Election 08 Special Coverage: The Internet elected Obama

by Steve Ragan - Nov 8 2008, 20:54

The Web 2.0 Summit ended Friday with a central theme of the Internet and politics. Some of the discussions and talks each centralized a single theme for the 2008 election; the use of the Internet will now become a second nature to political campaigns. If you want an example, look at what both Barack Obama and John McCain’s camps did during the race to the White House.

“If not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be President or even the democratic nominee,” claimed Arianna Huffington, of the liberal Huffington Post Web site. Arianna, who made these comments during a roundtable on the final day of the Web 2.0 Summit, has a very good point.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom chimed in with an anecdote that backed his opinion that some politicians are behind the times when it comes to using the Internet.

“Last year I ran for re-election and looked out at this big rally, and said to someone 'Who are these people' and was told 'Those are your friends on Facebook.' And I said, 'What's that?’ Now, he loves Facebook, “I'm obsessed with Facebook; it's an extraordinary tool.”

"The new possibilities on the Web have revolutionized almost every aspect of running for president. And the electrifying redemption of America's revolutionary declaration that all human beings are created equal would not have been possible without the additional empowerment of individuals to use knowledge as a source of power," said ex-Vice President Al Gore during his Web 2.0 Summit address.

Both parties, Republican and Democrat, during the Primary season and post nomination, used the Web to spread their message and push agendas. Party supporters took their love and loyalty to new heights by posting to blogs and forums urging others to see their candidates’ point of view.

The Internet has always played a role in how people communicate and how news or opinion spreads. Anyone who has watched the explosion from the early days of BBS and VAX systems, to the rise and fall of AOL, the DOT-COM bubble burst, and now social media and Web 2.0, can tell you; nothing escaped the attention of the masses online.

The link between politics and technology gained attention in the 90’s when political pundits created homepages dedicated to one candidate over another. In the 2000 election, the Internet offered instant news and debate, coverage that truly was round-the-clock, and again in 2004, where Presidential Democratic Nominee John Kerry could not escape the “flip-flop” charges on policy and opinion.

However, it was in 2008, when the Internet played a large role in helping the candidates spread their agenda. One Presidential hopeful, Ron Paul, arguably had the largest Internet following, outside of Obama himself, of any other 2008 candidate.

Ron Paul was running on the GOP ticket, and while he eventually lost to John McCain, his supporters used the Internet to push his ideals and thoughts and share their own views. They used the Internet to coordinate meetings and appearances at rallies, and televised debates.

Yet, with all of the Internet support, what the media calls a “grass roots” movement, Ron Paul never got the votes. This shows that the Internet does not guarantee victory; for some, it can only offer a new base of operations.

So what was different between how Obama or McCain used the internet, and how Ron Paul used the Internet? On a personal level, there is definitely a difference in how the candidate’s camps themselves used the Web. However, the major difference was in how their supporters utilized it.

Ron Paul used the Internet to post information and thoughts, to collect donations and to present his side. Ron Paul supporters themselves, most with a strong sense technical savvy, took this and ran with it.

McCain and Obama on the other hand, created an entire social media platform, and pushed information, tools, and ideals to the Internet that catered to the masses both on and offline. Their respective websites quickly became portals to an entire separate political campaign, one where the voters campaigned for them.

Portals like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube, along with thousands of personal sites and forums, and even smaller sites like meetup.com, each played a role in how the race was to be won.

“Over the past 21 months, millions of individuals have used My.BarackObama to organize their local communities on behalf of Barack Obama. The scale and size of this community and its work is unprecedented. Individuals in all 50 states have created more than 35,000 local organizing groups, hosted over 200,000 events, and made millions upon millions of calls to neighbors about this campaign,” wrote Chris Hughes on his BarackObama.com blog.”

“What has made My.BarackObama unique hasn't been the technology itself, but the people who used the online tools to coordinate offline action.”

Even now, the Obama portal is alive and active, encouraging the Internet to take part and help. Whereas the McCain portal is mostly inactive, with no new information, no discussion or interactive commentary; which is a stark contrast to what it was before Election Day. Yet, McCain supporters are still vocal, only in other areas of the Web.

The Internet has also changed the way the election was covered. On YouTube there were over 14.5 million hours of coverage available, mostly for Obama’s campaign, which pushed opinions and his agenda. Obama wasn’t alone, because McCain and his supporters used YouTube in the exact same manner.

“…to buy that time, you're interrupting people watching football games and soap operas," said Democratic political consultant Joe Trippi, “…this is stuff people wanted to watch.”

The press expanded how they covered the election as well by using the Internet. CNN, for example, uses Facebook to engage users on political discussions. CNN also takes advantage of the everyday citizen, and created a place for them to report news called iReport.

Citizen journalism from iReport took a hit when someone reported false news about Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Yet, despite that, the political coverage on iReport earned equal airtime with normal journalism, thanks in part to on air coverage from CNN anchors.

The Internet is a unique place. If you can dream it up, it’s already online. If it isn’t, then you have the ability to place it there. Politics will use this same method to push forward in the coming years, and you will see the Internet become as common place as postcards and telephone calls.

We already have proof, the Internet elected our new President.

Around the Web