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| Politics 2.0 |
September 7, 2007 |
How social networking is recreating political discourse
By Andrew Rideout
The emergence of the blogosphere as the only medium faster than the 24-hour news cycle has resulted in political futures made and lost faster than Republican Senator George Allen can say “Macaca.” The popularity of YouTube, Facebook and other social networking services has altered the way politicians interact with the media and potential voters, and nowhere has this been more evident than in the rise of a rookie state senator from Illinois named Barack Hussein Obama.
Having gone from political nobody to genuine contender in the span of three short years, Obama is now polling a close second to Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. More importantly, perhaps, his campaign has raised more money from more individual donors than any other Democratic primary campaign in history.
The fundraising results for the second quarter of 2007 show the Obama campaign raised more than US$32.5 million. Frontrunner Hillary Clinton gathered an estimated US$27 million, while third-place John Edwards took in only US$9 million.
Political pundits are starting to point to the Obama ’08 campaign’s comprehensive Web 2.0 experience as a significant engine driving his political fortunes. While having a Web site is definitely old hat (even Bob Dole had one), the Obama campaign has done more with social media than any other campaign, and the results are starting to show where it matters: the bank balance. In political terms, Obama’s campaign offers proof that Web 2.0 could be the new bag man: of the US$32.5 million raised, US$10.3 million came from online donors.
Putting the voter online
This success doesn’t come by accident; Obama’s online organizing coordinator is none other than Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. With such an experienced set of hands on the social-media reigns, BarackObama.com has been able to open itself up to the public like no other political experience. This is  most on display in the my.barackobama.com network—a sort of political Facebook that offers users an enhanced level of expression to help personalize the Obama campaign.
You can get yourself a blog hosted on the my.barackobama.com network that replaces the “my” with your name (i.e. andrewrideout.barackobama.com) and customize it with your own set of friends, groups, photos and event listings. And beyond merely donating to the campaign yourself, you can create a personalized donation page, complete with its own fundraising thermometer which updates in real time. Private messaging is also available over the my.barackobama.com network and you can use your preferred social networking tool (Facebook, YouTube, Partybuilder, Eventful and Flickr) to search for anything Obama-related. The site even throws in free Obama ringtones.
And as much as savvy public personalities are chasing new media, it’s interesting how much old-media coverage has been generated by sites like Obama’s and how that coverage is valued. In fact, a great deal of newspaper ink has been devoted to the video mash-ups posted to YouTube, Facebook and my.barackobama.com.
Two examples of social-networking- as-news are the well-known “1984 Big Brother” mash-up and the “I’ve got a crush on Obama” video. The first was inspired by the Apple Big Brother advertisement from the 1984 Super Bowl and, while there are many versions of it at YouTube, the original inserts Hillary Clinton in the place of Big Brother and includes several Clinton sound bites. Once the hammer is thrown through the screen the Obama ’08 logo appears.
“I’ve got a crush on Obama” is a slightly racy video starring Amber Lee Ettinger, a blogger known as Obama Girl, singing a sexy ode to her favourite candidate. These videos were created by fans with no apparent assistance from the Obama campaign itself, and in the true spirit of viral marketing, these videos went from YouTube to CNN and Fox News all the way to the Chinese news agency Xinhua. Total development cost for the Obama campaign: zero dollars.
Act locally
Another advantage of a social media strategy is the logistical edge associated with grassroots organizations. While Obama ’08 is a national campaign, much of the online fundraising and party building takes place at a neighbourhood level. This allows campaign staffers to micro-target key political messaging and use feedback from users to gauge which issues are most significant in certain states, and even in specific electoral districts.
If you are an Obama supporter from Iowa, a key state in American elections, you are now invited to pop in to the campaign headquarters for a cup of coffee or to watch the nomination debates with other supporters. The Iowa-specific section lists more than 20 different places to watch the upcoming debates, ranging from a Greek restaurant in Boise to Bill and Janet’s house in Des Moines. And all of that is linked to MapQuest for directions. You can even request a ride if you find yourself without a vehicle. Obama’s site has also taken a cue from Howard Dean’s ill-fated 2004 run for the democratic nomination by using the Web site as a meet-up hub for like-minded constituents.
Social media has rapidly become an essential part of any marketing strategy, whether the pitch is shampoo or politics. “Obama’s success with his social network doesn’t surprise me at all,” said Nadeem Kassam, a director at Vancouver private-equity firm Zynik Capital. “People-powered content is one of the most powerful business tools we’ve seen in decades and, as we all know, business and politics draw from the same crowd.”
Zynik has assets under management in excess of $1.5 billion and Kassam believes social networking has the potential to increase that sum significantly. “Soon, you’re going to see social media become an important piece of the marketing puzzle across a variety of different industries. In the next few years you’ll be seeing social networking integrated into everything from health care and education to scientific research.”
The Canadian picture
Up here in the Great White North, our parliamentary system means an election can hang over Ottawa like Charlie Brown’s perpetual rain cloud. Under threat of a snap election, would any Canadian political party be able to harness the power of Obama-style social media in an effort to deliver our next majority government?
Canadian political parties themselves are not implementing widespread social media strategies on a national level. The technology is, however, finding a niche amongst individual politicians as a way to converse with constituents and provide feedback on breaking issues. Vancouver Centre Liberal MP Hedy Fry was among the first Canadian politicians to implement a targetted Internet strategy. “Back in the 2000 election, I hired a dedicated Internet staff member,” Fry said, “and every day we would sit down for an hour or so and discuss the feedback coming from the Web site.” Fry’s Hedz Sez blog has been running for two years and her overall Internet efforts have increased with each election.
“The Internet is something I’m very passionate about. As a representative of a riding with such a large population, it’s impossible to knock on every door. [Social media] encourages civic participation and can act as a mutually educative tool.”
Fry is also interested in how social networking could be utilized by a governing party to gather feedback for implementing national policy. “[This] would be a two-way street: it would be most effective with the government leading and asking the opinions of the public, then looking at those opinions spread out over a national level.
“The government can’t be afraid to ask questions of the public. I think it will help us get the sense of how to implement regionally sensitive programs. Social media can help you better understand people’s opinions across what is a very large country. “I would like to see this help change the institutions of government.”
SIDEBARS
Definitions
Web 2.0: The second iteration of the Web experience, Web 2.0 is characterized by a level of sophistication and interaction absent in the Web’s early days. Social media is a Web 2.0 phenomenon.
Social media: Opinions vary, but well-known blogger and ex-Microsoft exec Robert Scoble defines these simply as Internet destinations that interact with users in some way. That means social media include blogs, photo and video sharing sites, and networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
RSS: Really Simple Syndication allows Web sites to syndicate (deliver) information automatically to Web users who have signed up to receive it.
Reviewing Canada’s major parties
While Canada’s major political parties all have a Web presence, the sites remain distinctly 1.0. A smattering of online video, a few press releases and the omnipresent Donate button are the real unifying features of Canada’s current political sites. Could one of Canada’s parties up the ante and successfully rebrand its Web site into a slick Web 2.0 vehicle to deliver visitors, votes and cold, hard cash?
Backbone reviews each major party’s online efforts.
www.blocquebecois.org
The Bloc offers standard press releases in RSS (syndicated) format, but otherwise there is very little interactive content that doesn’t involve you transferring money to them. It is surprising that a regional party makes no use of social media platforms. Unified by a language and confined within the borders of one province, a social media experiment would be easy to implement and could become a visible presence on the Facebook walls of francophone youth.
www.greenparty.ca
Finally. The word blog really does exist on the front page of a Canadian political party’s Web site. While the Green Party of Canada offers the standard political fare, it also includes a blog written by leader Elizabeth May as well as an impressive cross-section of blog posts written by dozens of different authors. The blogs are divided into top blogs and most-read posts, and the standard RSS feeds are available. The site also invites people to host a screening of An Inconvenient Truth.
Tagging would be a very welcome addition to this blog network and a tag cloud on the blog splash page would be a big asset in delivering targeted content quickly. The concept of tagging revolves around embedded keywords in blog posts that help explain the content of the post quickly. For instance, all of the posts about global warming could be organized into one section and all of the posts about Afghanistan in another. A tag cloud is a cluster of words used to display a selection of tags by increasing the size of certain words to reflect the amount of posts pertaining to that word. For instance, the more tags there are about global warming, the larger the word global warming appears in the cloud.
But with that said, this small party is taking giant steps in the world of social networking.
www.conservative.ca
Conservative.ca offers more features than some, but the bulk of the site seems very reactionary and focused not on features but on mudslinging. After a few minutes on this site, you begin to see the same keywords repeated—mostly “getting things done” and “Stephane Dion is not a leader.” There are some attack ad videos ready to be clicked, and Donate is top of the list in the Conservative.ca Action Centre.
Despite a large number of options and links available on the main page, there are no social media tools or blogs, only the typical selection of RSS feeds and podcasts. Attempts to send a Conservative e-card to myself through the Web site were unsuccessful. There are a few too many “candid” pictures of Stephen Harper taking his kids to hockey practice and not enough ways to rally fellow conservatives without donating money, buying Conservative Party T-shirts or watching videos about Stephane Dion. The site is cold and uninspiring and the words “Stephane Dion” are likely used more often than “Stephen Harper.”
www.liberal.ca
After a recent redesign, liberal.ca looks decent and presents a solid aggregation of content. The most impressive part of the Liberal Web site is how well the “find your riding” search works: not only are you given a picture of the local candidate and contact information for the local riding association, you also see dates for important fundraisers and party events happening in the area. You will also find some podcasts and the standard online video offering.
Unfortunately, liberal.ca drops the ball where Obama ’08 drives straight for the hoop. There is not one blog on the Web site, no links to any social media sites and no way to interact with like-minded local Liberals, aside from pre-organized functions. Granted, Stephane Dion has done a Facebook Q&A session that was broadcast on the site. However the overall level of interactivity is low and the focus is mostly on listening to somebody talk about how great Stephane Dion is and how much of a jerk Stephen Harper can be.
www.ndp.ca
The New Democrats definitely take the award for most appealing site in terms of aesthetics, with a nice colour scheme and a simple layout. The content is organized into fewer categories than the other Web sites, and the site has a good selection of tools to make your blog look like an NDP blog. There is also some code available to put an NDP banner on your site. However, you can’t actually get a blog at the site and there is nothing connecting these NDP-branded blogs together. Also, these options should be right out on the main page, not buried at the bottom of the Multimedia section.
You would think that offering blogging skins and banner ads would indicate the NDP is ready to use social media to drive traffic and build excitement among its traditionally younger constituents. Unfortunately, there is no mention of MySpace, YouTube or Facebook, not even in the NDP youth section. There are no blogs on the site and offering desktop wallpaper may not win anyone an election.
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