By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — The social media are changing the political playing field, and their impact has never been more evident in Arkansas than in recent weeks.

Twitter, Facebook and blogging have allowed anyone with a computer to be part of the political landscape, to immediately respond to events and to throw out facts, conjecture, gossip and innuendo.

For politicians, it has allowed them to communicate quicker with their supporters, to release information on their time, not that of the traditional media, and to stay relevant during changing political winds.

“Part of what we’re seeing is the whole speed with which opinions, rumors, fact or faction is shared,” said Russell Shain, dean of the college of communications at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.

“The accessibility and speed of the new communication is a blessing in many ways, but in some ways it could be a curse,” Shain said.

David Kinkade, creator of the Arkansas Project blog, which reports on politics and other issues, said the new media has made everyone a player. Simply sign on to Twitter or Facebook, or start writing a blog, and you can be a part of the news, he said.

“Often it can be very chaotic, but also I think it can be very constructive,” Kinkade said. “It gets a lot of information out there and it gets people very engaged.”

When U.S. Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Little Rock, announced on Jan. 15 that he would not seek re-election, the political rumor mill shifted into high gear, churned by the immediacy of the social media.

Within minutes of Snyder’s announcement, lists of potential Democrats who might be interested in 2nd District seat began popping up.

Soon, the Internet was atwitter with reports that U.S. Rep. John Boozman, R-Rogers, might run against incumbent U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln.

Then last week 1st District Congressman Marion Berry, D-Gillett, announced he wouldn’t seek re-election, and blogs and tweets again speculated on who might run for his seat. One blogger had a list that included former 2nd District Congressman Tommy Robinson, who now lives in eastern Arkansas.

Tweets and blogs also began suggesting Lincoln was thinking about dropping out because of low poll numbers. Her spokesman was then forced to deny the rumors.

When Lincoln’s campaign sent out a news release urging the media to check her Twitter page the following day, speculation again ramped up. Her tweet turned out to be a quarterly fundraising report.

State Sen. Gilbert Baker, R-Conway, last week issued a press release saying there was no truth to a blog-fed rumor that he was withdrawing his candidacy for the U.S. Senate and entering the 2nd District congressional race.

Little-known Little Rock businessman Tom Cox, one of nine announced Republican candidates for Lincoln’s seat, issued a news release saying he was still in the U.S. Senate race in response to new media chatter that Boozman’s entry into the race would greatly reduce the field.

When House Speaker Robbie Wills, D-Conway, refused to answer questions after announcing his candidacy for Congress last week, a local conservative blogger’s tweet of the slight was quickly picked up by the Republican National Committee, which issued a news release critical of Wills and his voting record while in the state House.

“The whole speed of the Internet … there’s so much churn in the ideas, opinions and things going on in the marketplace that it’s sometimes hard to pull out what we think is a reasonable idea, or, heaven forbid, the truth,” Shain said.

Kinkade, who was campaign spokesman for Republican Asa Hutchinson’s failed bid for governor in 2006, said the popularity of the social media has grown exponentially in the past five years and has become a way for anyone and everyone to be involved in the political process.

“What we have seen since … has been a generational leap in the maturity of these communication tools in Arkansas,” he said.

“It’s a faster medium to get your message out to more people and it’s a targeted audience,” added Gabe Holmstrom, who worked on Berry’s re-election campaign in 2006 and now is a senior advisor to the Democratic Party of Arkansas after a stint as spokesman for Attorney General Dustin McDaniel.

Both said blogging and MySpace, a forerunner of Facebook, were just becoming popular during the 2006 elections and had some effect on those campaigns, but nothing like the social media have today.

“One of the most interesting things that is happening now is the way the blogs, new voices on twitter and Facebook are used to communicate with other people,” Kinkade said. “And, they are tools that are being used to vet candidates very seriously and in a public way.”

Traditionally, it was up to the political parties and the news media to sift through the records of a candidate looking for any skeletons. Now, because of Internet and on-line newspaper and television archives, bloggers are finding information about candidates, often before the daily newspapers can, he said.

“Now all of a sudden, it’s just a free for all, in which the candidate’s record, statements and activities are being picked over in such a degree that it is a completely new dynamic for candidates in Arkansas,” he said.

The social media also allow candidates to communicate directly with their supporters, and offer candidates who might not feel they’re getting enough media attention to generate their own publicity.

“It allows them to communicate with their supporters and to the press, who might not be following them as closely,” Holmstrom said. “It’s creating a conversation.”

But Kinkade said while the social media have changed the ways campaigns communicate with reporters, they have not completely changed all of the rules of campaigning.

“They’re not going to be able to use those tools to sidestep the need for aggressive fundraising,” he said. “There’s a lot of traditional campaign activities that are still going to matter and they will still matter a lot. Anyone who thinks that social media is just going to make up for that is probably very mistaken.”