What has the Internet done for/to politics?

[Mister D]

I sense a thread ban coming...

[The Xl]

The internet has allowed for conversations, exchanges, and news that is free and uncontrolled. This is mostly a good thing. No longer is everyone a zombie beholden to one controlled narrative.

[Mister D]

The internet has allowed for conversations, exchanges, and news that is free and uncontrolled. This is mostly a good thing. No longer is everyone a zombie beholden to one controlled narrative.

Exactly. Controlling the narrative is now much more difficult.

[Mister D]

Neighbor lady brought us some "Coke" cupcakes. Moist, light and delicious.

Somewhat ambiguous. lol

[Standing Wolf]

When I was younger, most people had to write a letter to the editor of their local newspaper, or to a news magazine, in order to express a view on politics or social issues to the general public. That was a hit-or-miss business at best, and you were constrained by length, content and by the whims of the editorial staff.

Then "talk radio" came along, and - if you picked your venue well and were at all articulate - it was possible to put out there, however briefly and transitorily, even the most off-the-wall opinion or theory. Still, unless you had your own show, it was impossible to initiate any sort of popular movement or advocacy.

The Internet has changed all of that in a relatively few years. It is now possible to put and keep virtually any idea or message before millions of Americans - starting and maintaining movements, and influencing many of those people - with both information and misinformation, logic and fallacious reasoning - politically. Ideas, access to which used to be pretty much confined to the odd flyer handed out on a street corner, or to small groups of little old ladies in tennis shoes meeting in someone's apartment, can now be seen by anyone with Internet access, anywhere in the country.

What does that mean for American politics? Some good, some bad. Whatever your personal cause, belief or priority, you're not going to feel alone any more, once you begin surfing around on the Internet. Whatever your issue or prejudice, you will find plenty of others with the same issue or prejudice. For good or ill, you will feel emboldened by having company, and then you will have a medium by which to express it. Entire media sites feed off the popularity of an idea, then reinforce it and make it grow. Candidates are popularized, defeated or driven into obscurity with the help of online media. The Net amplifies and spreads ideas - bad ones as well as good ones - and politicians and political candidates are forced to address those ideas and sometimes to accede or surrender to them.

[DGUtley]

It has turned fiction into fact.