Real politics made for real people.

How do you make politics more real to the average citizen? Well, how about by combining public opinion and public radio. That’s exactly what happened in Exeter, New Hampshire. In the article, “Creating a Primary Place for Citizens Online” a local radio station created a website entitled Primary Place Online, as a companion to a year long radio series covering the residents of New Hampshire during the 2008 presidential primary allowing citizens to create a space to communicate with one another about their feelings on the race as well as the candidates.

In the small town of Exeter, with a population of only 15,000 the online space was used for residents to go to and express their thoughts and feelings on the race. By the end of the project there was 187 registered users with 72 of them posting at least once. This gave the followers of the campaign a chance to contribute to the ongoing coverage as well as use it as a supplemental source of traditional media enabling many individuals who do not watch traditional medias to follow the election to be an active participant as well as an opinion leader within the community.

Moving from the grassroots up, Primary Place Online became a respected source of presidential coverage within the community. One individual was quoted as saying he used the website to guide his decision on who to vote for. The project was labeled as a three fold project, reason number one being to show the rest of the voters in the country what goes on during the New Hampshire Primary. Second the give Greenburg (the brains of the operation) insight into what was going on when he wasn’t there documenting the process, and finally to give the residents of Exeter a fuller sense of what it is like to participate in a democratic process. It was designed to give residents to communicate and give feedback with their friends, neighbors, and families to see what was going on within their own points of reference.

The greatest thing that seemingly came out of this project that was quoted over and over again was that it gave real feelings to real people and allowed the primary to be a real process to those who had never had a chance or possibly had an inclination to participate beforehand. People were able to see beyond the perfectly articulated media messages and see the expression of real people, and in short put a face on the politics that are often times obscured by false messages and media fluff.

PPO allowed for people who weren’t necessarily experts to give feedback. Although the initial fear for the general public to lend opinions about an issue they may not be within their “expertise” is to resist and not become active, which many people and organizations did do, PPO also gave others an opportunity to lend their voices and opinions and connect with others within the community to guide or influence decisions.

• Why is their a resistance by some to participate in online groups such as PPO?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of creating a space that relies solely on public opinion? and how do you believe an organization such as PPO would function in the greater Seattle area?