Response to Political Engagement

I feel that my generation is indeed more engaged in politics and knowledgeable about politics because of the internet. Now I'm not trying to say that we are completely involved or as knowledgeable as we should be about politics, rather we are more involved and knowledgeable than we would be if we didn't have the internet. I think it's hard for us to ignore political messages online because they are all over the place. There are many Facebook groups dedicated to a candidate or a particular issue. Youtube had debates and their site was all decked out in red,white, and blue when those were happening. These are two sites visited quite often by members of my generation, so it was hard to ignore.

I also think that since we are very near to a presidential election, political activity has increased and people are starting to take notice of candidates and issues. I'm not so sure I could say that our generation is aware of political issues if we weren't in an election year. I also sense a bit of dissatisfaction with the current president amongst my generation which could also lead to them supporting a candidate who is least likely to be like the current president.

As far as my political involvement, I haven't done much online. I did watch all 38 minutes of Barack Obama's speech on race and I looked at his policies on his website. I can say that as an Obama supporter, that my activity online has been very one-sided. This is certainly a problem online that we discussed in class. The ability to only look at the candidates you want to and ignore the other candidates allows us to isolate the information we see. I did look at McCain's site, but my opinion was pretty much cemented because of the one-sidedness of my previous activity online.

Overall, I think that politics online stand to make our generation more aware of political issues than before the proliferation of political information online.