We’ve joined the Carnegie team! Find out more.
Alert Close close
Intelligence
Obama Campaign Far Ahead in Use of the Internet

Intelligence

Obama Campaign Far Ahead in Use of the Internet

Jun 14, 2008By Michael Stoner

Obama’s campaign has been widely lauded for its brilliant use of the Internet and social networking. And it’s one reason he has such strong generational appeal.

Here’s just one take, by Shelly Palmer, and another by Noam Cohen at the New York Times, dubbing the campaign “The Wiki-Way to the Nomination”.

Cohen observes,

But at the same time, Mr. Obama’s notion of persistent improvement, both of himself and of his country, reflects something newer the collaborative, decentralized principles behind Net projects like Wikipedia and the “free and open-source software” movement. The qualities he cited to Time to describe his campaign “openness and transparency and participation” were ones he said “merged perfectly” with the Internet. And they may well be the qualities that make him the first real “wiki-candidate.”

In “The Amazing Money Machine,” Joshua Green notes that the Obama campaign raised $55 million in February, without the candidate having to host one fundraiser. Contrast this to John McCain’s foray to Denver in May. McCain was forced into a tricky dance; while President Bush raised money for him, McCain had to avoid being seen in public with him to avoid too much identification with his unpopular policies, not to mention his person.

Green’s article explores how Obama has managed to take advantage of three major changes since the 2004 election when Howard Dean’s campaign pioneered web-based communications and fundrasing for an upstart candidate. What’s amazing about the Obama campaign is this:

What’s intriguing to Democrats and worrisome to Republicans is how someone lacking these deep connections to traditional sources of wealth could raise so much money so quickly. How did he do it? The answer is that he built a fund-raising machine quite unlike anything seen before in national politics. Obama’s machine attracts large and small donors alike, those who want to give money and those who want to raise it, veteran activists and first-time contributors, andespeciallyanyone who is wired to anything: computer, cell phone, PDA.

Green shows how many in Silicon Valley came to support Obama. Engineers, venture capitalists, and others in the Valley are used to smart, young entrepreneurs starting companies that quickly dominate a niche [think Google, begun by two Stanford students]. To them, Obama’s age or lack of experience in Washington wasn’t a put off; they were attracted by his charisma and brains and out their experience and technology to work for him.

Opportunities for engagement
The Obama Campaign’s website offers a huge number of opportunities for engagement. Create your own site; develop a network; join a Facebook group. If you visit the site, you can note all the social networking sites where the campaign has a presence, and then check out Obama’s presence on some of them.

In his New York Times article, Cohen observes,

Yochai Benkler, a Harvard law professor whose book “The Wealth of Networks” is a manifesto for online collaboration, points out a crucial difference between Mr. Obama’s approach to attracting supporters and that of his chief rivals. “On the McCain and Clinton Web sites, there is a transactional screen,” Mr. Benkler said. “It is just about the money. Donate, then we can build the relationship. In Obama’s it’s inverted: build the relationship and then donate.”

Also, note all the video that appears on Obama’s site. Lots of it. Speeches, policy comments, from lots of venues, on lots of issues. From the candidate (who looks good on TV) and from ordinary people. There’s also an Obama channel on Youtube; on 14 June, there were 1,103 videos posted, with 51,382,633 views. The McCain channel, in contrast, had 207 videos with 3,753,163 views.

Squelching the rumors
As Obama gained more attention in the primary, rumors began to circulate on the Net via emails and in right wing blogs; you may have heard about some of them: Obama is a Muslim; Michelle Obama has called white people “whitey,” and others. The media has reported that the Obama campaign was concerned that these, and even worse rumors, would form the basis for attacks against their candidate a la the Swift Boat Veterans attacks against John Kerry in the 2004 campaign.

So this week, Obama launched Fight the Smears, a site that is devoted to addressing the rumors and lies about the candidate. If you Googled the phrase “barack obama is a muslim” on Friday, the first two links were from Snopes.com and urbanlegends.about.com—both sites that debunk rumors. [A sponsored link by Human Events offers an anti-Obama tract.] By Saturday, the first links for that phrase were to news reports about the Fight the Smear site.

As media outlets and members of the Obama campaign begin to link to Fight the Smear, I’ll wager that soon the first several pages of links that show up for these rumors will lead to the campaign’s own site. You’ll still be able to find the anti-Obama sites, but unless they pay for links, they’ll be buried in the Google results.


  • Michael Stoner Co-Founder and Co-Owner Was I born a skeptic or did I become one as I watched the hypestorm gather during the dotcom years, recede, and congeal once more as we come to terms with our online, social, mobile world? Whatever. I'm not much interested in cutting edge but what actually works for real people in the real world. Does that make me a bad person?