Internet and American Politics

By hosting the online presidential debate, Yahoo is pushing into "user-generated politics" , and hopefully this will boost the internet portal's sluggish business. Internet looks like a perfect stage for American politics: the decentralist nature of internet shares the same ideal of democracy, the basis of American politics.

Teaming up with Slate and Huffington Post, Yahoo plan to host two online-only (not a copy of the TV live broadcast) presidential debates in the fall, one for Democrats and one for Republicans. The distinct features of the "online-only" debate are: aggregating candidates in different location at the same time; soliciting questions and responses rom audience via websites; having users rating the performance of politicians real-time as they watch them debating.

None of these features are innovation for internet per se, but applying them together will create new experiences of "internet politics". Just like moveon.org. Mud-slinging Youtube videos by candidates. Or many other creative ways of playing "internet politics"--all of which are mind-boggling for someone who comes from a communist country.