Much of our culture revolves around entertainment and the Democratic race is simply more entertaining. Obama's victory speeches are SUPER entertaining. Participating in the race by way of voting is, I suspect, akin to running into a celebrity on the street for many people. We all see the race through television, so it becomes another reality series...just with national consequences attached.
You are correct, not everyone sees the race through TV (I don't own a TV, either), but I suspect that the vast majority of the electorate does, especially the older demographic which is not as trusting or comfortable with newer media. And even if we are viewing video online, it is typically a television feed which has been re-encoded for online consumption, which means that in many cases it has been further edited down to small web-friendly chunks (granted, usually contextualized within an article). But online or not, the video or text is all coming to us through some kind of entertainment window, and this forces all political dialog to step up and become entertaining.
Those expensive 30-second television ads are absurd, but they do shape people's opinions. Most of any candidate's budget is spent on those ads. This alone stands as evidence which supports the notion that most people (not all, but most) are deciding who to vote for based on what they see through that same electronic window which also brings them Desperate Housewives and The Daily Show.
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The question should be if voter turn out will be this high during the general election in November? I sure hope so.
Much of our culture revolves around entertainment and the Democratic race is simply more entertaining. Obama's victory speeches are SUPER entertaining. Participating in the race by way of voting is, I suspect, akin to running into a celebrity on the street for many people. We all see the race through television, so it becomes another reality series...just with national consequences attached.
Well, not everyone sees the race through television. I don't even have a TV, and people who are getting real news rely on the internet these days.
You are correct, not everyone sees the race through TV (I don't own a TV, either), but I suspect that the vast majority of the electorate does, especially the older demographic which is not as trusting or comfortable with newer media. And even if we are viewing video online, it is typically a television feed which has been re-encoded for online consumption, which means that in many cases it has been further edited down to small web-friendly chunks (granted, usually contextualized within an article). But online or not, the video or text is all coming to us through some kind of entertainment window, and this forces all political dialog to step up and become entertaining.
Those expensive 30-second television ads are absurd, but they do shape people's opinions. Most of any candidate's budget is spent on those ads. This alone stands as evidence which supports the notion that most people (not all, but most) are deciding who to vote for based on what they see through that same electronic window which also brings them Desperate Housewives and The Daily Show.
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