Politics and Social Networks: Voters Make the Connection

It's about 8:30 a.m. on a recent Wednesday at Bowling Green State University, about a 30-minute drive from Myers's house, where he lives with his wife, Xiaoyu, and her mother. Myers took the day off to see Palin. Inside the school's Anderson Arena, Myers sits in the stands, surrounded by a crowd of about 5,000, many of them carrying red, white and blue pompoms. Carrying his digital camera and itty-bitty netbook (a laptop weighing less than two pounds), he's here to live-blog the event. This is the first campaign rally he's gone to this year.

Myers is a social conservative, and Palin, he says, is more in line with his views on issues such as abortion. Just as important, he says, is how Palin comes across -- sincere, authentic, her own person. After the news broke that the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 on clothes and makeup for Palin and her family, Myers thought the media were "just picking on her." He donated about $200 to the RNC between 2003 to 2005; he doesn't care if it spent money making Palin presentable. "She's out there campaigning in front of thousands of people," he says.

When the media wrote that Palin was for the so-called Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it, Myers says: "It's what you walk through the door with. She ended up being against it in the end, and that's all that matters."

Stoynoff, on the other hand, has been working for Obama's campaign for nearly two years. She has also donated about $150 to Obama. "I feel like I own a piece of this campaign. Like, I've bought and paid a piece of it, with work and heart and effort," she says.

Things heated up after the Democratic convention in August. Now, about three to four nights a week, she's doing something campaign-related, such as organizing phone banks at Panera Bread, where Obama supporters gather with their cellphones to call neighbors, and helping plan canvassing walks around Summit County, where she grew up. All this work has placed a strain on the family. She has a 6-year-old son, Noah, and she hasn't spent as much time with as him as her husband, Jason.

Like many others, Stoynoff first heard about Obama in 2004, when he gave the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention. She followed his career online, reading news stories and checking out his site. When he announced his candidacy in early 2007, she was sold.

It's partly because of where Obama stands on issues like education. She's gone to the education section of his site so often that she's practically memorized his three core positions. He wants to invest in early childhood education. Her son has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. If it weren't for early education, he wouldn't be where he is now, she says.

But it's also because of what she thinks Obama represents. "He's said all along that he didn't believe in a red America and a blue America, that all this Republican and Democrat infighting isn't helping average Americans. Well, he's right. And right now, he's campaigning in blue states and red states. He's trying to bring more people in. I personally felt empowered by it," she says.

Two days before Super Tuesday and more than a month before the Ohio primary, Stoynoff made a two-minute YouTube video and e-mailed it to her Akron for Obama online group. "Please feel free to forward this link to those who you think might need a bit of encouragement to make their primary decision," she wrote in the e-mail.

'A Major Breakthrough'

Myers and Stoynoff are only two examples of the expanding "participatory class."

In 2000, about 20 percent of Americans went online to interact with the presidential campaign, according to Pew. Four years ago, it grew to 37 percent. Earlier this year, Pew released a study saying that 46 percent of Americans have used the Internet to get their news, watch videos and share their thoughts on the race. By the end of the longest presidential campaign in U.S. history, Pew's predicts that figure will top 50 percent.

"That's a milestone, a major breakthrough, and it has changed and will continue to change the way we think about politics in this country," he says.

But is the Web creating a more informed citizenry, or just a meaner, nastier one? Palin and Obama, to name just two, have been the victims of anonymous e-mail chains. One falsely claims that Obama is a Muslim. Another is a fabricated list of books that Palin supposedly banned from her local library; Palin had no such list.

"Here's the thing about the Internet: You, and only you, can believe what you want to believe," says Myers, the Republican. "You can go on Google and find Web sites that say Obama's a Muslim or a Buddhist or Palin supported this or that. But can you trust those Web sites? I, for one, don't pay any attention to online rumors. It's like junk food."

Adds Stoynoff, the Democrat: "It's a lot easier to be mean and nasty online than in person. You can be anonymous, and often there are no consequences. That's the bad side of the Internet. But the good side is -- and the good side far outweighs the bad side, I think -- people can find each other and people have access to more information than ever before. People can make up their own minds. If so many people online hadn't made up their minds on Obama, I'm not sure he would have made it this far."