Candidates in the primaries and the parties themselves are increasingly utilising the Internet in their bid to win the US presidency, with the Democrats leading the race in building up a community around their social networking activities according to an article published today. The activity on their open threads does not suggest a party talking to voters, but evidence that there may be strong public engagement and cross-contributor horizontal dialogue; is this the e-public sphere that many academics of public discourse suggest the Internet can facilitate? Two observations here are very important, both made by John Durham the Internet strategist behind the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. Firstly that a candidate going online "needs to cede a certain amount of control for a certain amount of visibility", and when "Every vote is going to be necessary... [the] undecided group of voters [must] be reached in non-mass ways". British counterparts need to take note of this, and the level of interactivity French presidential candidates engaged in; being online is not sufficient, but creating a real dialogue and so building relationships requires a degree of openness and interactivity. If positive and fresh perceptions of politicians is to be built online then it needs to adopt a different model of political communication than the simple repeat-remind, one-way push communication! While Howard Dean did not change the face of political communication in 2004; the forthcoming contest could see the candidate with the most interactive web presence win the primary and the election - it is possible!
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