Politics and the Information Superhighway

July-August 1996

By Tim Vos

SIOUX CENTER, Iowa—While political candidates still spend most of their advertising money on television, the cutting edge of presidential politics is now on the information superhighway. The creative energy poured into producing election-related world wide web sites is one indication that these sites will be a significant medium for the distribution of political information. Though only a fraction of voters in this year's election will have surfed the net, the information superhighway is awash with world wide web sites dedicated to electoral politics. One estimate puts the total at over 1,200. This is only the beginning of politics on the internet.

What is the significance of this new medium for disseminating political information? In some respects, political information from the internet is not that much different from information from more traditional sources. But in another respect, politics on the net holds out some new possibilities, primarily by challenging some of the patterns voters have developed for obtaining political information.

In the past voters have gotten most of their information from either the candidates or the mass media, and political organizations—parties, think-tanks, grass-roots organizations, and special interest groups—have not been far behind. These are essentially the same players on the internet today. But while the players may be the same, their position in the information hierarchy is not necessarily the same.

In the 1996 election, the established mass media seem to be losing the most ground. There are well over two thousand TV stations, radio stations, newspapers and magazines on the internet, many providing political information. However, aside from a few elite media, most are not connected to the political web. While political sites generally are linked together, with few exceptions, such as US News and World Report and Congressional Quarterly, which have put together web pages dedicated to electoral politics that show up as links on many other sites, the media sites are out of the political cyber-loop.

Political parties show up prominently as links on other sites and in that respect they gain more visibility in the internet's world of politics. Yet the sheer number of net sources for political information continues to dilute the influence of parties in shaping a coherent platform and rallying voters to that platform. If any political parties gain ground it will perhaps be the so-called third parties. In fact, alternative parties now appear alongside the links to the Republican and Democratic National Committees, giving them enhanced visibility and perhaps even greater legitimacy. What they gain relative to the Republicans and Democrats, however, they are likely to lose in the general erosion of party influence.

Organizations like the Christian Coalition also move up in the information hierarchy. While the Coalition can be marginalized in the traditional media and slighted by the political elite, it is on relatively equal footing with other organizations on the internet. The internet provides a new audience for the Coalition's materials as instruments such as the Biblical Scorecard move from print to electronic form; now instead of post-cards, you only need to: "Click here to e-mail the President." Meanwhile, many other organizations provide a valuable service by producing original analyses that resonate with the views of many different communities of voters.

Clearly, though, the biggest winners in the reshuffled world of politics on the internet are the candidates—all links lead to the candidates. Since many web sites do not have a lot of content, they simply point to sites which do have information, and in most cases that means that you end up reading information from the candidates. In that sense, the world of the internet reflects the traditional political culture--political parties and political organizations are seemingly only a shell while the primary reality in American politics remains the candidates.

As a medium the internet does hold some promise. While TV deals in thirty-second ads and ten-second sound bites, for example, the hypertext links of the web page allows the reader to go deeper and deeper into information—but only if candidates provide a wealth of information on their sites. So far, however, few have done so. Come the 2000 election, will sites continue to be formatted like ten-second sound bites, or will they provide the layered depth that the medium allows?

We are only witnessing the birth of cyber-politics. It remains to be seen whether—and to what extent—this will change the political landscape or simply reinforce the present political culture. At this point the evidence points in both directions. One encouraging sign is the emergence of sites that offer information that neither echoes a party line nor claims to speak in an objective voice. The organizations that produce such sites provide valuable alternative information and perspectives. Those frustrated by a narrow discussion of a narrow range of issues by a narrow group of candidates may find the beginning of an antidote on the internet.

[Tim Vos is News Director at KDCR radio and adjunct professor of communications at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa.]