Vote For Me: Tapscott IV

'"Politics today is entertainment. But you don't really find out what's going on by watching TV." --Tina Sturgeon, 30, Portland Oregon' (Tapscott 260).

This statement is true on multiple levels.

Consider the presidential elections of 2008 - McCain vs. Obama. How were the Net Geners involved and influenced? Because there is such a high level of connectivity among people now due to the Internet and other connective sources, there is a higher level of communication and idea sharing happening. This means for the political arena, as well as many other areas of life and society, people are being bombarded with ideas, opinions, and thought-provoking material that perhaps they would not even have let their mind wander to otherwise.

Net Geners are not notorious for being highly politically involved at this point. But during the 2008 presidential elections, Facebook was brimming with "advertisements" along the outer columns of their pages promoting the Obama campaign. Truly, this seemed slightly biased and a bit manipulative as it was being placed in the gaze of every "Facebooker" with nearly each login. Obama became somewhat of a fad to many social-medites (not at the sole hand of Facebook, of course) without many truly knowing what he is all about.

Net Geners ". . .expect to collaborate with politicians--not just . . .listen to their grandstanding speeches. They want to be involved directly. . ." (Tapscott 244). This small step of appearing on the web in a variety of ways makes a politician appear more accessible and more understanding of the Net Generation (whether this is actually true of the candidate themselves or of the people behind the campaign).

It is very true, however, that the Net Generation feels compelled to interact with political parties in a more non-traditional way. After all, they can communicate with virtually anyone in the world about anything at anytime. . .why not have the capability to communicate with those who help establish the "law of the land." Communication is becoming commonplace and is breaking down previously acknowledged boundaries between society and government. Government is becoming a much more public phenomenon than it appeared to be in the past. This can be attributed to networking, the Internet, and the Net Generation.

The way we address politics and political campaigns will begin to change more and more as the years go on. Time will tell what the next big wave of communicative commonplace in the political realm ends up being.