Many people claimed the first-ever televised presidential debates in 1960 between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy drastically changed the outcome of that election. Kennedy, they say, looked appealing, calm and confident in his posture, hair, wardrobe and facial expressions, while Nixon was, simply, not. He was disheveled and looked older than his age, but of course that wouldn't affect the validity of what he had to say, right? Many people watching the debate on television asserted that JFK won without a doubt, while those who tuned in on the radio and couldn't see the senator's dapper smile were certain Nixon knew what he was talking about. Nonetheless, JFK won the election, and the rest is history. Since then, much emphasis has been placed on wardrobe choices, hairstyles, and facial movements. But in the Internet generation, I wonder if there is a different image candidates need to worry about?
Below is an interesting chart on the Pew site that plots the percent of Internet users who read the news online. The green line represents the percent of users who have
ever gone online and read the news, and the red line represents the percentage of those who read the news online just yesterday. As you can see, the highest number of Internet users in the past ten years are now reading the news online as we near the end of this Presidential campaign.
If more and more people are searching for their political and social updates on the Internet, it would make sense to have handsome, vibrant and appealing resources available to them, and the candidates' website is one good place to start. Tagging on my post below, I wonder what effect this will have on web-savvy Democrat and PC-challenged Republican?
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