Being Political Online

As the United States ramps up its political infrastructure for the elections. The Internet is alive with the development of new sites allowing for everyone to get involved politically. News outlets have since their entrance into the online world have been strongholds of political information as well as sites from the campaigns and the parties, but now, even more than before bloggers and online enthusiasts are adding to the debate in ways never before seen.

The CNN YouTube debates, for example, created a whole new method for engaging with candidates. Individuals submit videos to CNN via YouTube and then on live-TV, the candidates answered questions posed to them by citizens of the virtual American electorate. Additions to The Facebook have also provided a channel for candidates to interact with participants over the Internet by allowing them to have profiles and political groups on the site. Becoming friends with candidates is becoming a factor when it comes to voting.

MySpace and MTV have also announced a series of forums that will help users get to know the candidates.

A search of Technorati ( a website that currently tracks 100 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media) reveals more than seventy thousand recent blog posts about the 2008 elections.On many posts you can comment on posts made previous bloggers, and If you don’t like the content you find, you can start your own blog and tell the world what you think.

Unity 08 is a site that hopes to provide users a way to completely change the political landscape. The goal of the site is to provide users a community to propose alternative tickets and discuss political opinions.

Politics online is in not only an American thing. A Google search of “Global Politics” shows 142,000,000 results and the same search on Technorati shows 59,722 blog posts about global politics.TakingITGlobal is an online community that connects youth to find inspiration, access information, get involved, and take action in their local and global communities. I recently joined TakingITGlobal and it appears to be an interesting and vibrant community looking at many big picture ideas from multiple of points of view.

No matter if you are a political buff or not, there many new and exciting ways to participate in politics online.