Impact of New Media on Modern elections - Literature Review Essay

Impact of New Media on Modern elections - Literature Review - Essay Example Online democracy is not limited to polls and elections online. ICT does invite new opportunities. There are three categories broadly in which Internet voting may be classified – poll websites, kiosks and remote voting system. External influence is very common in case of remote voting compared to the well-monitored election booths. The problem of access cannot be ignored and the ‘digital divide’ exists across race, ethnicity and gender. The authors have also stated through thorough research that casting votes over the Internet might hamper the secrecy of a voter. The case presented here is that of TruE-Vote which uses smart card techniques and cryptography to design and formulate user accommodative system of voting through the Internet. Care has been taken such that the system is secret and secured. Field experiments were conducted through focus groups at five different locations. Tools used apart from the e-voting system designed include questionnaires. Results sh ow that the participants and pollsters did not expect that turnout rate would be influenced by this method of voting. Therefore the argument usually given in favor of e-voting (regarding increased turnouts) is proven wrong and the real cause could be cost curtail and time saving. The researchers concluded that traditional voting should not be substituted as his might leave out a large section of the population and internet voting might be used alongside the traditional ballot system. Also, despite expectations that e voting might enhance the democratic element there has been no definite plan about how this might be done in reality. (Besselaar and Oostveen 2004) With the advent of Facebook, Orkut and YouTube, a wide range of polling activities are already taking place on these sites. These websites obviously have great potential to assist the political elections as well but regulations will be essential. Already huge number of polls is taking place through Facebook. (Facebook: Polls, 2010) It is