If you haven't noticed, the political "election season" has creeped up on everybody a bit early this time around. Within the past several years, more people have turned off their TV's and have moved their learning about the various candidates online. The larger online user generated sites such as Myspace, Youtube, and simple blog platforms such as wordpress have enabled the large numbers of people in the world to have far reaching power that was just a few years ago, only available to the Mass media.

But the real question is will individual bloggers, fan generated video mashes, or even grassroots inspired Barack Obama T-shirtswill sway voters enough that big media companies will be threatened, or even try their own undercover attempts at manipulating the elections to suit their own agenda. Previous attempts at commercializing and privatizing various aspects of world news along with the ease of use actually created the need and widespread use of the internet for political news.

I for one am slowly seeing the influx of ads on the videos I try to watch online, complete pages I have to skip past just to get to the news, and even signups and giving away of personal information just to read the daily news stories. If this is Big media's way of joining the rest of us with the spreading of knowledge here on the internet, they've got alot to learn, but until then, I'll be happy knowing how easy it is to spot a probably biased source of news... just look for the ads on the site.

In the meantime, try reading myspace blogs, watching Barack Obama's viral youtube videos, or even looking at the daily digg news, and you'll probably be fine.