New Media and Politics, Introduction

For quite some time I have been curious about how new new media is changing the world of politics.  When I refer to new new media, I am not referring email or non-interactive websites.  I am actually referring to the blogs, videos, podcasts, wikis, and rss feeds that will be explored.

I do not currently have much experience with these newest forms of social media, so I look forward to exploring them while noticing and documenting political details in the process.  Last evening I signed up for Twitter and was a little confused and overwhelmed by the organization of the site.  To make matters a little more confusing I started to follow too many different people/organizations and unfortunately, was subjected to more spam than I anticipated.  In the future I plan to narrow this window down to make wading through the information a little easier to digest in an effort to get a clearer picture.

Thus far, I tried to delve into the developing race for the Republican presidential candidate.  Yesterday, however, I heard that Hilary Clinton may give President Obama a run for the Democratic candidate for the next presidential campaign.  So, I do plan to proceed on by checking in on Mrs. Clinton's Twitter feed also, to gather information on whether or not this is true.

One detail I was able to zero in on was the Midwest tour that President Obama was on that went through Minnesota.  Over the radio waves yesterday, Rush Limbaugh mentioned that Obama actually only rode a few miles at a time in the bus.  He flew in Air Force One and actually flew the busses also, reportedly trying to save miles.  True or not, I do not know.  The folks on Twitter last night were engaged in much debate about this detail.  Mr. Limbaugh, of course, struck up more debate with his repeated comments that the bus tour was a fake because Obama flew instead.  I was not able to find any statement from the white house regarding the flying busses.  I do look forward to see how this plays out and how big of an online debate this turns into.  It is difficult for me right now to determine how normal any conversation is because I have no history with the site.