Personal Technology: 'The Power of the Network' and the U.S. election

Mon, 11/10/2008 11:15 AM  |  Sci-Tech

You're probably sick of reading about the U.S. election by now. So, first off, I offer my apologies. But there's a couple of technology-related issues I wanted to discuss while the news is still hot.

The Internet played a huge role in this election.

Technology has always had its place, but this campaign was special. Joe Trippi, campaign manager for 2004 Democratic challenger Howard Dean, was the first to harness the power of the Internet to recruit support and raise funds.

"They were Apollo 11, and we were the Wright Brothers," Trippi told the New York Times.

Barack Obama did, however, reach the moon while Dean barely took flight. But how did he do it, and what can we learn not just in a political sense but in terms of the power of the individual to sway political change?

It's all about social networking.

David Talbot, writing in last month's edition of the MIT Technology Review, described how Obama's crew swept the Texas Democratic caucus using networking technologies.

While Hillary Clinton had 20,000 volunteers working in the state, Obama's website MyBO had signed up more than 100,000 Texans. Suddenly the power of online networking became apparent: Volunteers could be mobilized, paired, prepped and dispatched down to the block level.

"Here is the leaflet: print it out and get it to them. It was you, at your computer, in your house, printing and downloading. They did it all very well," Trippi was quoted as saying. Clinton won the primary vote 51 to 47 percent, but Obama stole the delegates 99 to 94.

We shouldn't underestimate this kind of impact. It's not just about the programs used, but the fact that people are so comfortable with technology that campaigners do not hesitate to distribute information via these means.

In 2004 these technologies were gimmicks. In Obama's campaign, their use was effective, natural and believable, and reached the right people.

Today, twice as many Americans have broadband Internet connections compared to 2004. YouTube didn't exist back then. Now Obama's channel on the site (http://is.gd/21R3) has 1,800 videos, one of them watched more than 5 million times.

Who would have ever thought that this video, an address by Obama, would be voluntarily watched by millions of people, many of them the youth labeled 'apathetic' when it came to issues of politics?

But that is in itself a bit old-school. Web 2.0, after all, is all about participation and conversation. So when Obama's team spread the word via messages, links and posts on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, they also relied on supporters to pick those messages up and spread them through their own networks.

The result? In the old days we'd keep our political preferences to ourselves or on a bumper sticker. This time around, your Facebook or Twitter feed was as likely to be dotted with "Obama yay!" messages as reports about your friends weekend exploits.

Of course, it was also about money. Obama's team made it straightforward for supporters to contribute online, but these networking sites also encouraged people to raise their own funds.

Volunteers, for example, could set their own fund-raising targets on MyBO and watch little thermometer indicators rise on their pages. The campaign raised more than US$200 million online by July 2008, against $140 million offline.

The other interesting aspect is that this was not a strictly managed or directed campaign. Much of the direction was organized in an ad hoc and spontaneous fashion from those on the ground.

Social networking tools made it easy for organizers to train others, provide them with material, and then leave them to campaign as they saw fit. This form of techno-campaigning allowed regular people to garner support at house parties in Iowa or mass support rallies in South Carolina.

So what can we learn from this? Well, the Internet is great if you're comfortable with it. McCain's campaign grasped its importance but seemed uneasy, at least in the vital first few months, in exploiting its potential.

The other thing is that one shouldn't mistake the Internet for the real world. Obama's people knew they could organize their volunteers through it. They could furnish them with instant call lists and Google Maps to locate target voters.

But the last mile still had to be covered the time-honored way: making phone calls, printing out flyers and knocking door to door.

Then there's another lesson. MyBO used the same familiar social networking tools as Wikipedia and Facebook not only to mobilize volunteers but to share their methods with others back in the system.

Perhaps for the first time in a mass media age, volunteers have been mobilized in a way that is truly populist. They were not just regular cannon fodder following commands, but contributing to the campaign via collective wisdom and insight.

So now the question is whether or not these technologies will be utilized by governments and campaign teams outside election periods. Or will they be wrapped up in moth balls for another 4 years? Is this the beginning of a new, more responsive age on the part of voters?

After all, those who exerted huge efforts to get people to vote aren't going to close down their Facebook accounts and Twitter feeds. The tools are all still there.

Now it'll be interesting to see how they're used. The network has, in a way, already become a sort of running feedback mechanism to monitor and measure the elected candidate and let them know how they're doing.

Perhaps the next step is to adjust the electoral process itself to take into account the network's power.

Jeremy Wagstaff is a commentator on technology. He can be found online at loosewireblog.com or via email at jeremy@loose-wire.com.

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