Old Politics in New Media

Political campaigns in the United States are using the internet as never before, reports Adam Nagourney. Unfortunately, some of the new technologies are being deployed in service of the same old dirty politics as ever, including attack ads and stealth campaigns: "Those include Podcasts featuring a daily downloaded message from a candidate and so-called viral attack videos, designed to trigger peer-to-peer distribution by e-mail chains, without being associated with any candidate or campaign." Nagourney notes that campaigns are also "studying popular Internet social networks, like Friendster and Facebook, as ways to reaching groups of potential supporters with similar political views or cultural interests."