeth.”

While many YouTube videos reflect issues in popular culture, politically focused videos that have gained popularity over the past year reflect the use and role of the internet in the 2008 political election.

Specifically, the advent of the internet has revolutionized the ways in which we collect information with regard to news. News is no longer limited to specified morning and primetime timeslots, or even the morning paper; the public is provided with a variety of news sources ranging from constantly updated news websites such as CNN and  The Times, in addition to user generated sites such as blogs, YouTube and social networking sites. This is particularly important in terms of understanding the internet’s role in the 2008 campaign.

A study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, entitled The Internet’s Broader Role in Campaign 2008, revealed that nearly a quarter of Americans have indicated that they learned something about the campaign from the internet. This is approximately double the percentage of those who learned something from the internet about the 2004 campaign.

However, one of the most striking findings of this study revealed that the internet has become a leading source of campaign news for young people. Over 40 percent of individuals between the age of 18 to 29 revealed that they learned about the campaign from the internet, which is double the percentage of young people who said that learned about the campaign from the internet in 2000.

A brief look at voting practices amongst youths ages 18 to 24 over the past several years reveals that voting decreased after the Vietnam War; however voter participation increased from 36 Percent in 2000 to 47 percent in 2004, says Susan Milligan of the Boston Globe in the article, “Youth Voters a Force in ‘08 Race.”

In the past, young voters have played a “marginal role in electoral politics,” Milligan says. However, “they have emerged as a powerful new force in the 2008 elections and are poised to determine the next president as a result of an explosion in political activity among youth.”

Milligan suggests that increased young voter participation may be attributed to the advent of the internet, which has provided young people with a “cheap and efficient tool to organize rallies, recruit volunteers and exchange information about candidates.”

Similarly, an article written by Brian Stelter in the New York Times entitled, “Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On,” reveals that the internet has made the political process into a “social one.” He suggests that “according to interviews and recent surveys, young voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events, but act as conduits as well — sending out e-mail links and videos to friends and their social networks.”

In an effort to clarify his point, Stelter quotes the director of Pew Internet and American Life Project, Lee Rainie, who suggests “They [young voters] read a news story and then blog about it, or they see a YouTube video and then link to it, or they go to a campaign Web site, download some phone numbers and make calls on behalf of a candidate.”

As a result, the internet has transformed the way we gather political information. We are no longer forced to serve as passive observers of the political process. The internet has provided us with the opportunity to gather as much or as little information needed to shape our political perceptions, a medium to communicate with others who share similar political views and even a way for voters to communicate directly with political candidates.

Making its debut in the 2008 presidential election campaign is WikiCandidate, a site that allows users to contribute to a campaign site for a hypothetical presidential candidate. The site displays a user-generated biography of Maria Montoya Correa, a native New Yorker of Catholic descent. Theoretically, WikiCandidate should portray what the public would like to see in a presidential candidate.

On the left side of the spectrum is Daily Kos, a blog that was started in 2002 by Markos “Kos” Moulitsas, when “an oppressive and war-crazed administration suppressed all dissent as unpatriotic and treasonous.” Kos, a war veteran, currently serves as a writer for the site that averages over one million hits per day and has a staff of over 20 writers and editors.

Daily Kos does not shroud its inherent political bias behind a veil of political correctness. Instead, it analyzes the news in a manner that makes its views and opinions clear and it seems as though its readers are walking the same line. According to a Daily Koss poll that asked readers about their willingness to vote for Sen. John McCain in November, 50 percent, or 6,555 voters, stated “You could not get me to vote for McCain even if you staked me out on a fire ant hill and poured honey on my privates.” Trailing behind in second place, with 23 percent of the votes, was the response “Short of torture, I would not vote for McCain.” Only one percent of voters said that they thought McCain would make a good president.

The Huffington Post exemplifies how technology has influenced the news media. HuffPost, which describes itself as “the internet newspaper,” has an obvious political slant, yet advertises itself as an outlet for news about politics, media, business and entertainment. On May 13, HuffPost ran a post entitled “Pentagon Propaganda ‘Analysts’ Made 4,500 Media Appearances,” which cited that members of the Pentagon media analyst program appeared on television news stations as retired military “media analysts” over 4,500 times. HuffPost editorializes the story most perceptibly by putting the work “propaganda” in the headline. Additionally, the post criticizes the news media, stating that The New York Times, which initially broke the story, “has done little to advance its blockbuster story since it was first reported.”

Towards the center of the spectrum is The Caucus, a blog where the political staff of The New York Times follows the 2008 presidential election campaign trail. While loyal Times readers may be inclined to say that the paper is in favor of Sen. Hillary Clinton — who received support from the paper’s editorial board — The Times’ blog generally veers away from making any outwardly editorialized statements. What differentiates The Caucus from other political blogs such as Daily Kos and HuffPost is the users who generate the sites’ content. Daily Kos and HuffPost can be classified as amateur blogs, in that content is produced by people who have no affiliation with the professional news media. On the other hand, The Caucus is written by the staff of The Times, a corporation whose reputation is dependent on their claim to report unbiased news content.

According to Thomas B. Edsall (2007), web-based political sites are, in many ways, becoming more important than newspapers. Political blogs and related sites such as Politico, the Huffington Post, Salon, Slate, the National Review Online, and the Wall Street Journal Online have grown to play vital roles in policy making and election coverage. Political blog sites, such as the Huffington Post, (which is somewhat unbiased as compared with other political blog sites), have the ability to hyperlink to thousands of other news sources. These sources include endless numbers of both liberal and conservative “blogrolls.” These “blogroll” sites then connect readers to politically varied sites, such as RealClearPolitics, TalkingPointsMemo, Instapundit, Taegan Goddard’s PoliticalWire, and the Drudge Report, (Edsall, 2007).

Furthermore, the surging popularity of left and right-winged blogs has become a crucial source for politicians with regards to their campaigns. Campaign staffers currently search for blog postings which positively reflect their candidates and which negatively reflect their opponents. The staffers then mass e-mail these comments, treating them as news releases to both the mainstream media and to new media sources.

One theoretical perspective of new media’s role in the political sphere centers on technological determinism. Technological determinism is the view that a society’s technology imprints its own logic on the culture, social relationships, and history of that society. However, an alternative approach, as pronounced by Philip E. Agre (2002), asserts that there are a multitude of ways, in which the users of technology allocate the technology for the purposes of providing the service of goals, strategies, and relationships. This perspective, known as the amplification model, can be applied to new media’s role in politics. Specifically, the amplification model relates to, among other things, the development of social networks and ways that new media technology can be used to connect people together to form a polity. Thus, the political blog serves as an emblematic example of the amplification model.

With regards to blogging, there are differing theories as to whether blogs function in support of mainstream media or counter to it. According to David Michael Ryfe (2007), writer, Andrew Sullivan, has argued that blogging is “the most significant media revolution since the arrival of television.” This view attests that bloggers are challenging, and possibly even supplanting, traditional news media. However, the opposing perspective presumes that blogs, though an important and significant new media technology, have had less effect on American politics than is generally assumed. This perspective is affirmed by Mark Tremayne in Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of Media, and by Stephen D. Cooper in Watching the Watchdog. According to proponents of this view, blogs have taken up a symbiotic relationship with the mainstream media, as opposed to a competitive one. Furthermore, Cooper and Tremayne claim that the mainstream media have had as much effect on blogging as blogs have had on them. (Ryfe, 2007: 5-6).

Grannick, Jenifer (2006, March 11). “Politics Get Caught in the Web.”

Jenkins: “Answering Questions from a Snowman: The YouTube Debate and Its Aftermath” (2007)

Pew, “The Internet’s Broader Role in Campaign 2008″ ( 2008 )

“Among the Audience” (2006, April 20). The Economist.

Graf, Joseph (2006) The Audience for Political Blogs: New Research on blog readership. Washington, DC Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, The George Washington University.

Sulek, Julia Prodis (2008, March 28). Young voters’ interest in politics surges. McClatchy – Tribune Business News.

Stelter, Brian. (2008, March 28). Finding Political News Online, Young Viewers Pass It Along. New York Times, p. A1.

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