news-record.com

Just days after John McCain named Sarah Palin his running mate, news about her pregnant teenage daughter hit the Web.

Ah, the power of the Internet.

Bloggers posted opinions on the Republican duo and their strength against Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden.

So many rumors crept onto the Internet through blogs and Web sites - with traditional media following closely behind - that Republicans even asked everyone to back off.

Not that anybody listened.

For better or worse, the Internet can now influence campaigns as much as television, radio or print.

And voters go online more than ever.

Nearly half of Americans in 2008 will browse Web sites, e-mail or text message to research and discuss candidates, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Roughly 30 percent of Americans used those tools for the 2004 presidential election.

Some voters even go online for their own candidate research.

"I'm getting information from the Internet, but I don't want what they send me," Archdale's Phyllis Davis, 64, said of campaign e-mails from candidates. "I want to find out for myself."

Davis will also dig into this election online through Voterspeak, a 10-person panel that will discuss election issues twice weekly at news-record.com. The panel will address Greensboro city bonds, presidential issues and more on a blog moderated by News & Record staff members.

The blog is an entry into the wide-open political world available on the Web, a breeding ground for fertile thought or a sea of rudderless opinion, depending on your view.

A feeding frenzy

The Internet is handy for researching an Alaskan vice presidential nominee living 4,403 miles from Greensboro.

"I just looked at 17 different feeds with takes on it in the last half hour," said Allan Louden, an associate professor at Wake Forest University specializing in political communication, as news about Palin's pregnant 17-year-old daughter surfaced.

Campaign staff members and reporters once were the primary researchers of candidates in an election. These days, blogs break news the same way a news outlet or campaign could.

In 2004, an anti-John Kerry book was written by Vietnam War Swift boat captains. In 2008, that book could instead become a blog.

"It's just a little bit nuts," Louden said. "Every piece of information becomes decontextualized."

Less objectivity can appeal to audiences wanting raw information or particular perspectives.

An anti-Obama video posted in April has been viewed 6.5 million times since it went up on eyeblast.tv, which is run by Media Research Center, a nonprofit that calls itself "The Leader in Documenting, Exposing and Neutralizing Liberal Media Bias."

The video emphasizes Obama's middle name, Hussein, and his connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and compares the candidate to Argentine Marxist guerilla leader/revolutionary Che Guevara.

And once an opinion goes online, it seems that another goes up against it.

YouTube, a video site that began in 2005, is now a player in the election battles.

In July, a pro-McCain clip on YouTube compared Obama to Paris Hilton. Later, Hilton posted her own goofball response online, and plenty of ticked-off Obama supporters posted theirs.

Much of the same sniping occurs on blogs for all levels of campaigns, candidates and supporters.

Wild Wild Web might be a better name.

"Newspapers used to compete, and they still do ... and now you have hundreds of blogs that are all competing," Louden said, calling it a "feeding frenzy."

Revolution will be blogged

Blogs, along with social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, allow people to operate in the virtual world as they would in the real world.

"It's not word of mouth. It's word of mouse," said Brandon Waite, a political science instructor at Ball State University who researches the political influence of social networking sites.

The best ideas rise to the top, he said. Something hatched on one blog may be linked to others and reposted until the idea spreads wide enough for a mainstream media outlet to notice and pick it up for a story.

"We're talking about terms and concepts as classic as politics," he said. "There are people who emerge in societies as opinion leaders."

Facebook members, Waite said, might seek perspectives from their politically minded friends online just the same as someone grabs a smart friend to talk politics over lunch at a cafe or a beer at a corner bar.

"Those people naturally emerge as the discussion leaders in politics, and they emerge online," Waite said.

DeWayne Wickham emerged during the recent Democratic National Convention. Never a blogger before, Wickham used his name as a longtime USA Today columnist and director of N.C. A&T's Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies to start a blog on the convention.

"I write one column a week for USA Today and one for a news service," Wickham said, "and there still was too much information that I had that I wasn't able to get into."

So he blogged about jilted Hillary Clinton supporters, black journalists and other issues.

When he sent the link out, Wickham said, he discovered that "some people actually read this stuff."

Linda Petrou, an adjunct instructor of communication at Wake Forest, took her blog to the Republican National Convention last week.

"They have a section for bloggers, which they have never done before," she said Tuesday from the convention in St. Paul, Minn.

Adding bloggers also lit a spark under the traditional press corps, Petrou said. "It's forcing the news reporters to work a little harder."

Interactive public

Obama collected huge donations online. McCain now checks his e-mail, just a few months after saying that he did so only occasionally.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Kay Hagan sends missives daily about her campaign. Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole has Facebook and MySpace profiles and a regular Web site, as does her opponent.

An online presence is standard issue for candidates and is expected among voters.

"I'm getting regular e-mails from Pricey Harrison," Marlene Nielsen, 67, of Greensboro said about the N.C. House candidate who is running unopposed. Most of the e-mails tell about what Harrison does in Raleigh, said Nielsen, who is participating in Voterspeak.

Deonna Kelli Sayed, 34, also on the Voterspeak panel, uses the Web to research candidates.

"I'm looking for both candidates' advisers on Afghanistan," said Sayed, an American-born Musilm married to an Afghani diplomat to the United Nations. "I haven't found it yet, though."

Panelist Kendall Garvin, 29, said he goes online to get around candidates' messages.

"I can't just go to their Web sites," Garvin said. "I like going to see how they vote."

So what?

What good comes of all the blogging, MySpacing, videos and online information?

In a sense, blogs level the playing field, as evidenced by major news outlets linking to blogs and other sites for their own stories.

"Before, people would send in an editorial and be fortunate enough to get it in the paper," Waite said. "Now, everybody is an editorialist."

With that comes the problem of too much information. Or information without any context, as Louden said.

In the case of Palin, Louden said, seeing her shooting wolves from a plane may be no big deal to Alaskans, where it's encouraged to boost populations of caribou and other animals.

But without the proper background, many in the lower 48 states could consider that a major issue.

"It's just that people have all these judgments about her because it's politically expedient," he said, speaking to the immediacy of digital information.

For Wickham, blogging is a venue to say what doesn't go in his newspaper column. For a reporter with a full notebook, getting the information out through a blog is cathartic.

"You are your own editor," he said. "And that's a blessing and a curse."

When he has several stories in mind, his editor asks for the best one. The blog lets him say more.

"And it gives you an opportunity to unload your gun," Wickham said. "And you put them out, and you feel a whole lot better."

Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt @news-record.com