Jeff Jarvis, from the Buzz Machine blog, will be a guest on Sky.Com News tonight at 7.30pm. He offers his take on why the internet has had a positive impact on the US Presidential primaries.

Click here for more details on tonight's Sky.Com News.

The problem with campaign coverage in America remains big media: meaningless coverage of the campaign as a horse race (which they often predict badly); simplistic sound bites and marketing messages overtaking any substance; the desire to goad the candidates into fighting to get a juicier narrative; the transformation of government officials into glib celebrities.

This is what big media wants and gets.

Thank goodness the web is providing some antidote to all that. The candidates have been able to speak directly with voters and in greater depth than 15-second sound bites allow. You want to know where Hillary Clinton stands on health or Iraq, you can go to her web site or her YouTube page and get your fill.

The candidates have also used the web to set the agenda for discussion, not merely waiting for reporters to decide what they want to ask.

But more important, campaigns have been able to organize and involve more voters; I'll argue that Barack Obama's clever use of Facebook and MySpace helped him get out the youth vote that propelled him to victory in Iowa and is still serving him well.

Finally, the campaigns can raise more money from more people, which some hope will reduce their reliance on big money (though as long as they have to buy commercials on big media, they'll still need millions to run).

The truncating of the primary season in America around SuperDuperTuesday means that the candidates can get out and press less flesh but voters can still get a sense of them online.

The web also allows us all to see the commercials the candidates are airing - on YouTube - which in previous campaigns we could not see unless we lived in a battleground state. Both the schedule and the web are making the election more national, which is what I think it should be.

My fear is that with the selection of the parties' nominees moving earlier and earlier - we will know at least one of the choices as soon as tonight - this leaves more time for more sniping leading to November.

An overlong campaign just got longer. And there are more ways to shoot at candidates using the web. The next nine months will take us into the next phase of the web-era election and we'll see what that brings us.