The influence of television on the general election – The Guardian

"Such sudden excitements and their equally rapid evaporation are characteristic of the internet era. This is indeed the "last-minute" generation who turn up in their hundreds to vote at the thirteenth hour and find that they can't get a ballot paper.

[…]

Tellingly, Cameron said last week that he wanted to forget the tyranny of 24-hour news bites and concentrate calmly and rationally on the business of government.

Is that going to be possible, particularly when an election, the TV debates and the rest may come our way again as soon as this autumn? If so, a key paradox will be exposed once more. While a mass audience listen to the candidates spar, they then split into a thousand postmodern splinter groups to vote. So remember the classic Riepl's law: innovations in media add to what went before rather than replacing it. We've now got the mass and the micro audience … but we've yet to learn how to maximise them."

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