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TCU 360

TCU 360

All TCU. All the time.

TCU 360

Students discuss religious topics in a small group. (Photo courtesy of tcuwesley.org)
Wednesday nights at TCU’s Methodist campus ministry provide religious exploration and fellowship
By Boots Giblin, Staff Writer
Published Mar 27, 2024
Students at the Wesley said they found community on Wednesday nights.

Internet Politics

Meet John. He’s a 53-year-old Gemini who likes Bruce Springsteen with 18,348 friends on the popular social networking site MySpace.com. Meet Mitt. He has 5,257 friends, is 60 years old, married and listens to the Beatles and Roy Orbison. Their occupations: U.S. senator, former governor and 2008 presidential hopefuls.MySpace.com and other social networking sites, such as Facebook.com and Friendster.com, appeal to a core audience of 18- to 25-year-olds, a demographic that will play a key role in the 2008 election, according to a March article in the Washington Post.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney are just two of the 13 presidential hopefuls whose profiles are featured on MySpace.com. The site has also attracted Democrats Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Joe Biden, Sen. Chris Dodd, Sen. Barack Obama, Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich. Republicans include Tommy Thompson, Rudolph Giuliani, Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul and Sen. John McCain.

And, with friend totals in the thousands, MySpace.com and other social networking sites appear to be what Jose Antonio Vargas, of The Washington Post, calls a “new kind of political action committee.”

MySpace is Your Space

Claire Boecking, a member of several presidential Facebook groups, believes that the Internet will play an important role in the election.

“It is definitely important for the candidates to have a presence online because I think that the country is becoming more and more dependent on the Internet for everything,” said Boecking, a junior mechanical engineer major. “When people want a direct answer, or if they are just bored, they turn to the Internet, and a good presence online will surely help any candidate.”

Obama, 45, appears to be the most popular candidate in online social networking sites, having accumulated the most friends, as observed on MySpace and Facebook. With more than 500 groups on Facebook.com, his campaign exemplifies how the Internet can mobilize young voters and raise money.

Using his Web site to organize 5,000 “house parties” in March, Obama collected more than $7 million on the Internet in the first three months of this year. In 50 days, “One Million Strong for Barack,” one of the most popular Obama groups on Facebook.com, reached 314,571 members, a feat Joe Trippi, leader of Howard Dean’s 2004 e-campaign said is no easy task. In an interview with The Washington Post, Trippi said a 139,000-member e-mail list for Dean took six months.

However, Vargas also noted Edwards’ leads in sheer number of social networking sites with 23 “socnets,” or social networks.

Fellow Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has also attracted popularity on Facebook.com with about the same number of groups as Obama, but with fewer members than Obama’s group, according to The Washington Post.

The Price of Clicking

Republican candidates have established a strong Web presence but appear to be less effective in gathering the supporters and fundraising their democratic counterparts seem to be cashing in on.

McCain, who used the Internet to raise his profile and dollars in his 2000 campaign for the White House, offered the opportunity to people to pick and track not only their own NCAA Championship picks, but his as well.

But in late March, McCain’s MySpace profile was hacked into by a Web page designer. McCain’s page was changed to say he now had a favorable stance on the issue of gay marriage, according to an article in Michigan’s Grand Rapids Press.

Republican Mitt Romney has developed “Team Mitt” software for fundraising and plans to borrow the Obama strategy of organizing house parties in the near future, according to an April article in the Austin American-Statesman.

Youtube.com, a video-sharing Web site, has a section dedicated to candidate uploaded videos. Several candidates used this as their medium of choice to announce their candidacies for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination before visiting the major media outlets.

TechPresident.com, a blog tracking the use of technology by the campaigns, updates the number of MySpace friends of each of the candidates every four hours. Daily statistics are maintained on how many times their names are mentioned in the blogosphere. There is even a category for “Wild Card” candidates, namely, Al Gore, Wesley Clark, Newt Gingrich and Fred Thompson.

To Vote or Not to Vote

However, some students are concerned Internet popularity will not transfer into votes on Election Day.

Matthew Dunham, a junior political science major, commented Internet social networks such as Facebook.com are not a factor in his presidential voting decision.

“I don’t really buy into the hype of candidates on Facebook,” Dunham said. “I like to read newspapers and make my decision based on the candidate’s stance on issues.”

But Burton said he believes college students will follow through on Election Day.

“This is a different kind of election, a different kind of energy and a real desire for change, which is a galvanizing force,” Burton said. “Now, more than ever in this generation, we really can get young people voting and get them involved.

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