"The Internet has become an integral part of modern politics; one-time presidential candidate Howard Dean made it an essential tool for organizing and fund-raising. But increasingly, cyberspace also has a dark side," says M.E. Sprengelmeyer, writing for the Rocky Mountain News.
With a few mouse clicks, you can find anonymous Web sites and blogs that test old political boundaries of privacy and good taste, sometimes substituting dark satire and partisan fiction for facts and opinion. ... Online hit pieces were a staple of the 2006 campaign, both in Colorado and nationally. It has become common for groups on the left or the right to launch edgy, often satirical Web sites attacking candidates.
Jason Bane, one of the once-anonymous authors behind the political site ColoradoPols.com, said he has seen the online political world turn more aggressive since last year’s election.
Bane said ColoradoPols tries to weed out anonymous postings that make inflammatory charges with no proof. “We don’t want it to be a place where it’s character-assassination central,” Bane said.
Still, he said the Internet is still a wild, untamed realm that mostly polices itself.
"You have to take it upon yourself to be fair. When you do that, you get the credibility for it," he said. "If you’re just going to slander people, be aggressive and use foul language, people will shy away from it. It takes care of itself."
A recent search of the 18 largest leftwing blogs and the 22 largest rightwing blogs found that use of foul language -specifically, comedian George Carlin's famous seven dirty words - was 18 times more frequent on the leftwing blogs' content and reader comments than on rightwing blogs.
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