I went to a talk a few months ago aobut Ron Paul, a supposed libertarian candiate for the US presidency.
Unfortunately, the talk - which was meant to be about the netroots campaign and how the campaigners utilised the internet and social networking to gather (erm...) unstoppable momentum - focussed very much on the man and his politics.
The impact of the net on politics interested me a lot; the uncritical acclaim for Paul's politics didn't.
I think the internet can be a powerful politcal tool (a recent article in the Economist demonstrated how this could be for good or bad, with extreme right wing groups using Facebook-like websites to rally their forces - described by the Economist as "Hatebook").
But it also allows the rise of single topic campaigns and people working outside the party system. This could be interesting going forward!
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Unfortunately, the talk - which was meant to be about the netroots campaign and how the campaigners utilised the internet and social networking to gather (erm...) unstoppable momentum - focussed very much on the man and his politics.
The impact of the net on politics interested me a lot; the uncritical acclaim for Paul's politics didn't.
I think the internet can be a powerful politcal tool (a recent article in the Economist demonstrated how this could be for good or bad, with extreme right wing groups using Facebook-like websites to rally their forces - described by the Economist as "Hatebook").
But it also allows the rise of single topic campaigns and people working outside the party system. This could be interesting going forward!