Over the next two weeks both political parties will be hosting their national conventions along with the requisite gavel-to-gavel coverage on the cable news networks. The political season will be underway in earnest, and along with it the communications revolution has brought us new ways to interact in the political process. Some of these new interactions put a new spin on existing technology, others are so new that they would have staggered the imagination only four years ago.
Cell phone text messages have been around for a while now, but Barack Obama has decided that he'll announce his vice presidential pick to supporters via text message rather than first announcing it to the press. Obama promises supporters that they can be "the first to know" (after the VP nominee, of course). It's a new spin on older technology, but Obama has managed to get quite a bit of attention in the traditional press for this tactic, not to mention the thousands of people he has managed to entice into signing up for text message announcements on his web site.
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds have been around for several years now as a staple of the blogging and online news world. Many connected news junkies have their favorite RSS feeds aggregated into feed reader, serving up the news of interest to them. A few days ago, Google (which offers its own online feed aggregator called Google Reader) announced that users could subscribe to the official feed list for the McCain or Obama campaigns, along with the feed lists of a number of prominent pundits and reporters. Billing it as an opportunity to "read what they read," users get an opportunity to read the articles that will drive the fall debate leading up to the election.
Finally, I recently learned of a new web site that promises to engage the public in the political process in a revolutionary new way. SaysMe.tv promises to turn every web-connected political activist into the next T. Boone Pickens.
Every election season we see the many television ads encouraging us to vote for this candidate or against that candidate. The entrepreneurs behind SaysMe.tv asked themselves the question: What if the ordinary citizen could produce and air their own political commercial as easy as uploading a video to YouTube? Taking a look at their site, it appears that they've done it.
SaysMe.tv users can select an ad from a library of pre-made, ready-for-TV political commercials, or they can upload their own (based on a set of specifications to assure the ad will be air-ready). Users then select the geographic area and networks where they want the ad to run, along with the number of times the ad should run. Punch in some contact information and a credit card number, and SaysMe.tv takes care of the rest. The site appends a disclaimer to the ad stating the name of the person purchasing the ad, makes the ad buy and takes care of filing the necessary paperwork with federal election regulators.
All of this technology is made possible by cable operators partnering with SaysMe.tv, allowing John Q. Public to leverage the powerful medium of TV advertising to advocate a political message using only a web browser and Internet access.
I'm looking forward to seeing how these new technologies and new uses of current technologies have an impact on our electoral process. Drop a comment in the comments section of this post if you know of a notable use of technology in the political process.
Is it possible that we are getting closer to voting online?
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