Electronic whistle-stops: the impact of the Internet on American politics

Abstract

From the Publisher: Fifty years ago, the political whistle-stop tour was thus named because trains blew their whistles twice when making unscheduled stops in backwater towns. Like its distant cousin, the electronic whistle-stop brings the candidate's message directly to the people, but with one outstanding difference: the new whistle-stop offers politicians an accuracy, efficiency, and success at voter persuasion unimaginable to earlier whistle-stoppers such as Harry Truman. Selnow illustrates how the Internet and earlier electronic technologies have been used politically and what the side-effects, intended and otherwise, have been.