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Will the Internet change media's role in politics?

cyber_politics

January 30, 1996
Web posted at: 12:35 a.m. EST

From Correspondent Brian Nelson

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- In 1948, presidential candidate Harry Truman, like most of the rest of the U.S., was just a bystander at the birth of a new medium called television.

And it wasn't for more than a decade, when John Kennedy rode it into the White House, that the country began to realize television's political power.

Now, nearly half a century later, a new crop of presidential wannabees faces a similar revolution. A new medium -- the Internet -- where, theoretically, candidates can speak to voters one-on-one.

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David Weir, producer of The Netizen, a new political Web page, says that the Internet offers a chance for candidates "to move beyond soundbites," while veteran Washington Post columnist David Broder, calls the new medium a route for candidates to "get their messages directly to the voter." (102K AIFF sound or 102K WAV sound)

Estimates suggest that only 10 percent of the population has ever been on the Internet -- and had the chance to see politics newsgroups and freewheeling debate. Yet nine Republican candidates -- and the main contender from the Democratic side -- have all mounted a presence on the World Wide Web with campaign home pages.

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They join their parties on the Internet: the Republicans with their snazzy "Virtual Town" and interactive live chat in the cloak room; and the Democrats, offering a sometimes offbeat mix of material, including political cartoons about Vice President Al Gore, and Sen. Ted Kennedy reciting a poem.

For themselves, the presidential candidates seem unsure about this new medium. And playing it safe, they cram their web sites with policy papers and speeches -- and plenty about themselves and their accomplishments. Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan goes further and throws in the family portrait on his Web site.

But does all this Internet activity really signal the approaching demise of the politics of quick television soundbites?

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Weir thinks so. From the offices of Hot Wired -- Wired magazine's Web site -- in San Francisco, Weir is preparing to launch The Netizen. Its target audience is the 20- and 30- something generation, and the technologically savvy.

"We're really talking about people who are already living in the next century," he says.

Even a media mainstreamer like Broder welcomes these challenges to the media's status quo.

"We'll make our adjustments," he says. "And if we can't adjust, we'll be bypassed." (119K AIFF sound or 119K WAV sound)

Depending on the Internet's performance, 1996 could turn out to be the media's year of adjustment.

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