Not that I've gotten through much of the paper yet today, but this article in the Week in Review caught my eye: The Year of Passion by Todd S. Purdum. Deep within it is a quote by my favorite theorist, Robert Putnam, on th effect of the Internet on the campaign season.
If the Internet has been the source of vicious blogs and half-baked rumors, it has also often been a worthy watchdog on the mainstream media, a direct route to the candidates' records and official Web sites and a means of instantly checking their half-truths and evasions through nonpartisan outlets like FactCheck.org at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center.Posted by Emily at October 31, 2004 02:15 PM | TrackBackOnline networking groups like Meetup.com used new technology to breathe life into the oldest American tradition: the town hall meeting. They allowed Howard Dean's supporters - and others - "to create 'alloys,' networks that are mixtures of silicon and real flesh," said Robert Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard. "People are making the connection over the Internet, but what they really want is not just the cyberfriend but a real connection."