The Web Factor

The internet gets blamed for any and all sorts of societal degradation. Obsession with social networking, pornography, plagiarism, and online stalkers all stem from the advent of the internet. But the world wide web definitely has its advantages as well. From making global communication exponentially more efficient to making shopping truly an "at-home" activity, the internet has made life more convenient in a plethora of ways. It has also had a monumental impact in the political world. As Michael Cornfield explains in Politics Moves Online: Campaigning and the Internet, the constant availability of news thanks to the web appears to create "smarter" voters. That is, a voting population that knows more about the political issues up for debate. Interestingly, Cornfield also indicates that these better informed voters tend to be more "independent" voters; they are not affiliated with a specific political party.

This correlation between "informed" and "independent" voters could be extrapolated to hypothesize that, as the internet becomes more and more dominant as a political news sources, large numbers of voters will float away from strict party adherence into independent territory. Therefore, the internet may ultimately have a much larger impact on American politics than merely as a campaigning tool. It may also ultimately prove to be much more of a societal good than harm.