it's not so much the really, really partisan people lived in confined eco-chambers. it's people at the outskirts of political discourse who only once in a while hear about political things, and it might be they hear it from people that share their point of view. it's going on probably, but it's not going on with the type of people that folks originally suspected were the most susceptible to living in eco-chambers. >> i saw you shaking your head. >> i was just saying i agree. that was pretty much it. >> good point, bob, back to you. >> i wanted to ask you myself. you talked about the degree to which traditional news organizations figure out there's not old news media and new online media. everything is online. "the washington post" changed its structure where they had

their print edition in washington and their online edition across the river in virginia. now they figured outd you need to be integrated here. i was wondering, as traditional media really become part of it this mix, to what degree are people really getting new information or new ideas or to what degree is there a value added in the transmissions moving back and forth through social media? are we really breaking away from the domination of major media voices, or is it just the kind of two-step flow of information from the traditional media through social media and then on through the web? >> there is very much a power curve in action, bob. the vast majority of political information gets -- originates with traditional news

organizations or organizations like yahoo! and to some degree the other portals like msn and aol where it comes from traditional wire services. so the starting point for a lot of political information in this culture is still the traditional media coming from reporters who operate under the traditional cannon and ethics and guideposts of journalism. there are more political voices talking about politics. sometimes they're not pumping original facts into the system, but they're definitely having the conversation around which facts are gaining meaning. so i think you're right that there's a multi-step flow to how people process information. it starts with maybe a traditional news organization, but then they turn to their favorite friends or favorite bloggers or favorite more partisan sources to figure out

what meaning this has for my team. i mean, a lot of people approach the news as partisans. they care about one particular candidate or they care about one particular party or one particular policy, and they read the news with that as sort of filter. did my favorite idea or my favorite candidate do well yesterday, or did the opposition do well yesterday? this is an environment well-suited to address people at that level. when we ask people about their role of the internet in it their life, what they like about it, older people especially p if they're politically involved, say many more voices. i have a lot more access to information. there's not sort of a strangle hold by sttraditional media companies on the flow of news but particularly political news into my life. we see this process where, first of all, the majority of traffic

and month joajority of informat comes from sites and it pop gates through social media and other sites picking up it. >> christine, you're next. christina. >> hi. i had a question. do you think that since we have so many people who re-tweet things and you selectively get to pick who you follow liblg newscaster, does it sway people to be farther right or left and helped with the division in the country in that way? >> what we see when we look at technology activity and people's partisan views and the feeling about the ways politics is conducted in this country now, there's some people who act like you described. they follow particular tweets, and then they get a little more jazzed up about things. many people who are moderate and don't have a happy mohome with e existing parties, they don't

necessarily follow people to get more partisan. they're looking for voices and information and sources that are less partisan and they think the tone of the conversation or the tone of the information flow is civil where they think people are tolerant of different points of view. so there's a real sort of separating out. partisan people now have a lot more opportunity to find information that matters to them for a whole variety of new kinds of sights and actors in politics. people who feel like the whole system is broken and who feel like there are their voices don't get reflected in the debates from the traditional party sources. they don't follow people on twitter to pick a team. they're trying to say, maybe there should be sort of a different way to organize ourselves so that we -- people like me can find a happy home in this political environment. >> i want to go back 80 years ago and give historical context

to how media has changed over the years beginning with radio and walk through a couple of key moments that become snapshots into how technology has changed. i want to do this because we're on a cusp on a new set of barriers being broken through social media. let's go back to march of 1933. the first of a series of addresses by franklin roosevelt referred to as the fireside chat. keep in mind, the banks were closing in this country and the grate depression was continuing, especially in more rural areas of the country, but certainly in large cities like new york, so the number one goal of president rose vemt was to calm the fears of the american people, having gone through his own election and then being sworn in in march of 1933. so here's the first fireside chat by franklin roosevelt on radio. >> i want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the united states about banking. they comparatively fumed one to

send the mechanics of banking but more particularly with the overwhelming majority of you who use banks for the making of dwofts and the drawing of checks. i want to tell you what's been done in the last few days and why it was done and what the next steps are going to be. i recognize that the p many proclamations from state cal tals and from washington, the legislation, the treasury regulations and to forth, couch for the most part in banking and legal terms ought to be explained for the benefit of the average citizen. i owe this in particular because of the fortitude and the good temper which everybody has -- with which everybody has accepted the inconvenience and the hardships of the banking holiday. and i know that when you understand what we in washington have been about, i shall continue to have your cooperation as fully as i have had your sympathy and your health during the past week.

first of all, let me state the simple fact when you deposit money in a bank, the bank does not put the money into a safety deposit vault. it investing your money in many different forms of credit, in bonds and commercial paper and mortgages and in many other kinds of loans. in other words, the bank puts your money to work to keep the wheels of industry and of agriculture turning round. a comparatively small part of the money you put into the bank is kept in currency, an amount in normal times which is fully sufficient to cover the cash needs of the average citizen. in other words, the total amount of all the currency in the country is only a comparatively small proportion of the total deposits in all the banks of the country. >> so when you hear that term "the run on banks," that's exactly what was happening in february and march of 1933.

here the closing words of franklin roosevelt in his first fireside chat from the oval office. >> we have had a bad banking situation. some of our bangers had shown themselves either incompetent or dishonest in their handling of the people's funds. they had used the money entrusted to them in speculations and unwise loans. this was, of course, not true in the vast majority of our banks, but it was true in enough of them to shock the people of the united states for a time into a sense of insecurity. to put them into a frame of mind where they did not differentiate but seemed to assume that the ex of a comparative had tainted them all. so it became the government's job to straighten out this situation and to do it as quickly as possible and that job is being performed. i do not promise you that every bank will be re-opened or that

individual losses will not be suffered, but there will be no losses that possibly could be avoided. there would have been more and greater losses had we continued to drift. i can even promise you salvation for some at least of the solid pressed banks. we shall be engaged not merely in re-opening sound bajs but in the creation of more sound banks through reorganization. it has been wonderful to me to catch the note of confidence from all over the country. i can never be sufficiently grateful for the people with the loyal support they gave me in their acceptance of the judgment that has dictated our cause. even though all our processes may not have seemed clear to them. after all, there is an element in the readjustment of our financial system more important than currency, more important than gold, and that is the confidence of the people

themselves. confidence and courage are the essentials of success in carrying out our plan. you people must have faith and you must not be stampeded by rumors or guesses. let us unite in banishing fear. we have provided the machinery to restore our financial system and it is up to you to support and make it work. it is your problem, my friends. your problem no less than it is mine. together we cannot fail. >> from march 1933. very important words at a very important point in american history, and using a brand-new medium. >> what was revolutionary about radio and then later tv in the way it behaved like radio is that it was a way to unite the culture. it was a way for everybody everywhere at that instant to be listening to this one voice. we didn't have that before the advent of radio, and it was a way to sort of have a common

experience and a common cultural touchstone for us to discuss. now, people went to barbershops and restaurants and town squares and chunrched and tals and talk that. how different it would be in the age of social media. people would tweet about individual sentence fragments as it was up happening. people would rip it apart or cheering it very vociferously from the moment he started speaking. people would break into very dercht kinds of conversations that might have taken place in barbershops and restaurants and churches. so the scale of the conversation is different now because of these things. what was unique about radio was all of a sudden at once into a broad, broad audience at the moment, someone could be commanding the stage. >> i'm going to show one other clip, and i want bob to respond after we show this. keep in mind, that was 1933. so it was 20 years later that

stevenson received to be sold like a box of soap so did not use television advertising in his first bid for the white house as the democratic candidate in 1952 realized advertised in television was here to stay. that was a dominant form of getting the message in and out 1966. this in 1960 as the candidates realized television was here to stay. >> good evening. the television and radio stations of the united states and their affiliated stations are proud to provide facilities for a discussion of issues in the current political campaign by the two major candidates for the presidency. the candidates need no introduction. the republican candidate, vice president richard m. nixon and the democratic candidate senator john f. kennedy. according to rules set by the candidates themselves, each man shall make an opening statement of approximately eight minutes duration and a closing statement of approximately three minutes dur ray.

in between they will answer questions put by a panel of correspondents. in this, the first discussion in the series of four joint appearances, the subject matter has been agreed will be restricted to international or domestic american matters. now for the first opening statement by senator john f. kennedy. >> so, bob, that was really the span of 27 years from radio and fdr to television and the first of four debates. historic moment in 1960 and another example of changing technology. >> yes. i really particularly love listening to roosevelt, because it's a reminder that although people recognize now that john kennedy was a great communicator with with electronic communication particularly because of those debates and televised news conference and we know ronald reagan, barack obama, but you can hear that fluid did it and sense of confidence instilled through the radio waves that franklin he would voez velt.

he was a master of using electronic media. we're now in a new stage where all of a sudden candidates and office holders are trying to figure out how to communicate with an audience in which the whole process is much more interactive. as you say, everything we've been seeing is how a candidate or a president stands up there and speaks, and everybody listens. and it's not going to be like that anymore. there's going to be constant back and forth, even if you can't hear it or see it. it's going on in the background, and the way that speeches are interpreted and the effectiveness they have is a function of the interactive communications community that we live in in the future. >> lee raine. >> yeah, it is sort of remembering where we are now compared to that debate.

we've been through dozens of debates in this election season, and we haven't hit the general election yet. it was such a momentous national event that lots of people who cared about politics, pretty much everyone that compared p about politics in the culture was watching the nixon kennedy debates. it's hard to think there would be a staging like that that would be equivalent to it in the digital age and the interactive age that bob was talking about. i think there are ways now that people sort of break into their tribes and break into their own conversations around events like that that sometimes rnlt necessarily conducive to have people talk across the aisle to each other. >> kevin rutherford, go ahead. >> hi. i was wondering like why you think more conservatives like when compared to liberals are using social media to find information on politics and stuff? >> well, that was definitely

what we saw after the 2010 election as we were watching it go up. and part of my theory about that is that republicans, first of all, learned a lesson from watching how well obama and democrats used social media in the 2008 election and didn't want to be left behind anymore. it's also the case that the internet has always been particularly hospitable or useful to people who don't have power, who are sort of on the outside trying to organize the opposition, trying to organize the conversation and narrative in opposition to those that have the most power. so in 2008 that was democrats who were coming out of the bush ernd in charge so they had a lot more incentive to talk to ea mobiliz share informatwi other. with 2010 that story reversed. republicans were out of power, and conservatives didn'tee the kouns simms of government. the internet was a particularly

hospitable place for them to talk to each other and to learn more things and to try to galvanize their friends and allies to seize back power. i don't think it's the case now that the enter the net is favorable to one side or other. what was striking is how republicans caught up in 2010 to it's interesting to see what happens in 2012 as this campaign sort of clarifying. >> trying to determine how we reached that point, keep in mind as we talked about before in the the class, is 1996, the first time he had two candidates using their respective campaign sites to post speeches, it was pre-video on the webb. it was really 2004 in which howard dean, the governor of vermont, an insurgent candidate is trying to use the web as a fund-raising tool but social networks teal and here's one of. >> first of all, it's time for a

shameless political commercial. we have a toll-free line. 866-dean-4 usa and we're on the web at deanforamerica.com. if you give us your e-mail address, we promise we will not spam you until the last three weeks of every quarter trying to raise a lot of money. that's how we build the network. p if you send the stuff that we send to you to dwrur e-mail network, there's 250 or 300 people here. that's 30,000 people if you have 100 people on the list. that's how we're building this. we're going to beat this president not the way that the people from washington want to do it. >> lee raine, what was howard dean talking about back in 2003-2004? >> every campaign has its own internet technology narrative connected to it. i'll go back to more history than that. in 1996 when they had their campaign speeches online, bob

dole got his website name wrong in a national debate and didn't lose any ground for doing that. so the web was just coming intoa central part of politics and dole didn't have any particular reason to get his web site right because it wasn't a central part of his campaign. in 1998, jesse ventura is governor of pennsylvania, had no real big advertising campaigns, but e-mail became a way that he organized his followers. in 2000, john mccain was the first one who taught the political community how to raise money on line. when he won the new hampshire primary, he raised more money in a single day on line than any candidate had ever done before. 2002, interest groups began to figure out that the internet was a great place for them to promote their ideas, so by 2004, howard dean was using social media. his campaign was really noted for the blogs that it had, even though he never put his fingers to the keyboard on the blog.

there were staffers who did the blog for him, and he was learning from mccain about how to raise money and stuff, but the technology community was really excited that he was using these tools to circumvent advertising and communication, and we can go on through the other campaign. >> so bob lichter, let me go back to you at george mason university. >> it strikes me, as one political analyst totaled up the obama campaign, if you look at the number of e-mails they sent out and the number of people on their list they sent out over a billion e-mail messages in the 2008 campaign, insofar as the internet isn't either intrinsically democratic, as lee said i saw a very concisive campaign in 2008, that mccain's was a campaign of the past and obama's was a campaign of the

future. i also have jim griffith. >> with the speed of how things come out today, you know, on social media, everyone wants instant gratification -- the way things come out today, it's so fast, and like you showed that video with howard dean and, you know, you got to hear 20 seconds or 25 seconds of them talking. but now on the internet of social media, you get three-second quips for sound bites, and people are making their judgment on that, and i'm just curious how you feel about that, how people are uninformed and just make their decision based on three-second sound bites. >> i think i'm going to remember my political science correctly on this. there have been really interesting studies that have looked at people's basic values and basic partisan inclinations,

so that would be a year and a half away, the summer before the year of the election. and then looked at where people ended up on election day, and a lot of what happens in between doesn't influence them at all. there are stories, there are scandals, there are instantaneous -- furors over things, and for most voters most of the time, where they started at the dawn of thinking about an election and what mattered to them is where they ended up on election day. and so all of the commotion and all of the information flow in between really didn't have a large influence on them making up their mind. and it's interesting, people really can't articulate. the political science community has been desperate to figure out the answer to your question. what messaging or what moment or what channel of information really mattered most to you, and for people when they assess it, they can't remember necessarily

where they learned things, they can't necessarily say one thing mattered more to me, they can't talk about a particular moment or highlights of a campaign, they talk about their feelings and they talk about their values, they talk about their personal connections or lack of connection with a candidate and stuff like that. so it's sort of comforting to know if you care about the public that a lot of silly things that happen during the campaign season, there are plenty of those, and even the profound things that happen during the campaign season aren't necessarily swinging votes wildly in one direction or another. there's variance and people have different feelings at different moments of the campaign, but they tend to end up where they started. i hope -- bob, am i right about my memory of the political science on this? >> people actually change their minds, go from one candidate to the other. there are a large number of people who aren't sure at the beginning and don't make a

decision until very late. there's an even larger number of people who, i think, give themselves the luxury of temporarily changing their minds. people who start out at a certain point, and over the course of the campaign will be influenced one way or the other, but by the time they get around to the end of the campaign, they'll be back where they started. this sort of aggregate change or change that isn't really permanent change makes it really, really hard for political scientists to figure out what's making a difference. you're right. >> it may be a good point to show you another piece of video, and this is hillary clinton, announcing her candidacy in 2007 and using youtube and the internet as a way to formally enter the race, and we have a question on the other side of this one minute and 47-second clip. >> i announce today that i'm forming a presidential exploratory committee. i'm not just starting a campaign, though, i'm beginning a conversation. with you. with america. because we all need to be part of the discussion if we're all going to be part of the

solution. and all of us have to be part of the solution. let's talk about how to bring the right end to the war in iraq and to restore respect for america around the world. how to makependt and free of fo oil. how to end the deficit that t s threatens social security and medicare, and let's definitely talk about how every american can have quality affordable health care. after six years of george bush, it is time to renew the promise to america. our basic bargain that no matter who you are or where you live, if you work hard and play by the rules, you can build a good life for yourself and your family. i grew up in a middle-class family in the middle of america, and we believed in that promise. i still do. i've spent my entire life trying to make good on it, whether it was fighting for women's basic rights or children's basic health care, protecting our social security, or protecting our soldiers. it's a kind of basic bargain, and we've got to keep up our

end. so let's talk. let's chat. let's start a dialogue about your ideas and mine. because the conversation in washington has been just a little one-sided lately, don't you think? we can all see how well that worked. and while i can't visit everyone's living room, i can try. and with a little help from modern technology, i'll be holding live, on-line video chat this week starting monday. so let the conversation begin. i have a feeling it's going to be very interesting. >> lee, that was from january 20, 2007. we could spend hours talking about why hillary clinton lost the race in the democratic primary, but many would attribute that to she tried to run a new media campaign using an old political strategy. >> yeah, and i would actually refine that to say she attempted to use new media in old media ways so that she was broadcasting. that ran on the web, but there wasn't interactivity built into it. there weren't ways for people to

respond to it, there weren't calls for action for them to donate, to become part of her campaign. it was a real command and control kind of campaign, even though it came down to using some of the tools. the difference in the obama campaign was they were using social networks to get out the word and to encourage their acolytes and their allies and their partisans to do the real work of grassroots organizing. it wasn't nearly so much a command and control campaign. that's why its tactics matched so well with the internet tools that they were using. the other thing to say about the obama campaign, and even the howard dean campaign, is one of the reasons it took off was not so much their use of the new technologies and social media. it's that they were the most anti-war candidates in a party that was pretty anti-war. and so the people who cared about that message were getting

in whatever format and it wasn't taking off. just using an internet campaign or blog doesn't necessarily go over well with people who use those tools but necessarily don't care about what you're saying. >> ariel, go ahead, please. >> so with the evolution of the internet and 75% of the entire voting population using it during the election season, do you think that the television news media will slowly fade out and become almost as obsolete as newspapers seem to be as a means to promote candidates? >> how would answer your own question before i have lee answer it. >> i'm not really sure, because i know for myself i don't pay attention to a lot of the tv ads, like don't support this candidate because he's ridiculous and he'll raise your taxes. i think i kind of tune it out, almost. i get most of my news from the internet and i get most of my candidate information from the internet. so i'm unsure when it comes to a different age bracket, though.