The Relationship Between Politics, The Internet, and Other Media

Politics have been important in civilization since humanity first existed nearly 200,000 years ago. As we have evolved over time, the rule of logic and law has become a predominant pillar of our civilization. More recently, our civilization has been affected and defined through the advancements in communication, such as the telephone, newspaper, radio, television, and most recently, the internet. As such, our modern political spectrum has been affected greatly by these advancements. The newest frontier, the internet, has arguably inspired the most change in modern politics. The major problem with sources that relate the internet and its effects on politics is rather paradoxical: the few resources that are not outdated tend to approach the topic at a variety of different angles, and those that are outdated contain far more detailed information.

Of the two major issues, the starkly different approaches are most interesting. Much like TV was to radio, the internet is challenging the way media works. Of the eight papers that will be reviewed here, the papers by de Waal and Sweetser are the most prevalent in this difference. These two focus on comparing new media, the internet, to old media, which includes newspaper and television. The introduction of de Waal’s paper includes a brief discussion of why it is thought that newspapers are superior to all other forms of media. In background to the thesis, de Waal uses studies from 1983 and 1990 to illustrate the theory that this is largely due to the amount of space available in newspapers in comparison to the narrow timeframe of evening newscasts. Sweetser, in contrast, completely ignores the print media, instead believing that network television news programs are far more influential tha...

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Wu, Jingsi. "Facebook Politics: An Exploratory Study of American Youth's Political Engagement During the 2008 Presidential Election." Conference Papers -- International Communication Association 2009 Annual Meeting 1 (2009): 1-23. Communication and Mass Media Complete. EBSCO. Texas Tech University. 13 Feb. 2010 . Online.