My World

According to the National Delegate Summary report on the Seattle Times’ website on February 26, 2008, Obama is in the lead to represent the Democratic Party in the next election, and McCain for the Republican Party. As such, I thought it would be interesting to see their different approaches in using their website in communicating their position on issues.

Looking first at Obama’s website, the opening page immediately caught my attention; it showed Obama with his family in what clearly reflects family values. The page is headlined “Change we can believe in,” and has two fields information can be entered, along with a “LEARN MORE” button. It seems as if many people would easily enter their information in there, because none of it is too personal, and it takes little time. However, by saying you want to “learn more,” you’re actually joining Obama’s movement. Only by going to a small blue button on the bottom of the page, which is well disguised due to the page’s blue body color, can you get around this.

McCain has a similar opening page, but with slight differences. Whereas Obama used the Democratic blue color in its body, McCain did not use the Republican red color. This may not seem like a big deal, but in a race to become the next United States’ President, it would be helpful to do as much as you can to create an identity. Another big difference is in that what grabs your attention first on the opening page. Whereas on Obama’s site the focus is on joining his movement, on McCain’s website the focus appears to be to “Donate Today.”  

Both websites are well organized; all the major topics can be found at the top and bottom of the page that allows for quick navigation through the sites. McCain’s website looks very “military,” due to its dark colors, use of stars throughout the site, and a picture of a jet placed prominently on the home page. The words “Ready to Lead on Day One” therefore seems to be in reference to the Iraq war, though it’s not clear what McCain’s viewpoint is on that issue until you reach the “On the Issues” page. This page briefly outlines his standpoint on every major issue, such as taxes, healthcare, government spending, immigration, and national security. Obama’s website has such a page as well, but not only addresses the problems we are dealing with, but also our values on family and faith.

Both websites also allow for citizen interaction. McCain’s site offers “McCainSpace” in which you can connect to other supporters. Though it’s great for people to have this option, those of us who don’t want to be forced to sign up and give out our information (and thereby being added to the mailing list) will not like this feature, as you can’t openly browse through the space to see what it’s all about. From a campaign standpoint this, of course, is great for luring in new supporters. It, then, comes as no surprise that Obama uses this sign up requirement as well.  However, you are able on this site to view members’ blogs without doing so, which enables more people, especially the undecided, to access and view opinions.

Speaking of target groups, McCain’s website has a special section for those who are undecided. There are also two other groups of people who get special attention; veterans and women. On Obama’s website, however, there’s a section for women and veterans, but also for students, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, African Americans, Americans abroad, Environmentalists, kids, Latinos, people of faith, and so on. Addressing so many people on a website makes you feel acknowledged and important. It seems, therefore, that Barack Obama wants to address issues that affect everyone, and not just limited groups.

Because I am a permanent resident, and therefore cannot vote this election, I haven’t looked specifically at the issues that each candidate present, but have purely looked at the content and marketing to the people in the United States. Though some similarities can be detected, it will likely be the differences that will affect the outcome of this election. Which website will prove more effective? 

The second pair of websites I analyzed were very similar. I would say the best website so far is the Knoxville News-Sentinel, just because it offers everything I expect from an online newspaper. It was easy to navigate, the links were where you’d expect them, loading pages didn’t take too long, and it offered quite a bit of interactivity. What made this site stand out more was the fact that the other sites just weren’t as good; some were slow, others had links that didn’t work and actually required me to manually manipulate the URL to get to my destination, and the worst one so far, the Albuquerque Journal, wasn’t even able to play video without forcing me to install yet another player on my computer.

What blows me away when looking at these websites critically is that some of these newspapers apparently have no clue how hard it is to navigate through their site. I had one site where I had to actually scroll down to get to the different news sections – classifieds were the first visible links on the home page. How many people actually go to a newspaper without looking at the news first? It seems as if their priorities were a little “different.”

It is amazing to me how different the two websites are that I analyzed. The first one, the Albuquerque Journal, is horrible; slow to load, all over the place, chaotic… It gave me a feeling like I wanted to exit the site as soon as I could. I also had trouble viewing the videos, as I apparently didn’t have the “right” player installed on my computer – how peculiar!

 The second one, however, which was the Journal News, was much better. It was very well organized, and their use of colors was much more pleasant. It did surprise me that they only had four RSS feeds, and that it didn’t have a designated election page.

Internet technology is seen as a very positive technology, but there are actually also some negative aspects that aren’t talked about very much. In my role of a discussion leader this week I pointed to some of these negatives.

First of all, there is an inequality between people, because not every one has internet access, and even if they do, they don’t all have the same amounts of time available, or the intellectual capital to make rational decisions.

Secondly, the issue of transparency comes up. Many of us feel that there should be no secrets, especially when it’s related to our government and community. However, there is a danger of having uncontrolled information, as well. Not everything should be made public, simply because it doesn’t help the greater good. And of course there is also the issue of information overload.

There are plenty of negatives of internet technology in political campaigns, and the future will tell how we deal with those. In my personal opinion, I think the internet greatly helps in enabling people to participate in a democracy. But not every technology is the right one for everyone, so we should leave everyone a choice.

This article “Digital Preservation” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_preservation) talks about the preservation of digital information over time, as it is in danger of being lost, creating a digital Dark Age. There are 89 contributors to this article, from the origination date of January 17, 2005 to February 9, 2008. This article seemed to be of interest in light of the increasing volume of digital information all over the world, and the great worry that we’ll end up in a digital Dark Age. 

Browsing through the history of the article, I started looking more closely at those users that had provided more than one entry on the article. Most of them actually don’t have their own user page, so it’s hard to make a fair judgment about their credentials and level of knowledge. Others appear to be “bots” which Wikipedia explains to be “automated or semi-automated account[s] for making repetitive edits that would be extremely tedious to do manually.” This would make me assume that these edits aren’t about the content necessarily, but more on code and rules regarding copyright, proper citations, etc.  There were also some contributors whose credentials appear legitimate; one author teaches at Virginia Tech on internet and information policy in a political science department. Another author is a professor at Harding University in Arkansas, whose scholarly interests are directly related to the topic of digital preservation (i.e. digital libraries, search engines). Based on these facts I would say that the article appears to be credible. This credibility is also supported by the different references that are provided; several scholarly articles, journals, University libraries, and even a report from the Commission on Preservation and Access and the Research Libraries Group, whose contributors come from Yale University, the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, and IBM. There are also a few articles by Jeff Rothenberg referenced, who is a senior research scientist at RAND Corporation, a non-profit organization that offers research and analysis for goernments, and is known for its ”rigorous, often-quantitative, and non-partisan analysis and policy recommendations.” Despite this, the topic seems a bit controversial, given the small discussion about the “proposed merger of digital obsolescence with digital preservation.”

The article “The KB e-Depot digital archiving policy” also addresses digital preservation, but focuses on the policy and ambitions of the digital archiving of electronic documents at the Koninklijke Bibiotheek, KB, which is the National Library of the Netherlands. The difference between this article, and that of Wikipedia, is that Wikipedia addresses the concept of digital preservation, whereas “The KB e-Depot digital archiving policy” looks at a specific way of digitally preserving documents. The latter, therefore, presents objective data surrounding the KB; why it was created, how it works, and what drives the content of the e-Depot. Wikipedia, on the other hand, writes about the necessity in general, and gives several examples. Of course the main difference between the two articles is that “The KB e-Depot digital archiving policy” is written by two people who have done extensive research about the topic, whereas on Wikipedia anyone can add content, even those who don’t really know too much about the topic.

Neither of the two articles seems more or less credible than the other. In fact, I would say they both seem to come from reliable sources because of number and type of references used. Personally, I still have some hesitation in using articles from Wikipedia in a paper or essay, because it has a reputation of being less trustworthy. But, by looking at such an article more closely (i.e. sources and references) you will be able to tell whether the content is biased or based on objective data. By developing your critical judgment skills, you are able to avoid information overload, thus be a better digital consumer.

References

Digital Preservation,(2005), Wikipedia Retrieved on February 12, 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_preservation.

User: SmackBot (2005), Wikipedia, Retrieved on February 14, 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SmackBot.

RAND (2003). Wikipedia. Retrieved on February 14, 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND.

Erik Oltmans,  Hilde van Wijngaarden. (2006). The KB e-Depot digital archiving policy. Library Hi Tech, 24(4), 604.  Retrieved February 13, 2008, from ProQuest Database. (Document ID: 1168375171).

Technology and society have a very interesting relationship; society has created the technologies because there was a need for change, but at the same time technologies force a way of living upon society.

Look back at the Roman era, for example, where there was a daily newspaper (Acta Diurna), but it wasn’t distributed to everyone. Mostly, in Rome, it was hung in a public place where people would gather and read it, or get it read to them. All across the empire, that news wouldn’t arrive until days or weeks later, because it took a while to distribute. Then distribution became much easier as transportation improved, and cost went down, and more and more people had the opportunity to be kept up to date with current events. Today, the distribution of news only takes a second when it gets published online, and everyone with a computer and internet access can read it.

All these changes, however, also changed people’s attitudes and expectations. Whereas before people were grateful to have access to news, today we have the expectation to be kept up to date. Not only that, we expect to receive the news when we want and need it. So society has become more demanding, of itself, and of its technologies.

What could this mean for the future? More access, faster access, and a lot of it on demand. We will create our own news outlets, and pick and choose what we’re interested in. Personally, I think there is a great danger in that, as there will be a lot of news that we used to have a little bit of exposure to, and if that changes, we will just ignore its existence, and perhaps also a little piece of society.