Featur e TECHNOLOGY TAKES POLITICS Full Circle By Julian Haigh J


oe Trippi, known most for his use of the Internet for fundraising in 2003 for Howard Dean, is expecting third-party candidates to soon be viable through the use of new media. The new technology is disruptive


to current campaign organization and early adopters stand to gain the edge. New media leads voters to “expect more personalized, dynamic and interactive communications”, as Natch Greyer said of social media in the March US edi- tion of Campaigns & Elections. What is more effective in creating a personal, dynamic and interactive relationship


18 Campaigns & Elections | Canadian Edition


than face-to-face communications? The answer, of course, is nothing.


Consultants enjoy selling social media as their next winning elixir. A step back from the hyper-focus on so- cial media to view how technology has affected politics in the past will provide better context to this inquiry. The arrival of the printing press in the late medieval period led to leaps forward in literacy rates, the Enlightenment and rationalism. In turn, it allowed a new form of mass identity and organization hitherto impossible. The writ-


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