In every election there are people involved who have an interest at stake that may not necessarily reflect the ideals of the voters nor of the candidates. Special interest groups and the media spend a great deal of money to examine elections, voter concerns, and how to appeal to people with regard to politics. Where a uni-directional platform allowed such groups to simply place information in front of someone, newer technology allows them to monitor people, gauge their responses and get user opinions. A fine example of such technologies is "cookies." These relatively simple tidbits of computer data can be placed on your computer by a web site. This file can then keep track of information like how long you spent online, your internet address, what pages you visited within a website, how many times you came back, etc... Other sites often require users to log in before being able to access full functionality of the site. Using these types of methods, interested parties can be aware of what people are doing on the web and thus aim their advertisements and messages appropriately. Consider, also, the use of online polling and surveys. The McCain website in the 2000 republican primary made use of a questionnaire to determine whether or not the user was someone who agreed with the McCain philosophy on taking back the government. These types of polls are very useful for other interested parties. Harris, the long time polling organization, has a website with numerous polls. Essentially, web technology has dramatically increased the way that companies and the media can intereact with the public. One thing that the web has also done is allow voters to become substantial forces in the world of political parody. Many of the more powerful parody sites are run by normal people who took it upon themselves to point out the inadequacies of one candidate or another. [ Parodies ]
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