HT: Planetizen<\/p>\n
Civic engagement denizens, be careful what you wish for. A New York Times article elaborates on the Strange New World of Public Participation<\/a> resulting from the traveling “town-hall-meeting-palooza” of the past two weeks:<\/p>\n The result was a series of made-for-YouTube moments, with video clips played endlessly on the Internet and cable television, the logical extreme, perhaps, of an era when Joe the Plumber<\/a> is really named Sam. Along the way, another kind of Joe \u2014 Joe Six-Pack, the average Joe \u2014 seemed to disappear, pushed into the background by crowds bearing scripted talking points and signs.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re living in the era of the viral town meeting,\u201d said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University<\/a> who once worked as a Senate aide. \u201cI remember back in the \u201970s getting identically worded telegrams in the thousands. What\u2019s happened now is the technology of protest has metastasized, and it threatens to overwhelm the relationship between members of Congress and their constituents.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The advent of the Internet has created “hyper-public” spaces where the object of “discourse” (I’m being generous calling it that) is an audience of millions even if the pretext is a town hall meeting of dozens. Here’s Arlen Specter getting bum-rushed (I know, I’m 39, what do you want!) by his constituents.<\/p>\n