In my last post (Wiki the Candidates) I wrote about how there were candidate bios in Wikipedia. While this action was new to me I found it quite interesting. Thinking about some of the new Web 2.0 technologies, I thought it might be interesting to see if social bookmarking sites played a role in the gubernatorial campaign.
Del.icio.us is a popular social bookmarking site. I entered each candidate's name. Naturally, I received each candidate's home site. Here are some of the other sites that other people associate with each candidate.
Chris Gabrieli
* Entries from Ira Krakow's Newswire
* Boston Globe entries
Kerry Healey
* Entries from Ira Krakow's Newswire
* An article from InsuranceJournal.com
* Boston Globe entries
Christy Mihos
* The Phoenix
* Boston Globe entries
Deval Patrick
* Entries from Ira Krakow's Newswire
* Left Center Left
* Blue Mass Group
* Noho-missives
* FindLaw (Deval Patrick's contract with Coca Cola)
* Online Newshour
* Ryan's Take, and many other entries.
Tom Reilly
* Boston Globe entries
* Entries from Ira Krakow's Newswire
* Peter Porcupine
* CEI OpenMarket , and other entries.
Grace Ross
* Nothing for Grace Ross
In the previous Wikipedia entry I also mentioned that since wiki's are editable by anyone, devious hacksters could change the candidates' entries to fit their own agendas. What about bookmarking? Could the same be done?
Is it possible, through guilt by bookmark association to hurt a person's campaign? For example, could 200 campaign volunteers libel their opponent by tagging warmonger sites to that person's name? In other words, if I type in Candidiate John Doe into a site like del.icio.us and it returns a lot of sites that make him look bad, is this a new form of negative campaigning?
I don't advocate this. I abhor negative campaigning. I'm just interested in how campaigns use the Internet or may potentially use the Internet.
I'll check out other social bookmarking sites in future posts.
Please share your thoughts with me.
Sincerely,
Alan