New Media & Politics

The article, Political Communication - Old and New Media Relationships reflects upon the ways television has changed the political landscape. It also looks into how far new media, such as the Internet, are displacing television or reconfiguring the political communications ecology. Since the 1960s and the JFK/Nixon debate, television has held the center of the political stage, assuming a “co-producer” role. Television gradually moved from the role of observer of events and provider of stories and emerged as definer and constructor of political reality. And without necessarily breaching journalistic norms, television came to have an impact upon the events it covered and how they were covered. Networks like FOX and NBC began to favor different sides when covering politics, setting different agendas. It is these reasons that the Internet is now taking the spotlight.

Since broadcast news limits what we learn on different topics, we are looking to the Internet for additional information (the same goes for newspapers). The article states that a majority of Americans who accept new media get political material from blogs, comedy sites, government websites, candidate sites or alternative sites. Furthermore, data shows that younger people are more heavily represented among new media users, suggesting that the trend will accelerate. Since 2004, the number of Americans citing the Internet as their first source of presidential election campaign news has increased by almost twenty-five percent. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are also finding ways to attract their audiences towards politics. The viral energy of the blogosphere, social network sites, and wikis constitutes a new flow of incessantly circulating publicity in which reputations are enhanced and destroyed, messages are debated and discarded, and rumors are floated and tested. President Obama’s decision to use Facebook as a source to reach out to young voters could be considered a key component in his election. It allowed him to open up to a specific audience that he knew he would not reach on any other media.

Television must find a way to incorporate the Internet in its broadcasts to maintain its dominance as a political source. However, it will first face consequences before it will be a success. Although television still performs a public service function, this function is struggling to survive in an increasingly market-driven, competitive media environment. Broadcasters must now be able to operate across media platforms and engage collaboratively with a broad spectrum of off-line as well as online communities. Now it is required to produce 24/7, cross-platform content, sometimes at the cost of journalistic depth and even accuracy. Overall, the media and politics will continue to be mutually dependent. I believe that in time, collaboration between the Internet and television will be made and our country will be exposed to a new form of gathering political information.