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The Internet and the Race for President
By Alex Hammer
Many feel that Howard Dean’s Presidential campaign of 2004 served as a kind of “flash point” or “tipping point” in regards to a paradigm shift or disruptive phenomena dramatizing the importance of the Internet in political campaigns. With Dean’s astounding online fundraising and volunteer success, no longer could the potential of the medium be ignored, nor delegated to secondary importance.
Instead, the Internet needed to be pumped, primed, and respected if not honored.
But as Dean’s campaign also demonstrated, Internet success does not necessarily translate into political success. The Internet is a tool, albeit a powerful one, that must be well integrated into an otherwise viable campaign.
Currently, the Presidential candidates are having “conversations” with us online, although too many of these conversations remain one-sided candidate message deliveries.
But citizens are also taking advantage, if not control, of the online political tools. The blogosphere is a realm that no serious candidate can ignore, with top bloggers being courted almost at times as royalty. The “1984” Hillary video, a remake of Apple’s famous commercial, demonstrated the upsetting of the apple cart capability that ordinary citizens can, will and now have played within major political elections.
YouTube has emerged as one dominant message medium both for candidates and others to inform and influence political opinion. Politics 2.0 recently published a complete ranking of the top YouTube viewed 2008 Presidential candidate videos, and it is fascinating to see some of the names and videos that have emerged on the list.
Beyond YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Digg and other major sites have become avenues for candidates to not only make “friends” but reach out and hopefully engage meaningfully with expanded audiences.
But the standards are still not clear.
Joe Anthony, a paralegal who developed an Obama MySpace page with a leading and staggering close to 160,000 friends, “lost” the page to the Obama camp in a national controversy. Anthony spoke to Politics 2.0 in depth in regard to this mess. Read it HERE.
Two major online Presidential debates are already scheduled. Imagine that. One is a combination between YouTube and CNN, while the other, hosted by leading media figure Charlie Rose, is a joint production from Yahoo! Huffington Post and Slate.
These are exciting days in the world of Presidential politics. With the rules still evolving, both mistakes and successes are occurring.
Which Presidential candidates do you feel are ahead and behind on the Internet curve, and why?
The world is waiting to see.
Alex Hammer is a businessman who publishes the blog Politics 2.0. He ran as an independent candidate for governor of Maine.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.