Geek Talk: Tech Politics

[mjhinton]

As the 2008 election campaigns heat up, Geek Talk co-hosts Benson Hendrix and Mark Hinton and guest Sari Krosinsky discuss the impact of technology on politics.

Listen to podcast (37:06)
http://www4.unm.edu/unmlive/?p=112

[mjhinton]

Obama vs McCain Website Smackdown - ReadWriteWeb
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/obama_vs_mccain_website_smackd...

[mjhinton]

VF Daily: Obama vs. McCain: War of the Web Sites: Online Only: vanityfair.com
http://www.vanityfair.com/ontheweb/blogs/daily/2008/05/obama-vs-mcc...

[mjhinton]

Do Regular People Really Read Blogs?
Written by Josh Catone / June 12, 2008 5:36 PM

A Harris Poll from earlier this year found that 56% of Americans never read political blogs, and just 22% read them several times per month or more. Interestingly, those over the age of 63 were the most likely to be readers of political blogs -- just 17-19% of Gen X and Gen Y (called "echo boomers" in the Harris Poll report) read political blogs.

That certainly explains why Obama has eschewed building a conversational blog while McCain has hired a well-known and experienced blogger -- Obama appeals to the specific demographic that doesn't read political blogs, while McCain appeals to the demographic more likely to subscribe to them. But could that speak to a larger trend in the blogosphere as a whole? ...

However, if the Harris Poll data is at all representative of the mainstream public's reading habits toward blogs in general, things don't look particularly rosy. The Harris Poll found that of those who visit at least one political blog at least one time each week, 76% read under four of them -- a third read just one. So even though blog readership may be up, people are reading only a small number of blogs on a regular basis.

Further, 69% of political blog readers don't comment on blogs.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/do_regular_people_really_read_...