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Will young netizens swing the election?

by tom plate

Personally, I had thought the third and final U.S. presidential debate was an honest draw. And that also seemed to be the general consensus of most of the instant polls and punditry. But, for one audience at least, the debate wasn’t even close: It was John Kerry by a knockout.

At first I was tempted to dismiss the instant poll that I took on campus as either an academe-based aberration or merely the product of ultra-liberal college kids who never met a leftist cause they wouldn’t embrace. But after randomly reflecting on the peculiar and extraordinary 2002 election of crusading human rights lawyer Roh Moo-hyun in South Korea, I am not so certain.

I asked my news media class at UCLA to try to watch the debate without political prejudice (a high percentage of college students tend to have strong liberal convictions). Please judge the event solely as a debate: Who had the better answers, the smoother sales pitch, the more persuasive argument?

I first asked how many students viewed the debate as a draw. Only two hands went up. I then asked how many gave the president the win. Only two hands went up. I then asked how many felt Sen. John Kerry was the clear winner. At least 60 or so of the 90 students in the UCLA lecture hall raised their hands straight-up.

I was astonished: These are very smart young adults who have studied social-science methodology and are able to reach objective conclusions. Still, I presumed liberal bias — and I told my students that. One said no: “He (Kerry) just had more detailed answers.” Another said: “Bush seemed evasive.”

Again, I was unpersuaded that this consensus was anything other than liberal bias until, for some reason, my mind drifted back to the South Korean election. There, younger voters, networking furiously on the Internet, pushed the human-rights lawyer over the top and into office with a last-minute effort. These young voters became known worldwide as “netizens” — for their exercise of citizenship and the vote via computer networking and organizing. Without them, the liberal candidate absolutely would not have wound up in the Blue House.

Question, therefore: Is there a mammoth netizen generation surfacing here in America that might emerge as a potent political force? This is now my suspicion. And it has been reinforced by recent news stories reporting an upsurge in voter registration, especially among young people. If these reports are true — and if (and this is a big if) UCLA students are at all representative of Nov. 2’s new voters, then the Bush reelection bid may be in serious trouble.

You observe the youngish Junichiro Koizumi in Japan and, of course, Roh in South Korea — both with telegenic looks appealing to the youth vote — and you wonder whether Kerry will become the first netizen president. On reflection, it wouldn’t take all that much of a youth push when you consider that Al Gore, a self-described computer nerd, almost made it four years ago. Maybe the American netizen movement will come to full fruition next month. That is what my students are, I think, trying to tell me.

Plate, an adjunct professor in the Department of Communication Studies, is director of the UCLA Media Center and founder of the Asia Pacific Media Network.