Evaluate how new media has revitalised democratic participation in the 2008 US presidential elections.

On November 4th, 2008 Barack Obama was named the 44th president of America, winning 52 percent of the nation’s vote and earning hard-fought victories in several republican and swing states. The election results crowned a staggering two-year climb which began for Obama as a relative newcomer to national politics, and culminated in the candidate becoming the first African-American to win the White House – a remarkable milestone in American history. But Obama’s improbable success owes much to his revolutionary campaign, which harnessed the power of the internet to encourage fundraising, enable self-promotion, and attract a new voting demographic.

According to technology journalist Claire Cain Miller in ‘The New York Times’, the democratic campaign has changed politics forever. “The election has echoed that of John F. Kennedy in Obama’s use of a new medium that will forever change politics. For Mr. Kennedy, it was television. For Mr. Obama, it is the Internet… by using interactive Web 2.0 tools, his team changed the way politicians organize supporters, defend against attacks and communicate with constituents.” Ironically, it was Obama’s rival John McCain who first recognised the web’s potential in a presidential election, experimenting with targeted banner ads during his republican primary campaign against George Bush in 1999. Eight years later it was Obama who finally exploited the full potential of the internet, his online impact dwarfing that of his opponents and proving key to his triumph.

The emphasis on internet organising began during the democratic primary campaigns, when Obama acquired the services of Joe Rospars, a seasoned online political promoter, and hired Face book co-founder Chris Hughes to build his own social-networking site, myBarackObama.com – a move that proved dividends for the candidate. By the end of the campaign, Obama had raised a record- breaking $600 million in contributions from more than three million people, many of whom donated via the website. MyBarackObama.com hosted two million profiles, and over half a million blog posts. Research by Igor Beuker and Paul van Veenendaal of viralblog.com revealed that thirty-five thousand volunteer groups were created, and two-hundred thousand offline events planned in support of Obama’s cause.

Political blogger Richard Mcmanus said, “We've written a lot about how Barack Obama's Internet strategy was a significant reason for his success last year - first in the democratic nomination, then the Presidential election. The Obama campaign made masterful use of social media and revolutionalised election campaigning.” The internet developed from being a medium for the politically involved to a platform in which millions of American citizens could participate, be it through volunteering, offering support, or donating funds.

Obama raised money through thousands of small, regular, online donations and then used the funds to exploit other, more conventional forms of media, such as television and phone calls. According to TNS Media Intelligence, Obama spent $293 million on television adverts, saturating the cable markets in targeted states. In comparison, McCain spent just $132 million. In addition, the democrat team arranged phone banking events, urging a million volunteers to make phone calls reminding the nation to go and vote. Author and blogging activist Kurt Cagle suggested that the sheer volume of low-value donations enabled Obama to canvass effectively.

“Ultimately, the Obama campaign won the most important election - the money game. Obama and his campaign manager, David Plouffe, settled on the risky strategy of not accepting government financing, but were able to parlay this into a major financial network of small and intermediate sized donors giving anywhere from $5 to the legal maximum of $2300 - made primarily through the Internet.” There are many advantages of Internet fund raising. It's simple, cheap and far less intimidating than giving a large amount. In fact, the democrat campaign set up a system by which the credit cards of donors were billed automatically in budget-friendly monthly amounts.

In September 2008, the democrat’s biggest single month of fundraising, Obama amassed over fifty percent of his record-breaking haul ($100 million of the monthly total of $150 million) from online donations. In ‘The Washington Post’ political editor Jose Antonio Vargas underlined the impact that online fundraising had on the campaign. “Three million donors made a total of six million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those six million donations, ninety-five percent were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once… undoubtedly, the bulk of the more than $600 million that Obama raised throughout the campaign was through the internet.”

But Obama was also aware of an untapped market of huge promise – the youth population. In addition to reaching out to primary voters with his social-networking tool, Obama’s team contacted young Americans through text messaging and the Obama ’08 iPhone, an application that facilitated owners to rally friends and contacts through the Apple devices. They even ran in-game advertising on Xbox games such as ‘Burnout 3’ across 10 battleground states. The campaign also embraced mainstream social-networking sites such as Twitter, My Space and Face book, where Obama currently has four million ‘friends’.















(Figure 1, Ruffini, P, 2008. Levels of engagement with the Obama campaign.)

This chart by former republican ‘e-campaigner’ Patrick Ruffini shows the relative importance of various online media tools to the democratic election process. The graph shows that five million people interacted via social-networking while thirteen million engaged through email. The democrats mobilised support through ‘data mining’ and email lists. This involved identifying potential voters in every region across the country, using technology which predicts political preferences depending on factors such as car ownership and magazine subscriptions. Volunteers would then canvass the prospective ally, focusing on issues that the individual was most likely to be concerned about.

Obama took advantage of video-sharing giant You Tube for free advertising, and internet stunts such as ‘Obama girl’, a viral advert that helped to increase the candidate’s profile. The move was dubbed “more effective that television adverts” by political scientist Michael Cornfield. In ‘Politics moving online: campaigning and the internet.’ Cornfield argues that “the videos had more impact because viewers chose to watch them, or received them from a friend instead of having their television shows interrupted.” The official material that the democrats created for You Tube was watched for a total of fourteen million hours worldwide. Cornfield suggests that “to buy the same amount of time on broadcast TV would cost $47 million… a staggering difference.”

Internet video clips have broken the mainstream, as a way to convey political messages and to view clips of candidates streamed from news sources and entertainment shows. For example a recent clip of Obama discussing his desire to ‘spread the wealth’ on a radio show was viewed over two million times on You Tube.

The web has also enabled democrat supporters to fight rumours, disproving Obama’s alleged connections with terrorists. This was the case when citizens used the internet to check facts, by watching Obama’s race speech on You Tube after Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s controversial references to ethnic issues kept surfacing. Referring to Wright’s offending sermons about America, Obama says, “Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely.” To date, nearly seven million people have watched the speech online.
Not content with just Face book and Twitter, the Obama campaign linked up with My Space, sharing content with the site and placing a fundraising widget on the web page. In addition, My Space announced the creation of the ‘Impact Channel’, which focused specifically on the presidential race, and resulted in Obama’s page receiving greater interest.

(Figure 3, Fertik, M. 2008. Is Obama the first Internet president?)

A study conducted by Michael Fertik, CEO and blogger of http://www.reputationdefender.com/, reveals the extent of Obama’s control over online tools. The graph shows that in just over ten months, Obama’s My Space page rocketed from under one-hundred thousand members to over seven times that amount, with a huge increase as the election date neared. In comparison republican candidate McCain only managed around one-hundred and sixty thousand members, a figure which remained consistent throughout his campaign. The surge in Obama’s figures accounts for the aggressive campaigning on behalf of his team to attract last-minute support. But whereas Obama reached out to users of the internet in order to communicate and mobilize volunteers, McCain’s campaign used activist blogs which channeled anti-Obama attacks into the mainstream media.

Many pro-republican bloggers cross-posted content on several web sites to raise the profile of key ‘anti-democrat’ stories on Google searches and video links. In ‘Election campaigning on the WWW in the USA’ Rachel Gibson suggests that despite isolation from the rest of the blogosphere, ‘No-bama’ blogs “repeatedly focused on the extent of Obama’s association with alleged domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, and the community group ACORN. These posts surface in search engine results about Obama, and give the impression of widespread outrage, which can frame news coverage.”

With evidence of both sides of the political spectrum battling to gain political ascendancy online, it seems as if the internet has changed the outlook of national politics. Since Obama’s success at the polls, sites like Drudge Report have gained significant influence. In October 2008, the website’s recorded monthly traffic was six times that of four years previously. Simply by linking to a story, The Drudge Report force the mainstream media to pay attention, for fear of looking foolish and not covering a story seen online by thirty million people. In addition, mainstream news websites such as CNN.com and Foxnews.com have overtaken their television counterparts for news absorption. On Election Day, CNN reported twenty-seven million visitors to their site in just twenty-four hours.

Political blogs such as http://www.dailykos.com/ have gained credibility, while Dan Rather’s weekly blog on http://www.cbs.com/ has become a legitimate voice of authority in politics. The election has also enabled niche, non-partisan sites to reach a wider audience. The realclearpolitics.com poll average map has been routinely source-referenced by broadcasting networks and news outlets. Not only has this changed the way in which journalists report on raw voting data and outlying poll results, it has also increased the understanding of political variations for the mainstream audience. Before 2004, social media hardly existed, but during the 2008 election campaign the democrat campaign used networking sites aggressively to communicate with America. According to Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble, “the internet as an election tool will continue to thrive and grow, this is just the beginning.”

The use of the web throughout the American presidential race has revealed the good, creative, and sometimes ugly, side of national politics. The anti-Obama propaganda and terrorism rumours circulated on forums and blogs are vastly outweighed by the positive aspects of the web’s influence upon the election. The online innovations of Obama’s campaign team pushed politics into the mainstream, attracting record-breaking numbers of support and donations, and devising new and ground-breaking ways to gain voters. The Obama campaign utilized the web to help raise record-breaking amounts of funds, single-handedly destroying the concept of public financing, and setting a precedent for forthcoming presidential elections. Furthermore, the democrats used the internet to raise awareness and attract support, effectively rallying and organising volunteers, thus significantly changing the future of political strategy.

There is no doubt that the internet played a huge part in Obama’s presidential success, and as a strategy will evolve into perhaps the most powerful weapon a candidate has in their quest to organize, rally, raise funds, and ultimately win the presidency. The editor in chief of the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington, contends that without new media many of us may not have even heard of Barack Obama. “Were it not for the internet, Barack Obama would not be president. Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee…it enabled one of the biggest turning points in modern history. God bless the internet.”