Online Media Cultist

If you’re at all a fan of the sport of politics, this has been a fascinating political season, and we’re just now gearing up for the frenzy of the proverbial playoffs. With each fresh cycle, there’s an ever increasing amount of websites dedicated to convincing, explaining, exhorting, spinning, pontificating, and synthesizing what’s going on in electoral races.

Here are a few I’ve come across in just the past few days:

Presidential Watch ‘08 contains a bunch of cool “heat maps” and trending data charts that pull raw statistics into a very cool visual form. If you’re into data visualizations, check out this map of the political blogosphere.

Meanwhile, Republican presidential aspirant Ron Paul may be the biggest online political story of the year. While he languishes in the single digits in polls, he has gathered millions of dollars thanks to hardcore support from libertarians (a political breed who tend to congregate online more than others) and an online presence that encourages fund raising in manic flurries based around specified event days.

Now, in a move unforeseen back even in the heyday of Howard Dean, a Ron Paul social networking site has sprung up, a “social alliance” that invites people to “join the revolution.”

It’s great fun to see the online world become further enmeshed into the political process, and while there is always any number of ways to “abuse the system,” I can’t help thinking that more information, more communication, more collaboration, and more access can only help the political process as a whole.