Obama Win Showed Rising 'New Media' Influence -- Now What?

The rules of the Presidential election game have been changed forever -- by technology. It was more than the "YouTube Election," as some dubbed it, or "The Facebook Election," or "hyper-politics." James Rainey, the longtime media reporter for the Los Angeles Times, declared that there is a "new-media revolution that is remaking presidential campaigns. Online videos can dominate the evening news. Or an unpublished novelist 'with absolutely no journalism training' can alter the national debate," a reference to Mayhill Fowler. "What's different this year is that the entire political and media establishment has finally woken up to the fact that the Internet is now a major player in the world of politics and our democracy," said Andrew Rasiej, co-founder of the TechPresident blog and annual Personal Democracy Forum. "We are watching a conversion of our politics from the 20th century to the 21st."