Democracy Online

It has been fascinating following the US Presidential campaign this year and in particular this fall. There are two days remaining before the big day, and I have, along with others, noted how the net has been used in a totally new way than four years ago. The Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama has been particularly good at utilizing the Internet's vast opportunities to communicate the message. This have lead to what Michael Moore humorously has refered to as the great Slacker Uprising - in other words - the young generation - first-time voters - are getting involved and are active online to recruit others to vote. Some observers have noted that this might turn the election to Obama's advantage. Obama has an informative and media-savvy homepage, is present on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc. McCain is trying to do the same, but does not get the same attention. If this is due to his voters lack of interest in these channels or his campaign ignorance to its opportunities is hard to know.

What would be interesting to see is if next year's upcoming Norwegian election will utilize the net's obvious democratic potential to wake up potenial voters and perhaps regenerate the political interest in an increasing tech literate generation who live a lot of their life online.

For the record: If I had a vote - I'd give it to Sen. Barack Obama.