The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) has tapped MySpace to create an online portal for the upcoming election season that will include live streaming video and real time polling. The site, called MyDebates.org will be open to anyone (you don’t need to create an account), and will launch as we get closer to the first debate on September 26.
The CPD is charged with organizing the four “real” debates leading up to this November’s election (it is unaffiliated with the dozens of primary debates we’ve seen over the last 18 months). The partnership with MySpace marks the first time the organization has included any kind of real-time participation.
Visitors to the site will be able to watch the debates stream in real time. A team of employees working behind the scenes will monitor the arguments made by each candidate, and will pose questions to viewers that will be displayed in tiny popup overlays. In this way, the site will be able to collect an endless amount of polling data in real time, allowing users to immediately see how the public responds to each question. The site will also be involved with the town-hall debate on October 7, which will feature questions drawn from a pool of submissions from MyDebates.org.
At MyDebates.org, users will be able to create widgetized “Issue Cards”, which can be embedded in their blogs and webpages. While there are a number of sites that offer similar widgets, this one has a trick up its sleeve – during the broadcast of each debate, these Issue Cards will fold open to reveal a miniature video player.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen tie-ins between debate organizers and online sites – last year we saw similar cooperation between CNN and YouTube, with disappointing results. But the primary debates pale in comparison to those leading up to the general election, and MySpace and the CPD seem to be taking a new approach.
Television changed the election process forever, bringing the candidates into the living room of every American. The web is clearly the next frontier, but it has yet to live up to its potential. If MySpace can create a site that is both intuitive and informative, it stands to actually enhance the democratic process by engaging and motivating the millions of apathetic Americans who might not vote otherwise.
What a great idea. Hopefully this will help more young people feel more involved in an easy, accessible way. And maybe they’ll even start to think for themselves and try to think for themselves and vote for which candidate they want, versus who the media and their friends try to influence them to vote for.
Seems like a nice idea! I’d like to see more politics on the web!
Check out http://www.createdebate.com for a political debate startup.
Steve,
See http://www.vote...her.com—- non-partisan, easy-to-understand summaries of 25 major issues. Videos, blog posts, links, and an interactive feature to help you see which candidate’s views align most with yours.
Sadly, even though we now have the Internet, these debates are still made “the TV way”.
Now we could have written, on-line debates (more in the style of an Internet forum than in that of IRC), where politicians would not get away with speaking beautiful words devoid of meaning, because each sentence could be quoted and commented.
I like the idea, but MySpace is not the venue for this.
Don’t care at all…
My hope is that Bob Barr will be included in the debates. Bob is the only candidate for REAL and POSITIVE change. My money and my vote are going to Barr. If you haven’t taken the time to actually read through the issues and stances on his website, you should… http://www.BobBarr2008.com …you might be surprised that you agree with him on more than you think!
Yeah! Great idea… MySpace just continues to do great things… always fresh. Not sure why Bill thinks that MySpace is a bad choice for the venue? MySpace s the largest social network in the world… and has almost twice as many users than Facebook here in the U.S. And come on… let’s face it… Facebook is predominately used by middle class, college educated, white folks… that’s a pretty homogenous group to participate in the debates. MySpace has every race, gender, creed, color, sexual orientation, etc. There isn’t a better place on the Internet for this debate series… especially in an election with our first African American candidate!