How Twenty Something Year Olds, Facebook, Myspace, etc. are Changing the Face of Politics

July 7, 2008

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The 2008 Election is seeing something that no other Presidential race thus far has been privy too - a massive influx of the “youth vote” and the tool they are using to get involved. The internet. It has been well documented that throughout the Democratic the “Millennials” turned out to vote in numbers up until now, no one could have imagined, and the key to a lot of this “involvement” has been the internet - which has transformed from just a way to instant message your friends or check an e-mail, to a vital networking and grassroots mobilization platform.

There are those who argue against the importance of the internet in regards to it’s impact on politics (Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Mark Penn one said Obama supporters “look like facebook”), however Barack Obama saw something worthwhile and brought in one of the industries best to get his “online campaign” in place - and boy did it pay off:

“Mr. Hughes, 24, was one of four founders of Facebook. In early 2007, he left the company to work in Chicago on Senator Obama’s new-media campaign. Leaving behind his company at such a critical time would appear to require some cognitive dissonance: political campaigns, after all, are built on handshakes and persuasion, not computer servers, and Mr. Hughes has watched, sometimes ruefully, as Facebook has marketed new products that he helped develop.”

Initially some of those closest to Obama were a little skeptical about throwing so much behind a “social media” campaign via the internet, however those individuals were quickly convinced that not only was this the right move, but they may just have hit a political gold mine - that up until now had been completely untapped:

“The campaign’s new-media strategy, inspired by popular social networks like MySpace and Facebook, has revolutionized the use of the Web as a political tool, helping the candidate raise more than two million donations of less than $200 each and swiftly mobilize hundreds of thousands of supporters before various primaries.

The centerpiece of it all is My.BarackObama.com, where supporters can join local groups, create events, sign up for updates and set up personal fund-raising pages. If we did not have online organizing tools, it would be much harder to be where we are now,” Mr. Hughes said.

One of my fundamental beliefs from my days as a community organizer is that real change comes from the bottom up,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. And there’s no more powerful tool for grass-roots organizing than the Internet.”

Now Mr. Hughes and other campaign aides are applying the same social networking tools to try to win the general election. This time, however, they must reach beyond their base of young, Internet-savvy supporters.”

One may be asking themselves what is left? What could Obama possibly do, that he already hasn’t, to garnish even more support then he already has received courtesy of the internet? Well there are actually quite a few plans the Obama camp plans on employing - and remember this is unchartered territory so there is no blueprint per se for a candidate on how to run a successful online campaign:

“By early April, Mr. Obama’s new-media team was already planning for the election by expanding its online phone-calling technology. In mid-May, to keep volunteers busy as the primaries played out, the campaign started a nationwide voter registration drive. And in late June, after Senator Clinton bowed out of the race, the millions of people on the Obama campaign’s e-mail lists were asked to rally her supporters as well as undecided voters by hosting Unite for Change” house parties across the country. Nearly 4,000 parties were held.”

The campaign’s successful new-media strategy is already being studied as a playbook for other candidates, including the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain.

Their use of social networks will guide the way for future campaigns,” Peter Daou, Mrs. Clinton’s Internet director, said at a recent political technology conference. Mr. Daou called Mr. Obama’s online outreach amazing.”

Sitting amid a cluster of cubicles, Mr. Hughes, whose title is online organizing guru,” handles the My.BarackObama.com site, which is known within the campaign as MyBo. Other staff members maintain Mr. Obama’s presence on Facebook (where he has one million supporters), purchase online advertising, respond to text messages from curious voters, produce videos and e-mail millions of supporters.”

So as you can see there is plenty left to do and even when that is complete, there will be room for honing and perfecting the practices, I say this because as I referenced earlier, this is the first time anything like this, on this large of a playing field, has been utilized.

The key to Obama’s “social networking” online success is actually rather simple in it’s philosophy:

“As supporters started to join MyBo in early 2007, Mr. Hughes brought a growth strategy, borrowed from Facebook’s founding principles: keep it real, and keep it local. Mr. Hughes wanted Mr. Obama’s social network to mirror the off-line world the same way that Facebook seeks to, because supporters would foster more meaningful connections by attending neighborhood meetings and calling on people who were part of their daily lives. The Internet served as the connective tissue.”

But even with all this, and remarkable it most definitely is, we will have to wait until November to see if it has any dramatic event. One would not be wrong in assuming that it will, seeing as though the use of the internet in energizing and mobilizing the “youth vote” is credited in helping Obama defeat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries.

But make no mistake about it - the internet is a new player on the big stage of politics, and what we are seeing now with Obama and his utilization of the net is just the beginning of a new phenomena we will see from here on out when dealing with elections, politics, and social movements.