This from a Harvard Institute of Politics survey of 1200 undergraduate students (doc):
53. One of the newer uses of the Internet in this campaign season has been the blog – the online diary that details the day-to-day life of a campaign and also allows people to communicate with the campaign and each other. Does the ability to communicate directly with a favored campaign make you much more likely, somewhat more likely, or no more likely to become involved with a campaign?
Much more likely: 10%
Somewhat more likely: 40%
No more likely: 49%
Don’t know: 1%54. Have you ever read or participated in a presidential campaign blog?
Yes: 3%
No: 96%
Don’t know: 1%
This is an interesting response. The same students thought that political engagement was an effective way of solving issues facing the country (88%), seemed to shrug off the use of a blog by the candidates. Part of this may be that the majority of undergraduate students are pro-Bush republicans, and therefore may not have been exposed to Dean’s blog, or the blogs of some of the other democratic candidates. More likely, I am guessing, students simply do not value the opportunity to interact in this way with a campaign.
Unrelated, but interesting: 58% support the invasion of Iraq, but if the military draft were reinstated, 46% would avoid it. 60% think “Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks.”
3 Comments
Reading that I lost faith in the glass of Canadian wine next to me.
I think if that survey proves one thing it’s that those students are lazy lemmings and not pro-Bush. They appear to be the usual weak-minded consumer who is unwilling to resist the influence of the mass media. And since the mass media are 95% staunchly pro-Bush, this is what happens in the end. Sad really…
Among the students, 56% said they planned to vote for Bush in 2004. I don’t buy the “media is pro-Bush” argument. It seems overly simplistic to me. If there was an opportunity for an embarassing scandal, the media would run with it. As a com major, you know that the media has a bias. But a party bias seems extremely unlikely to me.