Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Diggin Digg

Until now, I had never been aware of any such website by the name of Digg. But after reading Levinson's chapter, I researched the site and did some digging of my own. Digg provides a wide spectrum of online articles, with anything ranging from medicine to celebrity gossip. With the freedom to post any desired article, I found that the scale information on the site is limitless.
Levinson talks about Digg's usefulness during the presidential primaries to find articles about the respective candidates. Although a candidate like Ron Paul had many more digs than reflected in his votes, I don't believe that means his support was forged or subject to "gaming". Levinson suggests that people were falsely supporting Ron Paul by increasing his "digs" or casting extra comments on his articles. I think that perhaps the extra "digs" and "buries" show the reason that Ron Paul lost the primary. With the amount of information circulating around a candidate such as Ron Paul, it is completely understandable that people would be more aware of his faults, hence choosing not to vote for him.

2 comments:

  1. Interesting, so you're saying that increased exposure on social media is bad for a campaign?

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  2. It may be true that more exposure may reveal more faults, however, Ron Paul was never really overly exposed. Obama and McCain had been exposed and discussed more across the board and still held their grounds. I think Ron Paul got so many buries and diggs because he is very controversial. His politics are not mainstream and often bring people either to love or hate him.

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