An Analysis Of The Internet's Role In American Political Communication

The Internet appeared in the late of 20th century, and it has developed rapidly into a new kind of mass media following the press, the broadcast, and the television. In the United State of America, Internet informatized media not only inherit the political functions, but also have divided the political communication influence of traditional media by unique communication characteristic and superiority. The involvement of the Internet makes the media in the process of political communication's role change, from the high degree of autonomy as a third-party participation in political communication into the main information platform.The successful practice of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's E-campaign in 2008 U.S. presidential election, shows the Internet huge influence and positive role in promoting to political communication activities, like presidential election. Thus, for understanding the Internet's influences and functions to the political communication, research the Internet's unique mode of communication and characteristics of information transmission, that is meaningful to carry out scientific and effective political communication activities or direct competitive activities.In this respect, the paper tries to carry out some useful exploration. In this study, author firstly introduces the relationships of the mass media and the political communication, analyzing the superiority of the Internet as the political communication's new channel; secondly elaborates the Internet's involvement, characteristics presented and influences to American presidential election; lastly taking Obama's E-Campaign in 2008 for example, explores the Internet's role for political communication in improving communication channels and promoting democratization and so on. The author uses unified method including the literature search, the case study and the text analysis to research these questions above, gives some conclusions and puts forward some rational thinking.