There was a very interesting discussion last week on the importance of unglamorous political technology tools. It seems that this election cycle is bringing a downpour of coverage for MySpace pages, YouTube videos, and Facebook friends, but in truth, the tedium of building email lists and databases are far more worthwhile endeavors. Patrick Ruffini, Colin Delaney, and Alan Rosenblatt all made the point. From Ruffini:

When it comes to covering the online campaigns, reporters tend to hone in on stuff that’s actually pretty easy by comparison. Throwing up a YouTube video or a MySpace page. Cleverly repackaged press content. Anything goofy. It’s easy for campaigns to get thrown off by this, and keep going after press hit after press hit. But some of the most important technology work that campaigns do is a lot less sexy — voter databases, activism tools, Web-based interfaces for high-dollar fundraisers. How about some coverage of that?

Colin Delaney emphatically agrees. Alan Rosenblatt made a similar point here. As Colin puts it, there is a “gee whiz” narrative in the media that is clouding the unglamorous but more critical political technology tools. Colin, Patrick, and Alan are giving us some solid perspective.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2007 at 10:31 am and is filed under 2008 Election, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.