Political Science

Lee Thornton, who has served as the Dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism and who also during the Ford and Carter administrations covered the White House for CBS News, writes in a recent academic journal that President Obama was able to effectively alter the tradition operation of the American political system by using technology to educate and mobilize American voters.  More specifically, Thornton argues that What the American political system witnessed this time around was a perfect collision of technology with a generation ready to rise up and embrace a cause. Candidate Obama understood those things in a way that his opposition obviously did not  HYPERLINK httpwww.questiaschool.comPM.qstaod5033652158(Thornton, 2008, p. 2).  The article strongly suggests that the integration of technology and political campaigns has transformed the American political system by granting Americans new types of access to candidates and by creating a sort of voter enthusiasm that deviates from traditional media contacts with political candidates.
 
Thornton notes that politicians have frequently made use of the media and cites Lyndon B. Johnson as an American president who devised deliberate strategies to influence public opinion through the news media.  In terms of examining the American political system, within the context of political campaigns, there have been few changes in how the media has been defined and used since President Johnson.  President Obama, much younger and much more technologically-aware than his predecessors, demonstrated through his internet efforts that the internet is a powerful new type of media and that success in the American political system may become increasingly dependent on savvy internet campaigns.  Surprisingly, given the deeply-entrenched role of the broadcast news media in national elections, Thornton notes that this may encourage future candidates in the American political system to  try to sidestep the traditional media HYPERLINK httpwww.questiaschool.comPM.qstaod5033652158(Thornton, 2008, p. 2). 

This relates to class discussions because it illustrates how special interests such as the mainstream news media can be perceived as being unduly influential and sometimes biases President Obama, seek to free himself of some of these powerful interests and effectively addressed himself more directly to the American people.  This is, in my opinion, a positive development because it bridges the gap between political candidates and voters by squeezing out to a certain extant information brokers such as media organizations owned and controlled by powerful financial interests.  The Internet is more transparent and diverse, though care has to be taken to determine whether information is factually correct, and it is probably a good thing to sidestep the broadcast news media in the name of transparency.