Campaign.USA

Remember the axiom, driven by the rise of TV, that politics is theater? Candidates are actors in front of a camera and we're in the audience? All that's changing. Now everyone can be an actor and be in the audience.

"In the past there was only a passive relationship between the producer and the audience. But the audience has also become the producer. That's very empowering -- and a huge change," says Jamieson.

"There's a dark side to this, of course. Voters can only read and watch and interact with everything they agree with, creating a hyper-partisan and largely uninformed electorate. But there's also a bright side where an informed and engaged electorate can participate in discussions that are relevant to the political process. Which way we'll eventually go, we'll have to see."

While Internet usage is still unevenly distributed-- and older, reliable voters still primarily rely on broadcast media and newspapers to keep abreast of politics -- as a whole we're getting more information about the campaigns online than we did in 2004, says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. A Pew survey released in January said that nearly a quarter of Americans say they regularly learn something about the campaign from the Internet. That figure is 42 percent among voters under 30, a historically unreliable voting bloc that has surprised pollsters by turning out in record numbers during the Democratic primaries.

When dial-up was the norm and AOL reigned supreme, the caption on a now famous New Yorker cartoon read: "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog."

Thirteen years and a lifetime later online, not only do we know the name of the person behind the computer, he'll also show us his YouTube channel -- and talk endlessly about why he supports his candidate.

Nathaniel Morris, a senior at Osbourn Park High School in Manassas, has fallen hard for Clinton. Not only has he donated $50 to her online, his YouTube channel is a shrine to the former first lady. The page's wallpaper reads "Hillary" and most of the 16 videos he's uploaded, including a three-minute mash-up set to the music of the metal rock band Shiny Toy Guns, are pro-Clinton.

"I've compared her positions with Obama and McCain and Edwards online. I watched clips of her debate performances on YouTube. I went to a rally in Manassas and volunteered for the campaign," says the 18-year-old, who waits tables at Romano's Macaroni Grill.

"Being a young Clinton supporter is not exactly the cool thing to be at school. Most of my friends are for Obama," Morris says. His mom, Lea, voted for Obama. His dad, Russell, leans toward McCain. "But I didn't want to just jump on a bandwagon."

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So what about Ron Paul?

No Republican candidate -- not Romney, not Rudy Giuliani, not Mike Huckabee -- came close to his popularity on YouTube, Facebook and MySpace, the online social networking trifecta. He had more MeetUp groups than any candidate, including Obama. For some time "Ron Paul," ahead of "iPhone" and "Paris Hilton," was the most searched term on Technorati, which offers a real-time glimpse of the blogosphere.

But it was his online fundraising prowess that most impressed -- and downright baffled -- his opponents and the media. He raised more than $4 million on Nov. 5, then another $6 million on Dec. 16. Of the $36 million he raised throughout his campaign, $32 million came from the Internet. That's $5 million more than what Dean, last cycle's online phenomenon, raised during his candidacy.

That money allowed him to expand the number of campaign staffers from minuscule to modest. But the votes didn't follow. Though Paul earned 10 percent of the vote in Iowa and finished second (albeit with tiny totals) in Montana and Nevada, in many states he only got between 3 and 8 percent of the vote.

So when Paul bowed out of the race last month, the temptation was to conclude that this Internet thing can only do so much.

But take another look:

Although Paul is a 10-term congressman from Texas, he was virtually unknown nationally before this race. Yet by March 6, when Paul announced via a seven-minute video that he was dropping out, the 72-year-old made it further than anyone thought he would. He bested Giuliani, the onetime front-runner for the nomination. He beat conservative darling/former senator/movie-TV star Fred Thompson. He did way better than Sen. Sam Brownback, or Rep. Duncan Hunter, or former governor Jim Gilmore.

For Ron Paul, the Internet did more than enough.