Politics Is No Longer Local. It's Viral.

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Politics Is No Longer Local. It's Viral.

By Jose Antonio Vargas
Sunday, December 28, 2008; Page B01


Around this time last year, I was driving through the snow-covered flatlands of the Hawkeye State, headed to a bowling alley where a dozen college students from the University of Northern Iowa were holding court at lanes 27 and 28. All members of a group called UNI Students for Barack Obama, they were dressed from head to toe in Obama gear. This was their last gathering before Jan. 3, the day of the Iowa caucuses, scheduled smack in the middle of their winter break.

As talk turned to their plans for caucus day, it also inevitably turned to the Internet.

It was on Facebook, after all, that the group had been born. Brandon Neil, a 21-year-old junior, had created it on Feb. 12, 2007, the day Obama announced that he was running for president.

It was through news clips posted on YouTube -- and through Obama's YouTube channel, which lists more than 1,800 videos -- that the group learned about the Illinois senator's policies and positions.

And it was mostly on the Internet, in one of those ubiquitous, inescapable Web ads -- the campaign spent $8 million on online advertising -- that they heard about Obama's text-messaging program. "I only get texts from my friends," Andy Green, a 20-year-old sophomore, told me. "Let me correct that: I only get texts from my friends and from Obama."

Looking back, I realize that it was on that Thursday night that a new political reality was cemented in my head. In the past, we've thought of politics as something over there -- isolated, separate from our daily lives, as if on a stage upon which journalists, consultants, pollsters and candidates spun and dictated and acted out the process. Now, because of technology in general and the Internet in particular, politics has become something tangible. Politics is right here. You touch it; it's in your laptop and on your cellphone. You control it, by forwarding an e-mail about a candidate, donating money or creating a group. Politics is personal. Politics is viral. Politics is individual.

And we're just getting started.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/26/AR2008122601131.html?hpid=opinionsbox1