How is the internet changing politics?

There is an interesting discussion thread on Daily Kos about how the internet is changing American politics. Here is an excerpt from Marcos followed by my comment, then followed by an excerpt from a comment by Dallas Doc:

New school progressives are also less tolerant of ideological orthodoxy. We don't fall in line with the "acceptable" liberal position, frankly, because we're not trained to fall in line. We are more likely to be educated in an economy that values "proactiveness" and "self-initiative" and "problem solving" over blindly following the orders of our boss. We have the tools to research any and every issue in a way inconcievable even 10 years ago. We no longer need to rely on our "leaders" or the media to tell us what the "right" position on any one issue might be.

My comment in reply is:

You are perfectly correct. This is, however, an extremely individualistic postition, but politics rewards groups. The leaders are those who represent groups who agree on the goals they are working towards.

Groups operate to achieve shared goals. How do you take the highly individualistic process you describe and turn it into a set of shared goals that large groups can work to achieve?

Traditionally that has been the job of leaders and congresses. The legislative process takes individual positions and runs them through the political process to create mostly mutually agreed upon shared goals for groups. The groups then use those shared goals to attract individual members.

It was easier for leaders and potential leaders when the only source of information for group members was those leaders or potential leaders. Creating goals from the diverse data available on the internet would seem to me to require policy institutes and strong polling organizations, with trusted public figures to present the results. It would probably be better if the trusted public figures were not also attempting to be activist leaders.

The generational problem seems to me to be the nature of the connection between the members of the groups, the leaders, the information sources and the shared goals they are all working to achieve. Leaders who acknowledge and accept and reflect the new sources of information the followers have available will be more successful than those who don't appear to accept those sources.

Otherwise the problem of building effective political groups around shared goals remains much the same.

Then Dallas Doc offers some ideas on what changes are necessary:

Consensus rather than hierarchy; persuasion rather than loyalty; attraction rather than membership are likely to be the main features of a new politics. Political figures who can engage and persuade voters, who can demonstrate personal integrity and attractive values, who are genuine and honest, will be successful in this new politics.

The new leaders are going to have to be good at these skills.