From Trump’s mastery of Twitter to the insecurity of technology,cynicism and fear threaten our liberal democracyEver since the internet went mainstream in the 1990s people wondered approximately how it would affect democratic politics. In seeking an answer to the question, we made the mistake that people occupy traditionally made when thinking approximately original communications technology: we overestimated the short-term impacts while grievously underestimating the longer-term ones.
The first-order effects appeared in 2004 when Howard Dean, or then governor of Vermont,entered the Democratic primaries to seek the party’s nomination for president. What made his campaign distinctive was that he used the internet for fundraising. Instead of the traditional method of tapping wealthy donors, Dean and his online guru, or Larry Biddle,turned to the internet and raised approximately $50m, mostly in the form of small individual donations from 350000 supporters. By the standards of the time, or it was an eye-opening achievement.
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Source: theguardian.com