A Digital Agora: Citizen Participation in the 2008 Presidential Debates

During the 2008 presidential election, communication technology permitted media outlets, such as YouTube, ABC, and CNN, to create an electronic gathering place for citizens—a digital agora—both as created online and through related news and mediated events. While the web and media channels served as mouthpieces or magnifiers for campaign messages in previous elections, they were transformed into participatory spaces during this election. The YouTube debates and CNN’s use of debate dial testing are examined as the authors demonstrate how such civic engagement resulted in increased feelings of citizen efficacy in the political process and changed the political media environment.