Click the "Edit" Link to add HTML to this space.
COMPUTERS AND POLITICS
The world of politics is ever changing. Scientific discoveries and sociological transformations have changed the way that our countries are governed and the laws that we must follow. Major inventions, especially those that seriously improve or change people’s lives, have always played a part in government. The printing press, the invention of the automobile caused politicians to develop laws for the road and step up infrastructure. The plane made governments set new rules for the air and set up airports. Credit cards made politicians set up even more new rules and ways for them to be used. And now we find ourselves with another invention, the computer, and this again is seriously changing the way that politics in our country, and around the world, works.
Let’s start out with the positives. Computers have helped politicians spread the word about which they are and what they believe it has helped them on the campaign trail and allowed them to connect with citizens and demographics that they wouldn’t normally be able to get in contact with (nytimes). A great example of this would be the most recent presidential election and our president Barack Obama. Barack Obama has been utilizing such internet assets as YouTube, Twitter and Face Book since the beginning of his campaign. He has reached out to the public through the internet getting his word out and posting speeches and campaign ads on the web in order to reach the younger and more computer literate community, many of which were first time voters, as well as other more computer savvy Americans (ontheissues). In fact it has been said that the web has done for Obama what television did for John F. Kennedy when he ran for presidency. Indeed he may not have even won the Democratic Party nomination against Hillary Clinton if it were not for his campaign on the internet (ny times). The use of social network sites has most definitely affected politics. They have allowed politicians to reach out to a larger audience and changed the way that the campaign trail will work in the future. It has also allowed citizens to study and research their candidates and make a more educated decision as to who they will vote for or rally against (guardian).
With this being said, the internet has also opened up a plethora of false information about politicians; rumors that many of the public take as true. Such rumors often come from people that are on an opposite political party or with different political views as a certain politician. These pieces of false information lead readers to false conclusions. I have looked through the web for some of these sites posting unproven knowledge. I am sure that most everyone has heard accusations about politicians such as our president Barack Obama. I will use the accusation that president Obama is not a president and therefore is not eligible for the position of president as an example of false information.
In one such site, www.obamacrimes.com , Obama is accused of not being a citizen of the United States, that he was born in Kenya, his real name is Barry Soetoro, and that the health care bill should be dubbed unconstitutional because of these “facts”. This last one is especially false because the president does not directly put forth policy or pass laws. That is the job of the legislature as it reads in the Declaration of independence. This site seems to offer more claims then facts. I decided to step forward and email the author of the site explaining what I was working on and asking him to back up his claims with cold hard facts to back up his claims. Not surprisingly I received no response back from him. Here is a copy of this email:
To: Philip J. Berg, EsquireEmail: philjberg@obamacrimes.com
My name is Eric Latham I am emailing you because I am a political science major and am writing a report about current politics and the effect on it by the internet. Your site states that Obama is not a citizen and several other pieces of info such as an alternative name (Barry Soetoro) and birthplace (Kenya). However the site offers very little to back up such statements. For my report I was wondering if you would be able to email me with some sources used to find such information. I will be penalized for information that is not able to be backed up so I really need cold hard facts. Can you please provide me with cold hard facts to support your claims? I would really appreciate it.
Thank you,
Eric Latham
To people searching the internet for valid information, beware. Make sure you check to see that what you are reading is correct and not just a post from an angry person wanting to bad mouth someone they disagree with or dislike. I did some more research on this topic and was able to come across some interesting information that helped me disprove this claim. Barack h. Obama was born in Hawaii to his mother a natural born citizen of the Untied States and his father a Kenyan immigrant. Although his father was not a citizen of America, President Obama was born in Hawaii a couple years after Hawaii was given statehood. Therefore he is a natural born citizen of these United States of America (snopes). How people honestly think this government would not check his eligibility before allowing him to run for presidential office is beyond my understanding. Sites such as Obama crimes claim that Obama was adopted by another man other then his father, had his name changed and moved from the country, but these claims are irrelevant. Born in the USA; citizen of the USA (urban legends).
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/citizen.asp I found this site in an attempt to find false information online. On the page a viewer is shown a clip of information about President Obama’s citizenship being invalid and bringing the second article of the constitution into play to back up a call for his removal. After this clip the author of the site argues the claims made above with some research and interpretation of the constitution and policy. The site is concluded by falsifying the accusations against the President. Some of the argumentative claims lack backup and are backed more on opinion, but I guess that’s what you get on the internet. I still found it helpful.
urbanlegends.about.com/od/barackobama/a/obama_citizen.htm I found this site in the same page of results as the site above. I expected to find a lot of junk with no backing and accusations filling the entire page from conspiracy theorists. The site was actually relevant and provided a lot of information to disprove theorists of Obama’s non-citizenship and ineligibility for president. This site offered thought provoking information with facts to back up claims. I found it quite helpful to disprove false claims.
www.ontheissues.org/askme/computers.htm . I found this site in a search for computers and politics on Google. Although the webpage was on the topic I wanted it to be it was basically a forum page in which any visitor can post a response. Therefore most if not all of the information was not backed up with facts. The responses were also terse and short, maybe a few sentences to a paragraph at most. I ultimately did not find it very useful.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/f471j05112p51204/ I decided to put this site in my review because I came across so many like it and this was one of the first. In my search for politics and computers I came across several sites advertising books and online articles that I would have had to buy and download in order to read. Advertisements like this, when searching for real information, are everywhere not to mention very aggravating. Trying to access a free version of many of these books online is near impossible and would have most likely been helpful under other circumstances.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s10843.htm . this site was perhaps one of the most helpful to me when searching for information about how the invention of the computer has affected politics. It talks about not only American politics, but politics in the UK as well. How computers have affected the campaign trail and raising money were given. Examples of politicians who have used these tactics and some others were also shown. I found it quite helpful and it gave be a basis to start off my paper in the positive side of things. I would say this one may have helped me the most in this topic.
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/04/how-technology-changed-american-politics-in-the-internet-age096.html here is a site that I came up with when searching internet and politics. This site offers a time line of events in which the internet has in some way come into contact with politics. There was a lot of information to go through and was again not just American politics. I fond this site useful and able to be used in my project. More research about topics listed needed to be done however because the timeline format made information provided very short. Definitely a page I am happy to have come across.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/04/iran-politics-blogging-internet
This site also talks about how social networking sites have change political strategy. The site gives examples of how politicians such as our president have used sites such as facebook and myspace to reach the public. Often other users of sites like this are younger people so this is a way for politicians to reach the younger demographics. I used this site to help me with this project and found it quite useful. Not all of the information was relevant to my search such as the tie in of Iran, but ill blame that on the search engine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/opinion/18douthat.html this site does not directly talk about the internet affecting politics but rather that one party has come to it before the other in the USA. Still I found this useful because it further backs up the information already gathered about social network sites (facebook) and others as political tools. It references the most recent presidential election and the use of these sites to reach out to the public. A different feel then some of the other sites but still valid and supportive.
