Web 2.0 Invades the Presidential Election Process

The social community of web 2.0 has its fingers in every aspect of life.  Blogs, Myspace, Facebook, and other applications are making the world a community of neighbors.  It’s affecting everything from how you do your taxes or cook your dinners to how you vote in elections.

The democrats pushed the revolution to a new level (good or bad is still up for debate) when they choose to do a live debate on YouTube.  The republicans declined to offer to follow suit.  But all the candidates have seemed to embrace the internet with blogs, websites, and other uses of the medium.

MySpace has pages for all the candidates and it is set to have the candidates do live interviews in the next few weeks.  This is a push to get the youth involved in the election, but will have other repercussions as well.

The internet could be the catalyst for grassroots efforts to take over the nominations.  Online communications make the process seem more intimate and tend to encourage people to have a more personal stake in the outcome.

It is a fine line between trying to pull new voters into the process through the use of new and unusual means and crossing over to situations that demean the very position that it is trying to promote.  Candidates need to use the internet with discretion and dignity.