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Experts say in time, Web won't be political weapon
AUSTIN, Oct 27, 2008 (El Paso Times - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Democrat Joe Moody may be among the first -- and he won't be the last -- political candidates whose online musings return to haunt him, political experts said this week.
Last year, shortly before he decided to run for a seat in the Texas Legislature, Moody had a blog, an online journal full of postings about his daily life, video clips and photos. It was similar to blogs kept by many.
Among the postings were some unsavory photos and Moody discussing the possibility of moving away from El Paso.
On someone else's blog, he made a negative comment about the military, saying the institution recruited young people to kill them.
Moody, 27, has said the postings don't reflect his real character and that he respects military
service deeply. He removed the postings from the Web, but not before his Republican opponent Dee Margo could download copies.
Now, the blog comments have turned into a series of negative attacks from Margo, questioning Moody's commitment to El Paso, his work ethic and his respect for the military.
Experts said that as the so-called "Millennial" generation, which has grown up posting their daily lives on the Web, comes of age politically, the online indiscretions may not mean much. But for now, they said, those unfortunate photos, blog entries and Twitters can lead to trouble.
"At all levels (the Internet) clearly has a lot of potential, but it's really changed the communication environment so fundamentally it creates a lot of other
unintended consequences people are still sorting out," said James Henson, who directs the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
Henson and researchers Aaron Smith of the Pew Internet and American Life Project and Julie Germany of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University, said they have seen several instances of campaign staffers or candidates' children causing Web headaches for politicians.
But none said they had seen a case in which the candidate's own online entries had become campaign fodder.
"Politicians are bound to get caught in that," Henson said. "Not everybody plans from age 10 to be a politician and act accordingly."
Henson said Moody might be caught between two generations -- an older group that is unfamiliar with the level of public exposure people allow their personal lives on the Internet and a younger group that is accustomed to online life.
"People are becoming a little more forgiving of things like this over time," he said.
George Washington University's Julie Germany said she and other researchers believe there will come a time when photos of drunken people, stupid videos and crazy rants of young people on the Internet will become virtually meaningless in campaigns.
With the growing use of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and online messaging tools like Twitter, posting every minute and momentous detail of their lives is common among young people.
"This is a generation of people who've grown up with essentially the Internet as we know it now, and they're just so comfortable with it," Germany said. "e It's another form of being real for them with their friends."
When this Millennial generation starts running the country, she said, it's likely no one will care about all those postings people created when they were young and unwise.
"But we're not at that point right now," Germany said. "We're at a point where young people have to be careful about what they say and do online."
Aaron Smith, of the Pew Project, said young people should realize what they post online is a permanent public record.
"We've really got to figure out as a society how to deal with that and how are you supposed to deal with someone's youthful indiscretion when they are sort of publicly visible now," he said.
Richard Pineda, a communication professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, said the Internet provides candidates with many beneficial tools for campaigning, raising funds quickly and targeting voters directly.
Online postings, he said, can create problems, but how a candidate deals with them and how the overall campaign is run make a difference, too.
"If (Moody) doesn't win, it's not just this Internet stuff," he said. "It's a combination of having a young candidate and an unusual strategy."
Brandi Grissom may be reached at bgrissom@elpasotimes.com; 512-479-6606.
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