PDD Event — Netroots and Politics
This looks like a really great event from the PDDs. Details are from the PDD announcement:
Lecture and Q&A by Prof. Matt Kerbel, author of “Netroots, Online Progressives and the Transformation of American Politics”. Professor Kerbel teaches Political Science at Villanova University and has authored or edited six books on politics, the mass media, and the presidency. He worked as a radio and television news writer for outlets including the Public Broadcasting Service in New York City, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
This will be held at Delaware Democratic Party Headquarters, 19 E. Commons Blvd., New Castle on Thursday November 5 at 7PM.
This event is open to everyone, not just to PDD members, so make a point of coming out. It would be interesting to hear how Prof. Kerbel sees the difference in netroots activity here vs other close states.
Here’s a little taste … He’s talking about how Andrew Jackson took advantage of the cheap printing technology that was available during the 1828 election . . .
“In this system, newspaper editors doubled as local party officials. They could speak on behalf of the campaign and routinely held formal positions on local or state committees. This gave Jackson an independent outlet for coordinating and spreading the Democratic Party message, an outlet owned and operated by the campaign and facilitated in no small part by postal laws that permitted newspapers to circulate through the mail free of charge. Editors took advantage of the free postage by subscribing to a multitude of papers from across the country and excerpting what other editors were writing, creating something of a crude national political message machine.[snip]
“In terms of what they produced and how they worked creatively with the technology at their disposal, what Jacksonian Democrats did with inexpensive printing technology more closely models today’s progressive bloggers than any subsequent media-influenced political transformation.”