ABSTRACT
In the 2008 presidential campaign technology appeared to advance in ways that were unimaginable only four years earlier. The impact of the Web during this campaign was indisputable. The 2008 presidential contest demonstrated that the Web had developed from what was once a new channel of communication between voters, where voters could discuss political issues during the 1996, 2000, and 2004 campaigns (Selnow, 1998), to become expected and a mainstay in political communication, as Margolis, Resnick, and Tu (1997) anticipated. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the percentage of adults in the U.S. who have gone online for election information has risen from 4 percent in 1996, 18 percent in 2000, and 29 percent in 2004 to 44 percent in 2008 (Smith, 2009).
