Mirror or Lamp?

posted by fidelis

There has been much discussion as to whether Blogs have had any real impact on this campaign. Antonia Zerbisias writes in today's Toronto Star that blogs in this election have not had the impact people might have either feared or hoped for. In fact, the impact of blogs so far may only have extended as far as the simple one of "aggregation", i.e., compiling links and references from other sources. Thus, perhaps the effect is of simply reporting what others, especially one's friends, acquaintances and "trusted" sources think (an echoing of the so-called conventional wisdom).

This could perhaps be termed more of an "mirror" effect rather than a lamp-like one (with apologies to M.H. Abrams).

At the same time, however, there may be a prosaic, but more powerful media effect that the blogs could have on the election. As The Globe and Mail argues in today's lead editorial , the existing law on broadcasting electoral news on election day may simply be rendered quaintly obsolete on Monday by the new information technologies, such as text messaging and blogs. This idea has also been examined by John Bowman and others.

Given that strategic voting may be an issue in places like British Columbia (see Pogge et al), will the availability of results from the East via NICTs finally put the nail in the coffin of the restrictions under the current Election Act?