With the late Wisconsin primary gaining more importance in recent weeks, the state has become an arena for the kind of intense campaigning political junkies dream about.
Campaigning and political dialogue this election season are taking place on a frontier beyond the basics of years past, when candidate visits, posters and flyers made up the majority of public relations.
Voters today are now using Internet outlets like YouTube and Facebook for their political information, according to Cameron Marston, a UW-Madison senior and UW-Madison Students for Barack Obama new media chair.
The reason that I think that electronic media is so important for our generation is that, especially at this age, we don't have a set schedule,"" Marston said. ""We can't assemble everybody and talk to everybody '¦ [the Internet] is just massively easier to get people involved.""
According to UW-Madison journalism professor Dhavan Shah, the shift toward electronic dialogue in politics may produce an interesting set of consequences: the establishment of a more democratic form of political discourse.
""There's a kind of political dialogue and political information being exchanged laterally and horizontally rather than top-down,"" Shah said.
""Conventional media '¦ is much more, 'I'm going to give this pool of reporters access to me and I'm going to interview with Fox News, and I'm going to only appear to debates on CNN with journalists I like.' There they have much more control. With the Internet, they have much less.""
Sue Robinson, another journalism professor, said she felt the changes in the political process brought on by new media were less significant.
""I think that it's forced the campaigns to operate on a bit more of a grassroots level than they might otherwise have,"" she said. ""[But] I feel that a lot of these new media outlets are becoming normalized within traditional structures.""
Katie Harbath, the deputy E-campaign director for former presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, disputes the idea of a significant change in the distribution of political information.
""Even before the Internet you had no control '¦ and you have no control with the Internet either,"" Harbath said.
The question of control becomes even more interesting when one considers the impact of user-created content on campaign's strategic communication, such as the heavily viewed ""I've got a crush '¦ on Obama"" YouTube video.
""The things about that kind of technology that make young people so interested in it are exactly the ones that make future campaigners a little bit nervous,"" UW-Madison communication arts professor Michael Xenos said.
Marston said the fact that ""the campaign has massively more resources by which to work to control their own image"" helps campaigners keep a strong handle on their political messaging.
Another debate is emerging over the Internet's possible effects on voting and civic life. Some believe the Internet provides students, who are considered complacent to news coverage, a forum to network with others and get involved with politics.
""What a lot of scholars have argued [is that] these new media avenues are going to be the savior for democracy and civic life, that they're going to empower citizens to go forth and not only vote, but become active and develop [debates] and have a more vibrant public sphere,"" Robinson said.
Robinson said she thought new media would ""create evolutions in our communication infrastructure,"" but existing communication structures would influence its use.
Marston reiterated the importance of using the Internet in new ways to get young people to participate in politics.
""I would definitely say, at the very least, that getting stories on people's [Facebook] news feeds and things, clues them in more or less about what's going on,"" he said. ""It has the potential to get people who may have not otherwise paid attention.""
According to Shah, research shows that online political communication can have as much of an effect on political action as traditional means.
""We've done research [showing that] talking about politics, sharing your political views, encouraging [people online] to go out to vote has a consequential effect on levels of political participation, levels of civic participation like community involvement and levels of political knowledge,"" he said.
""In fact, a lot of what we're finding is that kind of online expressive political communication actually may be more powerful than face-to-face political talk, which has always been the sort of democratic gold standard '¦ in terms of mobilizing action.""
Despite varying opinions and limited research on these effects, most people agree on one thing: electronic campaigning is not going away.
""We are barely seeing the beginning of electronic and Internet campaigning,"" Harbath said. ""The Internet is going to become as important as TV and radio.""
