What is the Internet useful for in political campaigns?

The general consensus of many of the “old guard” political consultants that I have come in contact with is that the Internet is not a successful tool for driving messages. This group believes that the best way to promote a campaign’s messages is through earned media and paid advertisements on television, cable, radio or print media. Messaging is considered the top priority of campaigns and is central to the majority of their actions. Part of this disbelief regarding the Internet’s potential among “old guard” consultants certainly derives from a fear that they can’t control their message online (something that has been debated online since the Dean campaign). However, many consultants believe that, regardless of online message control, it is impossible to convince people of anything through Internet tactics.

There isn’t a political consultant in their right mind who would advocate completely ignoring the Internet. However, the Internet is not considered to be the top priority in lower budget campaigns because political consultants don’t see evidence that the Internet can convince people that their candidate/cause is better than their opponent’s.

The real question boils down to this: What kind of medium is the Internet? Is it a reach medium? Or is it a reinforcement medium?

To clarify, I consider a reach medium to be one where a message distributed on the medium reaches and is consumed by a population of people. Thus, if the message is effective and the consumer is receptive, the message will impact the person’s opinion on the matter at hand. Television and the radio are the best examples of reach mediums. They both amass large audiences and more importantly they affect the opinions and decisions made by those consuming them.

Whereas, a reinforcement medium is one where people explicitly seek out opinions similar to their own and through consumption strengthen those opinions. Niche publications and ideologically affiliated publications are the best example of reinforcement media. There is certainly an argument to be made that certain television channels and radio stations are reinforcement media. However, as a whole I view media to fall on a spectrum falling somewhere in between a pure reach medium and a pure reinforcement medium.

“Old guard” political consultants would argue that based on people’s online habits, they use the Internet to reinforce preexisting opinions, rather than seeking out information from both sides of an issue in order to choose a stance. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been an academic study based on whether or not the opinion of “old guard” political consultants is accurate on this issue.

As such, one of IPDI’s next major research projects will be to look into the political information consumption habits of people. I believe any research must combine survey data similar to the Pew Internet & American Life Project with a controlled experiment that specifically watches people’s consumption habits.

We are looking for input on how such a study could be conducted. My current thoughts entail giving people a news story about a topic such as the economy, global warming or foreign affairs. Following the article the research subject would be provided with a list of stories from a variety of ideologically coded news sources, which they would be required to click on at least one. The experiment would be preceded and followed by a questionnaire regarding their views on the issues at hand, in order to determine how their opinion changed over the course of the exercise.

Do you think an experiment in this style would work? Do you have any ideas to improve the study? Please email me at akellner@ipdi.org.

Caveat: If the Internet is jus t a reinforcement medium, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There is fairly substantial anecdotal evidence that the Internet is very successful at rallying the base and invoking them to take action. A recent example is the number of people who have volunteered for the Obama campaign that was initiated and often carried out entirely online.

[cross posted at http://alexkellner.com]

Last week, Nate Wilcox of the Webstrong Group spoke to one of my graduate classes. Wilcox’s lecture entitled “Confessions of an Internet Hack,” overviewed the history of politics and the Internet. While much of the lecture wasn’t news to me as an avid follower of Internet politics, Wilcox said one thing that really struck me. Throughout the lecture he “named” each of the elections, and his title for the current election cycle was perhaps the best metaphor to describe the state of the current political Internet that I have come across.

Wilcox’s metaphor began by talking about the 2006 election. He discussed the innovations in mobilizing, messaging and fundraising online that were made in the election cycle. He compared these innovations to rock and roll bands in the late 1960s and early 1970s like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Moving on to the 2008 election cycle Wilcox said that The Beatles are to 2006 as Foghat is to 2008. In other words, no one would suggest that Foghat revolutionized the music scene or was even particularly innovative, but, regardless of that fact, they sold out gigantic arenas throughout the mid to late 1970s. The metaphor carries over to Internet politics because while very little innovation has happened online this election cycle (with perhaps the exception of the use of social networks), the effects of old innovations have had made a larger splash because the people are online in larger numbers (just as people were hooked on the rock and roll scene for Foghat).

I think when you look at the oft-pointed to evidence for why 2008 is “the first real Internet election” it backs Wilcox’s characterization. Ron Paul’s money bomb, Obama and Clinton’s online fundraising prowess, Obama’s offline movement with online roots and the campaign’s webpages themselves are all just extensions of developments that occurred in the 2006 election cycle. These events were more pronounced in 2008 because they involved more people and because they received more coverage in the press. This is not necessarily because the campaigns were doing anything drastically different; rather, there are more people comfortable with “new technology”, more people connected to the Internet and the press has become increasingly more likely to cover “Internet” stories in the mainstream press.

Now, I’m not sure that this means that we actually have reached the “first Internet election.” As a child of the millennial generation, The Beatles and Foghat were both before my time, but I have 12 hours of one of the bands and 0 minutes of the other on my iPod. The Beatles are still relevant in today’s music scene, even to someone born almost 20 years after Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released, and Foghat is largely forgotten. Perhaps this is carrying Wilcox’s metaphor slightly too far, but I predict that in 20 years, 2006 will be considered far more important year for the development of online politics than 2008. Whether or not it is “the first Internet election” is going to depend on how 2010, 2012 and beyond carry out as the Internet continues to evolve.

Recently, I’ve taken a turn to looking into what was written about the so-called “Internet candidates” of the 2000 election. On the right, we had John McCain, who managed to pull up an astonishing $3 million after winning the New Hampshire primary through the use of….get this…pop-up ads! On the left, we had Senator Bill Bradley, who was criticized by Silicon Valley leaders for spending more time on real estate taxes during a two-decade Senate tenure than on the promotion of high tech issues. (Strikingly, Senator Bradley became the first Presidential candidate to raise a million bucks on the Web without putting so much as a donation link on his Web site’s sidebar, choosing instead to hide a donation hyperlink in a short paragraph encouraging voters to help out.)

The New York Times reported in February of 2000 about the McCain phenomena:

Several bits of evidence suggest that Mr. McCain’s success is of a different order than anything seen in many years. His presence on the ballot is driving voter turnout, starting in New Hampshire and sweeping through South Carolina and Michigan, where twice the normal number of voters went to the polls. He pulls big crowds that clearly adore him. Their excitement undercuts the conventional wisdom about citizen apathy, as does the explosion of Internet fund-raising that has brought him $3 million in the space of a few weeks.

In Washington, Republican leaders are assuring each other that Mr. McCain’s appeal is personal rather than based on issues like campaign finance reform and using the budget surplus to save Social Security and Medicare.

Similar sentiments have commented about the successful Web candidates today: Barack Obama and Ron Paul. As a piece of food for thought, I have considered the possibility that it may not be a campaign’s savvy use of the Internet that makes an “iCandidate” but an intrinsic value within that candidate him or herself. The campaign can guide and nudge, but beating overwhelming support out of the Internet will be a nugatory exercise sans a message with appeal to voters familiar to nooks and crannies of the World Wide Web.

Barack Obama’s forensic ability and “change” message bequeathed him a wide swath of followers who were (generally) younger and therefore less likely to be concerned with online giving. Ron Paul’s idiosyncratic message allowed support for his candidacy to thrive on Internet institutions such as Digg or YouTube because the truly tech-savvy have always been more likely to the beat of the libertarian drum (witness the need for overflow rooms at Google headquarters in California when Congressman Paul visited…there was no such need for more rooms when the more establishment types walked into Mountain View).

Perhaps its the man or the message that yields Internet attention, and not a stronger Web-based campaign tactic. Those who try to apply the Ron Paul example of diffusing most power to supporters with little to no supervision from the campaign in 2012 will probably be disappointed to find that they will not garner $35 million in contributions.

Calling Harrison Ford.

The White House is under attack. It’s time for the President to heroically start dropping terrorists with an Uzi rifle, defending the Executive Mansion for God, family and country…perhaps even bellowing “Get out of my house!” before strangling the last Al Qaeda villain to death with his bare hands.

Well, maybe not quite like that.

According to a post from the geeks over at bigmouthmedia, the White House may soon disappear from the search results preferred to the info-hungry public by our good friends at Google. Thanks to a technical solution devised by the White House to insure that it stays hale and healthy in search engine rankings, the robots.txt file is quite close to passing the 100kb limit, at which point Google quits reading the site.

As a result, it is now theoretically possible that, as the White House Web site grows and expands (as it, no doubt will, albiet at a slower pace that the deficit or size of government) under the next Administration…certain new pages added to the White House’s online parking space may no longer emerge on our search results.

Perhaps, aside from the inevitable promises for a middle-class tax cut coming from all corners in the 2008 election, it might be time for a candidate to take the hard pledge to cut down the size of their Web site.

Will the academic study of the Internet ever set standards for the practices of political operatives, campaigns and politicians, or will it forever be trying to play catch up to the constantly changing technology?

This was one of the most interesting questions that I received after presenting my undergraduate thesis yesterday afternoon. My initial thought is that for the foreseeable future scholarship of the Internet would not be able to catch up to constantly changing technology. If anything, the constant push towards advancement and the presence of hundreds of millions of dollars that are being spent on acquiring Internet companies is allowing technology to increase its metaphorical lead over academics. I come to this conclusion after reading two dozen scholarly books and articles about politics and the Internet, only a few of which had any salience towards current practice. The lack of conclusions that can be turned into actual practice is not because of bad research (in all but a few cases), but rather because the technology discussed is outdated, even though all of the studies have been conducted in the last 8 years.

My thesis- a literature review of the study of the Internet’s effect on political communications and democracy- identified six main areas or questions that scholars have been considering when approaching the topic of online politics:

1. How does the Internet Age of political communications fit into the history of media and politics? What forces drove the Internet Age to come about?
2. How has the Internet changed the process through which politicians, professional political communicators, campaigns and organizations operate? What may the future hold?
3. What is a blog? What effects do blogs have on political discourse? What societal and political norms do they advance? What is the personal, social and political influence of blogs?
4. What are the implications on democratic societies of Internet-users who can choose what news content they consume?
5. What is the relationship between Internet use and individual-level production of social capital as it relates to politics? Are there generational differences
6. What are the consequences of the growing digital divide on democratic societies as the Internet continues to gain prominence and utilities?

Admittedly, these categories are from perfect. In my opinion this is driven by an overall lack of homogeneity in the study of the Internet. In my research I found that very few scholars are trying to refine or challenge other scholars already published studies. Instead, most scholars are tackling a new aspect of the Internet and trying to put their mark on an emerging field. In the very simplest terms, this makes synthesizing the research more difficult for my thesis; however, it brings up the major question I ask at the end of my thesis: What questions do academics need to focus on in the future of the study of politics in the Internet sphere? And how do they need to approach their studies differently?

Here are some of my initial thoughts:

1. Has the Internet’s significance in political actions changed over time?
2. Do social networking activities have an effect on political campaign? Can politicians target likely voters with the personal information provided by users on their social networking webpages?
3. What are the driving factors in political activities online? Political needs or technology improvements?
4. What are the implications of online micro-donations in political campaigns?

I’d like to start a conversation in the comment potion of this blog post on other questions that scholars should be asking.

Here is the entire Powerpoint I used during my presentation.

The Ron Paul campaign has an ambitious goal of raising $12 million for the 4th quarter. For a candidate with more “star” power, this might not be an ambitious goal, but considering Ron Paul’s (perceived) lesser status, this is a big number. However, he is well on his way having already pulled in over $9 million.

Even with those numbers, his campaign is needing more money now. With that in mind, they are attempting two more money bombs - fundraising campaigns akin to the $4.2 million single day effort.

The first campaign is “Rudy’s Reading List.” This campaign is supposed to highlight Paul’s noninterventionist foreign policy, as opposed to the rest of the Republican field. On the website there is a short list of books that they are recommending (and implying that Rudy Giuliani hasn’t read). They are trying for 25,000 pledges of $100, $2.5 million.

The second campaign is “Tea Party ‘07.” This campaign is meant to happen on Dec. 16th, the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. I do appreciate their sense of history. Their goal for this campaign is 100,000 pledges of $100, $10 million!

Both of these money bombs have the potential to reach their target. The Internet love that Ron Paul gets is quite extraordinary, and after his first cash explosion, I wouldn’t be surprised to see another bomb land directly on the bullseye.

This campaign season we have seen some new and interesting campaign websites. The web presence of a campaign is a big deal, and this year that is being taken to the next level. There are facebook apps, MySpace pages, and youtube channels for campaigns. I am glad to see campaigns using the full power of the Internet, but also disheartened by the fact that many do not use the greatest asset of the Internet, transparency.

That being said, Ron Paul’s website is breath of fresh air. If you haven’t checked it out, do so (www.ronpaul2008.com). I know it seems like I’ve been schilling for Ron Paul lately, but he is making big news. First with his $4.2 million dollar day and over the weekend the New York Times had a piece on his web campaign. Despite all the other web applications that campaigns use, Ron Paul has one that I thoroughly love. On his homepage he has a running total of his online donations as well as a ticker that lists his recent donors. Most campaigns time the release of fundraising totals for maximum effect, but Ron Paul’s are just out there for all to see. I checked it yesterday around 2 PM and then at 11 AM this morning. He’s pulled in over $120,000 in that time, all online. Impressive.

Alexander and Caveh, two of the creators of www.Straight2theCandidates.com visited IPDI Labs this week. They have developed a platform that allows many-to-one communications. It is sort of an inverse blog. We all know that a blog works by one person, or group, posting on it, then many people can read it. Their system allows many people to post questions, then other people can vote those questions up or down so that the most popular questions make it to the top of list. Whose list you might wonder? They originally developed it for communications with politicians, but it has many applications. A company, a famous actor, or a musician could all use this system to communicate with the masses. One nice feature is that anyone who voted on a question that gets answered automatically receives the answer.

In case that’s hard to follow, here’s an example:
Let’s say that Senator John Doe is using their platform. I want to ask John a question about his position on stem cell research. I go to his straight2who site and look over the questions that other people asked. If no one has asked my question, I submit a new question. But, if my question already exists, I vote for that question. If enough people vote for the question, it moves up the list. If the question makes it into the top 3 or so questions, John Doe will answer it. His answers will appear on the site as well as get emailed around to those people who voted on the question.

Alex and I had time for a little Q&A:
IPDI: How did you come up with this idea?
Alexander: As students we had another idea, but couldn’t receive a government grant. We wrote to and emailed the Chancellor, but because the Chancellor receives so much communication, all we received were automatic responses. She later started to talk directly to the citizens using videopodcasts on her website. One of the episodes was about announcing grants for innovative technologies. Sitting in front of the laptop Caveh wanted to jump into the monitor to tell her we are there, but there was no way to do that. And because we already knew that sending email resulted in automatic answers we just decided to set up the back channel to her. The result of hard time, working and sleeping in the office: a brand new way for everyone to communicate faster with politicians.

IPDI: How willing have politicians been to cooperate?
Alexander: The site has just started so it’s difficult to say at this point.

They did show us a few sites that have been setup for German politicians, and they informed us that the Chancellor answers the top three questions on her site every week. She usually responds within three or four days which is apparently unheard of in Germany. They said that it normally takes a few weeks to receive responses.

IPDI: If you could interview one candidate for the site, any candidate, who would it be and why?
Alexander: I have to stay neutral.
Laughter
IPDI: There is no one candidate that you really want?
Caveh: The candidate who is the best for the United States and the world.

IPDI: Technologically, what was the hardest obstacle to overcome?
Alexander: We used Ruby on Rails, but not everyone knew the language. Having everyone learn and understand Ruby on Rails was one of the most difficult parts.

IPDI: What new technology on the horizon are you excited about?
Alexander: The spread of video and video applications on the Internet. It started with plain text, then color text, then sound, and now video technology is getting popular. Many people said there wouldn’t be enough bandwidth, but its spreading quickly.

The site was nice to see in action. It has some other nice features such as the ability to make a video questions (CNN/YouTube anyone?) or to embed video that is hosted somewhere else. People are allowed to comment on the questions so that discussion can be person-to-person as well as person-to-politician. Of course they have a group on Facebook, and they said their software would integrate with the Facebook platform. I hope their platform gains popularity here as well so we can see easier interaction between politicians and the masses.

In 2004, we saw an animated John Kerry dancing to the theme song from “Flipper.”

Today, if you want to throw a term like “flip-flopper” at a presidential candidate, then you have to bring more web stuff to the table. Stuff like point-counterpoint issue statements, t-shirts, web video, PowerPoint presentations, a searchable online database of campaign contributions and a citizen journalist toolkit – so that everyman and everywoman can conduct a little opposition research of their own (then report back to the party, of course).

That’s what the Massachusetts Democratic Party did with RomneyFacts.com, a site designed shed light on Romney’s statements as a presidential candidate and make light of any flip-flopping. There’s also a hefty dose of do-it-yourself information to help bloggers and concerned citizens do their own research on Romney.

The Boston Globe quotes the Dean of GW’s Graduate School of Political Management (and IPDI’s interim director) F. Christopher Arterton:

It’s obviously a new application of the Internet, and it strikes me that . . . we’ll probably soon have equivalent sites for all the candidates.

Sites like these are fun to play around with – especially if you vehemently oppose a candidate, but can they really harm a candidate’s chances?

Boston Daily thinks probably not:

Perhaps a determined blogger with a mind for finance will make a significant find in the documents RomneyFacts.com posted, but the attention-grabbing contradictory quotes on the home page won’t hurt Romney much.

We’re wondering if RomneyFacts will develop a widget like the WashingtonPost.com’s Issue Tracker that will allow anti-Romney Democrats to track and compare campaign issue statements with previous performances.

For all those who thought the net neutrality debate was over, think again. AT&T and British broadband providers have rekindled the fire of the pro-net neutrality folks out there on two different fronts.

First, during Pearl Jam’s Lollapalooza performance, which was broadcasted on AT&T’s online entertainment video site called the Blue Room, the company (they say by accident) cut the following lyrics during one of the bands songs:

“George Bush, leave this world alone, George Bush find yourself another home.”

Now at first AT&T said a third party content monitor for the concert got too excited and decided, without permission, to cut the rock group’s politically charged words. However since the event occurred, CNET, MTV, the LA Times and Chicago Sun-Times are all reporting that this isn’t the first time AT&T has censored political statements while allowing swear words to go out over music broadcasts. The Internet policy watchdog Public Knowledge and WIRED Magazine’s Listening Post blog are also reporting that according to an AT&T employee, there is a standing policy at the website to cut any political messages during broadcasts.

AT&T has since apologized for the whole mess but it hasn’t stopped net neutrality proponents from saying that this is just another example of why laws need to be put in place to ensure that content cannot be discriminated against by broadband service providers.

In the United Kingdom, the BBC’s launch of their new” iplayer” online service, which allows you to watch BBC shows to your computer, is stirring up a lot of trouble. Major telecom companies are threatening to slow down the BBC’s traffic unless they pay additional fees because continued expansion of the BBC’s service and other video websites are beginning to put a strain on their systems. Some have argued that this is just a way for ISP to charge more for service without providing additional bandwidth or updating their networks.

The debate continues….