This study, like its predecessors, will explore motivations for using the Internet and its components, credibility of online and traditional media and the degree to which Internet components are taking time away from traditional media.

The new study also explore the degree to which the media are polarizing public opinion by examining selective exposure and hostile media effects. The 2008 study also includes measures for reliance, credibility and motivations for using social network sites and YouTube. Finally, this study doesn’t simply look at blogs and political websites, but distinguishes between media journalism, political and candidate blogs and political websites and studies their uses and effects.

We invite you to click on the link below and fill out this survey.

Although we recognize that the Internet is a global medium, we asked that
only those individuals who are eligible to vote in the U.S. participate in
this survey. Click below to start!

http://survey.utk.edu/mrIweb/mrIWeb.dll?I.Project=POLITICS08

Such as, oh, say, building readership for a news website.

What can news publishers learn from the Obama campaign? Lots.

Republicans mocked Obama’s experience as a community organizer on the south side of Chicago. But Obama’s community organizing skills defined his campaign. I think that the single best piece of political journalism this fall came from Zack Exley at the Huffington Post, with this examination of Barack Obama’s volunteer-driven ground campaign.

I think that this will be the new roadmap for election campaigns: do not rely on ads and news coverage to convince people to vote your way on election day. Instead, recruit volunteers throughout your community and use the power of their personal relationships to build a network of loyal supporters that expresses its support through publishing, demonstrating, organizing, recruiting and, ultimately, voting. Then send those volunteers into new communities, to build new personal relationships that can extend your campaign into fresh territory.

You can sell a lot more than a presidential campaign this way, too.

The Obama victory marks more than a change in American eras on race relations. It marks a change in American eras for public relations, as well. No longer can we consider public relations primarily a function of media relations. In the Obama campaign, public relations was even more a function of community organizing (or, to use the more online-appropriate term, social networking).

According to Politico, more than 130 million people turned out to vote yesterday, shattering the U.S. record. Here in Los Angeles County, the county clerk yesterday estimated the local voter turn-out at 82 percent. The era of “voter apathy” is done, dead and buried. The number of people engaged in their civic life, in the most fundamental way, is rising. That tells me that the market for civic engagement is growing. That ought to be thrilling news for publishers, and potential publishers.

So why is circulation dropping at so many newspapers? So why are so many online start-ups struggling? There are as many specific reasons as there are publishers, I suspect. But allow me to suggest that if all you are doing is reporting, writing grant applications and taking whatever advertising falls your way, you probably are not building the personal relationship network that could allow you to develop readers and advertisers the way the Obama campaign developed its voters.

Here’s my suggestion, whether you work at a newspaper or a hyperlocal start-up: Read Exley’ story. Then find a few local Obama campaign leaders and take ‘em out for coffee or lunch. Tell them what you are doing and ask about how they built their connections within the community. Learn how you can build a passionate loyal following among new (and newly energized) voters, as well as among local businesses.

Friday, I’ll continue these thoughts with some comments from Markos Moulitsas about how he built a hugely influential multi-million dollar website network from scratch (including his flagship DailyKos), using some of these same social networking ideas.

CNN’s John King, for one, called the debate for McCain, only to have his own network’s snap poll show that the viewers, resoundingly, thought Obama the winner. That got me thinking about the opinion sections that many newspapers run in print, and on their websites.

Many now run Web polls where any reader can click to vote which candidate won a debate or to show which position on an issue they support. These polls of self-selected readers can be useful in eliciting discussion, but are worthless in providing good data about the public’s collective opinion on something.

But online polls don’t have to be garbage. The same technology can be tweaked easily to enable a previously selected, demographically balanced, random sample of individuals to log in and record their votes on an issue, such as a local candidates’ debate.

So, why not? Why not provide marry online technology with random-sampling techniques to build a readers’ panel than provides a scientifically accurate measure of your community’s response to important issues? Why ask a hired reporter or pundit to guess the public’s reaction to something when you have the ability to gauge the public’s reaction directly?

Several large news organizations commission public opinion surveys on a regular basis. I’m suggesting something less ambitious than that, something cheaper and faster, using online polling exclusively.

Who won a debate is a great application for this technology because the call of a winner is purely a matter of opinion. There is no empirical evidence that one can tap to render an indisputable judgment on a candidate debate, as one might use a tape measure to determine how far atheletes had launched a shot put, for example.

News organizations still need critics and commentators, people who can put an issue, or a debate performance, into a broader perspective and challenge readers or viewers to consider a different point of view. For things that can be judged with “tape measure” accuracy, such as voting records and scientific research, we also need reporters who make or report those measurements to better inform the public. (These are very different responsibilities than simply reciting partisan talking points, or shilling 24/7 for one party, as too many news pundits now do.)

Technology has made obsolete the need for pundits to tell us how we think. I asked on my Facebook page, “How many times does a Washington pundit get to be wrong before s/he is fired?” (To which Huffington Post political editor Marc Cooper replied: “4,000?”).

I’d love to hear from news organizations that are using online polling, not just for fun, but for serious, random-sample audience reaction. E-mail me via my blog page if you have a story you’d like to share with OJR readers. Or if you’d just like some guidance on how to make this happen. If there’s demand, and I think there should be, I’d be happy to help find a way to get more news organizations using better public opinion polling techniques online.

Sample electoral vote scenario: (not my prediction; just an uneducated guess for demonstration purposes only)

This is the creation of Sean Connelley, our Flash guru, based on our 2004 electoral vote tracker. The cool addition this time around is the sharing functionality.

We’re hoping to improve on this as the campaign heats up, perhaps adding demographic info and data on past elections by state. Would love to hear suggestions.

whereIstand.com is a new wiki opinion forum that allows users to hold public figures, organizations and themselves up to one another like baseball cards and compare the stats—their stands on various issues—listed on the back.

Here’s how it works: A staffer or reader poses an issue. Then, once approved, anyone is invited to weigh in on that issue and submit a yes-or-no stance. Individuals can then compare themselves to their friends, other users or even public figures, who also submit their opinions.

Well, not exactly. A public figure’s reported stance on any issue is only as accurate as whereIstand.com users’ ability to dig up and present the evidence thereof. For example, Barack Obama did not actually log on to whereIstand.com to offer his stance on gay marriage. Rather, user brianr posted the evidence plucked from the senator’s website and voting history. Users and staff verified it, and others are now invited to “take a stand” of their own on the issue… or even compare Obama to, oh, some other politician and see where they stack up on all debates.

It can be an increasingly fuzzy line between fact and spin out there. That’s where this (almost-)straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth opinion aggregator comes in. Unclear about what Clinton really thinks about dropping out after Pennsylvania? The evidence is there, in her words. Wondering where McCain might fall on an untapped issue? Create a new debate and wait for a whereIstand.com junkie to dig up the evidence. Not what Dan Abrams says McCain’s stance is. What McCain says McCain’s stance is.

Of course, it’s not all election speak at whereIstand.com, where recent opinions range from home-field advantage in the World Series to the circulation of the U.S. penny. But until November, the site does make for a handy political cheat sheet for our esteemed candidates. OJR traded e-mails with whereIstand.com president and founder Nick Oliva to find out more about the logic behind an opinion wiki and how it might help voters decide whom they really support.

OJR: Why whereIstand.com? What void are you filling on the Web?

Nick Oliva: whereIstand.com has a unique model whereby users post the opinions of public figures and organizations (and other users verify these) on the same issues on which members take stands. This makes whereIstand.com the only comprehensive source on the Web for finding the user-verified opinions of anyone on any issue and for comparing people to each other based on their opinions.

Additionally, issues on whereIstand.com are translatable, meaning that the opinions are readable, searchable, and comparable in any language into which they have been translated. The implication of this is that a Spanish-speaking user can see in Spanish where he agrees and disagrees with the candidates for an election in Japan.

OJR: All submitted issues are reviewed for accuracy by staff and users alike. Can you talk about that process? How has it worked out so far, and what sort of issues have you had to turn away?

NO: Members propose issues that interest them in any topic – politics, health, sports, etc. Members and editors comment and debate how well a proposed issue meets our guidelines – and suggest revisions to the wording. Among these guidelines are that the issue be relevant, that the wording be free from bias, and that the wording is “open” enough to find on the Web the opinions of public figures and organizations. At the end of this collaborative process, issues that have not been rejected are framed much as they would be by a meticulous polling organization. An editor then approves the issue and that’s when people can take a stand on it or post public figure opinions.

The best issues are those where there is enough interest that people of different backgrounds and views collaborate in the approval process. The community should decide what is interesting, so we try not to reject issues that represent a legitimate controversy or difference of opinions. The issues that get rejected are usually those that are inherently biased.

OJR: What sort of things are you doing to drive traffic to the site. And, once they’re there, why should they register?

NO: One of the things that drives traffic to the site is when members invite their friends to register and take stands so they can find where they agree and disagree. It’s remarkable how surprising it is to discover some of the opinions of your friends – particular those on which you disagree.

What most drives new traffic is the public figure opinions. When you search the Web, for example, for opinions or comparisons, whereIstand is often among the top results. For example, the following search terms on Google return whereIstand.com opinions and comparisons:

mccain politics

obama outsourcing

angelina jolie writers guild

jordan athletes overpaid

compare barack and hillary

All content is free on whereIstand and registration is optional. If you have taken stands on a lot of issues, and bookmarked the issues and people that interest you, you should register so you can sign back in and access these. A big reason to register is so that others can see your stands and compare themselves to you. Some of the functionality, like proposing issues and commenting on people’s opinions, is limited to registered users.

OJR: Aside from bloggers seeking a syndication platform, who else would bookmark this site? People who really like to argue?

NO: whereIstand.com does provide a platform for bloggers to promote themselves through their opinions, but it’s really much more than that. For example, when the community jumps on a news item, frames it into issues, and starts posting opinions, you can quickly see the lay of the land just based on who is taking which stand. Since public figures are tagged with rich information about their affiliations, you can also see where groups of people stand on an issue. Sports fans may be equally divided on whether Barry Bonds should get into the Hall of Fame, but where do “sports journalists”, for example, stand on the issue? To find that out either somebody needs to do a lot of research, or you need to go to whereIstand.com.

For people that are more interested in the opinions of their friends than of public figures, whereIstand.com provides a forum to argue, but also to interact, engage, etc. Some people find it more interesting to read and comment on a friend’s recent opinions than to see and comment on the pictures from a friend’s recent barbecue.

OJR: I like the way the site aggregates public figures and invites users to compare their own views. Seems like a good way to package the presidential candidates’ positions into something relatively digestible. How do you see that feature playing out as campaign season heats up?

NO: Many people that are following the candidates closely still find it difficult to identify just on what issues particular candidates disagree. Sometimes this is because candidates change or clarify their previous positions – changes whereIstand.com keeps up with. In particular, as the campaign season heats up, whereIstand.com makes things more interesting, for example, by letting people see how the candidates for state elections compare to them and to each other.

Again, what’s most unique is that you can compare any two people and quickly find where they agree and disagree. So, for example, when the campaigns begin to float names as candidates for Vice President, you can very quickly see whether they are a good fit and where they may clash.

OJR: Finally, regarding the tech behind the site’s comparison feature, how are you determining compatible positions? What variables you are looking at?

NO: whereIstand.com doesn’t try to measure “compatibility” per se, but rather points out where there are differences of opinion. The comparison highlights whether two people tend to agree or disagree on the issues on which they have taken a stand. What’s most interesting is when you read the actual statements made that support those opinions. In that sense, whereIstand.com is like an opinion index where you go to find the answer and then click through to read the original source.

One of the ways that the journalism industry has tried over the past few decades to reassure the public that its information is accurate is by restricting the political activity of its reporters. But does that work? Does telling reporters not to campaign, not to contribute, or even not to vote, really help build readership?

If recent trends in newspaper circulation offer evidence, the answer is “no.” But it’s hard to separate political restrictions on reporters from the other variables affecting people’s decision whether or not to read a paper.

So, the debate continues. In the build-up to the recent Super Tuesday elections, the editor of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, John Temple, ordered his newsroom’s reporters not to participate in the Colorado caucuses. (Unlike primaries, in caucuses there are not secret ballots and people must declare their preference publicly.)

“Because caucuses are party activities that involve expressing your political position in public, you should not attend them, unless you’re covering them for the Rocky,” Temple wrote, in an e-mail obtained and published by the Denver weekly Westword. Temple later reversed his decision, according to Westword.

[Disclosure: I used to work for the Rocky Mountain News, though when I edited the Rocky's website, it did not report to Temple.]

Columnist Dana Parsons of the Los Angeles Times explained why newsrooms have restricted their reporters’ political activity:

“Believe it or not, we are trying to cover these controversial social issues with objectivity. And we still have the belief that people belonging to Greenpeace, for example, shouldn’t be covering the environment.

No, that doesn’t mean we don’t have personal opinions. It just means we’re schooled that you can have an opinion and still report both sides fairly.

And if being a party activist suggests you can’t be impartial (which it would), better not to be one.”

My USC Annenberg colleague, and popular blogger, Marc Cooper, added his view in e-mail to me, coming down on the side of allowing some activity, provided that it is disclosed to readers:

“There is no set formula. My personal view is one of common sense i.e. that obvious conflicts of interest must be avoided. Someone actively involved in a campaign should not be writing about it as and objective observer unless, of course, your editor actually wants a first-person piece with a defined POV (This is common in the journals of opinion I have worked for as compared to most newspapers).

Whether or not a political affairs journalist should be allowed to make a financial contribution to a campaign is, again, a matter that is determined on an employer-by-employer basis. Some permit it. Some don’t. Some won’t even allow their reporters to put a partisan bumpersticker on his or her car.

Again, my personal view is that I would prefer political reporters be passionate and engaged in the process so long as they fully disclose their preferences. Their work can then be fully evaluated for its fairness. I am suspicious of political reporters who have no views. This, however, is a minority position within the profession.”

My take? The winners in the Internet publishing business will be those who write with deep knowledge and committed passion for the topics that they cover. Given that few areas of life stand completely unaffected by elected government, every beat will have some political element. A journalist’s job is to investigate and to report on controversies, including political ones. It’s ridiculous to believe that their reporting is not going to ever lead them to conclude that certain parties’ or certain candidates’ positions are better for their audience than others’.

If that’s the case, those journalists’ reporting would be incomplete — even misleading — if it did not acknowledge and explain the reasons for those conclusions.

Asking journalists to remain silent on politics cheats readers by promoting the idea that a well-informed, “objective” source will have nothing to say about which candidates for elected office offer the best hope for a community. If a reporter’s got nothing to say, why should anyone read him/her?

Furthermore, it’s hard to rest any non-participation policy on the need for “objectivity” when there’s a such a schism in America today over what “objectivity” even means.

Almost everyone working in journalism today ascribes to a post-Englightenment view of truth as deriving from empirical evidence. Collect the data, check them, test them, and we’ll support the hypothesis that they support.

But there’s a massive segment of the public that finds its truth not from empiricism but from creed and canon. In its most popular form in the United States, it is the belief by Christian fundamentalists that physical evidence can and is manipulated by the will of God. Therefore, mankind ought to find truth not through the transience of the physical world but through the enduring word of Scripture.

Therefore, any news reporting that relies completely upon empiricism and that does not acknowledge the word of Scripture cannot be considered “objective,” but is, instead, biased, incomplete and flawed.

I believe that this is the reason why so many news organizations are besieged by accusations of “liberal bias,” because they practice journalism according to a belief structure that is at odds with the belief structure of those readers who complain. The journalism industry’s concept of “objectivity” is objective only within a post-Enlightenment, pro-empiricism belief structure that is not held by a significant segment of the population. Or, in my opinion, a great many people currently in power in United States politics.

Journalists cannot be “objective” to all of their readers. The best we can do is to explain how and why we collect and report the information that we do. And if that information leads us to a specific conclusion, we should reveal that and explain how we got there. That’s truly complete reporting. Whether readers choose to believe it, or to challenge it, is up to them.

In short, allow me to quote the E.W. Scripps motto, which I saw every day atop the Rocky Mountain News when I worked in Denver: “Give light and the people will find their own way.”

Which brings up to the question of the week:

Please give us your take on this issue in the comments.

Update: When I talk about journalists, I mean anyone who publishes news online, whether they use they use the Big “J” word to describe themselves or not. Also, after I’ve made my point here, I suppose I should go ahead and reveal that I voted in the California primary. For Hillary Clinton. (I was going to vote for John Edwards, but when he dropped out, I chose to go with Clinton over Barack Obama. But barely. I find Duncan Black’s analysis of the race compelling.)

But when the Big Night arrives, readers are not satisfied with pre-planned features; they want vote returns, data analysis and a swift and accurate score of who’s won and lost. If those tasks were not demanding enough, the day strained the abilities of many newsrooms in the country’s midsection, as staffers reported on not just the primaries and caucuses, but a string of tornadoes from Alabama to Kentucky that ultimately killed more than 50 people.

OJR checked in via e-mail with Meredith Artley, editor of latimes.com; Mitch Gelman, senior vice president and executive producer of CNN.com; and Fiona Spruill, Editor, Web Newsroom, of The New York Times, to ask about what they found, and learned, from this year’s Super Tuesday.

How was traffic on Tuesday, compared with a normal Tuesday and with other top days at your site?

Spruill, NYT: It was huge. According to our internal traffic numbers, we saw more page views to the site in a 24-hour period than we ever have before.

Gelman, CNN: More than 97 million page views, double a normal weekday.

Artley, LAT: We saw good traffic numbers Tuesday. About 4.3 million page views according to our Omniture reports. That’s roughly a million more page views than an average day. Our record to beat is about 8 million page views in one day — we hit that during the October fires.

What was the single unique element on your website that you were most proud of?

Spruill, NYT: I’m afraid I can’t give you just one, so here are two:
1) Our election results graphics, which were updated on a minute-by-minute basis throughout the night. The depth of information we provided and the innovative display on the home page made for a great package.
2) The “Voices From the Polls” interactive feature, which included 124 audio interviews with voters across 24 states. We published it around midday on Tuesday and added to it throughout the day.

Gelman, CNN: The rapid results and updating delegate counts allowed the audience to follow the evolution of the events in real time, along with the live video coverage with four simultaneous live streams exclusively online that resulted in another nearly 600,000 views through the day.

Artley, LAT: It’s a three-way tie! The Top of the Ticket blog, which is quickly climbing the Technorati charts, is a shining example of how news organizations can pair smart reporters with a platform that lets them be prolific and interactive. Andy Malcolm, Don Frederick and Scott Martelle are blogging the heck out of the campaign season — breaking a lot of news, linking out and getting linked to. And they tell me they are having a great time.

We are also proud of the live California results map. It was done in Flash, put together by Sean Connelley, our interactive graphics producer with help from Stephanie Ferrell, Ben Welsh and Eric Ulken. This map and Top of the Ticket were the two most viewed elements of our campaign coverage.

Lastly, we are proud of the “vote cloud” as a way of clearly presenting how the candidates are faring state-by-state and nationwide. We set out to not be too “charty” and to give readers something they can quickly understand at a glance, while providing easy access to deeper information. The cloud will continue to be available from the Campaign ’08 page.

What was the lesson that you learned from your Super Tuesday coverage that you did not know before?

Spruill, NYT: The “Voices From the Polls” feature is one of the most ambitious Web-only projects we have ever undertaken. It is great to know that we can publish something so comprehensive (124 interviews in 24 states) with such a tight turnaround. I was also pleased with the way we conceived of a project for the Web that was a perfect complement to our coverage in print but stood on its own online.

Gelman, CNN: That America has fully embraced the two-screen election results experience. CNN won the ratings on TV and CNN.com had one its best nights ever, showing that in order to fully follow an election, you need to turn to CNN online and on air!

Artley, LAT: As for new lessons, I found the variety of presentations among news sites fascinating. Lots of discussion about that in the LAT newsroom. CNN.com went with straightforward and simple approach — one photo, one headline, and usually bullet points with updates. Their maps and charts were farther down the page, unlike NYTimes.com who went with a big chart at the top of their homepage. Washingtonpost.com divided the page down the middle between Dem and GOP stories, with interactive maps. I suppose this is all more of an observation than a lesson, but it seems that after years of news sites looking largely the same for election coverage, we’re starting to see different philosophies and a new wave of creativity in terms of presentation. That’s gotta be a very good thing for our readers.