Technology two-fer

This new, informal interactive setup for presidential candidates to be questioned over the internet has two immediately evident benefits: it takes presidential politics right to the youth in a forum they’re used to and comfortable with, and it draws young people into the political process and encourages them to participate.

MySpace and MTV said Thursday they have joined forces to let candidates for the US presidency individually discuss ideas and issues with young people in online webcasts.

The social-networking website and Viacom-owned MTV.com will host “interactive real-time presidential dialogues” in which candidates field questions from college campus audiences and from people watching on the Internet.

“It is really a digital extension of the Iowa or New Hampshire living room where a candidate walks into someone’s home to have a dialogue,” said MySpace senior vice president of public affairs Jeff Berman.

“We are offering one-on-one conversations rather than the big clusters of candidates on stage all struggling to get their sound bites in.”

I’ve been talking with really smart, engaged young adults lately who love this idea. Finally, they say, politics is coming into their arena of ideas.

The collaboration is to be a centerpiece of MTV’s “Choose or Lose” campaign launched in 1992 to get young people more involved in politics…

“We are changing the world one young person at a time,” Berman said of MySpace’s campaign to inspire political activism.

I believe they’ll ask tougher questions than some of the formal, staged debate moderators have, and I hope they’re persistent about expecting answers. It’ll be interesting to see how this evolves….and who emerges…