David Elkin Blogging Inc

Factors that affect elections are numerous and embedded in society. Increasingly, the internet is becoming more and more part of the culture that many countries live in. Taking these two points, the question must be asked: Can the increasing influence of blogs begin to have a real affect on the voting conciousness?

At the moment: no. Not really. The traditional means to get elected still hold firm, with the internet becoming an increasingly important factor. But the rise of the internet’s affect does not necessarily correspond with the fate of the blogs. Sure, a news/blog site can still reveal scoop to drastically change the public opinion on an individual, but in the slow world of opinion polls revealing ad campaigns, corporate media and (God forbid!) actual policies still being the main contributors to public opinion, the independent bloggers of this world have yet to see real impact on the election.

Will this remain so? I don’t know. The fact remains that when it comes to setting the mainstream agenda the corporate press will still retain the power, even when it comes to the online world. The bloggers and similar such media players will still remain in the background of the situation, perhaps with something very important to say, but with significantly less listeners.

As alluded to in this “blog” before, interactivity is one of the mainstays of internet journalism, and a potential USP for the medium. Among the political blogs I have read, they retain this importance and are an integral part of how they work.

Taking what many of these news sites are: links to other stories, it is obvious that interactivity is one of the most important, if not the most important, feature of many sites. The concept of a site being a “terminal” from which to branch out to other stories is enshrined in the concept of interactivity. This is the case for many sites below and can not be underestimated when dealing with the features of political blogs.