Political Campaigns and the Internet Essay

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internet and emerging technologies on the presidential campaigns. Online campaigning has transformed political communication, fan outreach, as well as fundraising. The internet was hardly ever utilized in politics ten years ago. In the early cases of internet utilization, majority of the users were scholars, military, or technology fanatics. However, currently, the internet is a common portion of American life. The internet has been the most rapid developing resource in the American politics ever since the mid-1990s. With not less than 55% of Americans regularly using the internet, and almost 70% possessing access to the internet, campaigns are spending a lot of money on the development of websites and emerging technologies to get to their fans, target voters, influence public views, as well as raise funds.

Question 1

The internet has assumed a fast growing role as a platform for raising and gathering funds. Campaigns air several television adverts that have been declared as poorly-crafted, blunt tools, targeted at small groups of viewers. In order to solve this problem, campaigns are utilizing the internet's "micro-targeting" to better customize who views what. In case one is a registered voter that spends a lot of time online, it is possible for the presidential campaigns and the largest independent factions to familiarize themselves with the habits of such individuals online. According to a research by the (Cline, para3). The campaigners' websites separate the tracking devices, which assemble information, keep track of a registered voter on the internet, and gather profiles cross-listed, with credit card records and other personal demographic information, which are utilized to target the user with ads. Examples of internet fundraising achievements that have practically modified the outlook of fundraising permanently are the millions of dollars raised via online efforts. For instance, Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and most recently, John McCain, raised millions of dollars via online efforts (Cline, Para 2-6).Majority regard Howard Dean's campaign in 2004 as the first internet achievement (Carty 79). In addition, he was also the very first politician to run for presidency that utilized the internet as an influential fundraising platform (Clayton 21). Even though he lost the Democratic nomination to John Kerry, he, together with his team, developed a network of blogs, social media and websites that produced a committed internet following that he effectively encouraged to contribute for his campaign (Rice 4-5). Taking into consideration that just four of the presidential candidates in 2004 possessed blogs, Dean could be regarded as a significant leader of the internet fundraising and blog movement in politics.

Question 2

While the television remains an influential force for getting to voters, candidates make use of free air time as the news media covers debates, party meetings, and stories regarding the campaign trail. Beyond the television lies the wonderland of the internet that transmits up-to-the-minute poll figures to the voters' smart phones instantly! Increasing access to broadband connections has crowned the internet as an important resource in spreading data, raising funds, and rallying voters. Hillary Clinton utilized an internet video message to launch her presidential bid in 2008. A new technological trend introduced in 2008 was the creation of pages on Facebook, in addition to personal campaign websites meant to connect extensive data regarding the presidential candidate's background, ambitions, and policies. Fans are capable of chatting with one another, donating funds to the campaign, and even buying campaign bumper stickers and t-shirts from online stores (Eddins, Para 22). Although the majority of voters moan regarding the overwhelming negativity of the recent campaigns, those particular threads were created quite early, immediately after Washington's presidency. The lies and insults displayed in the early press certainly made it hard for the public to recognize the exact positions of the candidates (Pew Research Center Para 2-5).

According to a Pew Research Center (para2-5) campaigns are utilizing digital devices to directly communicate with voters --bypassing the filter of conventional media- discovers that Obama's campaign posted almost four times as much content as the Romney campaign, in addition to being active on almost twice as many platforms. Digital technology permits leaders to participate in anew degree of "conversation" with voters, changing campaigns into a more dynamic thing, more conversational than it was in the 20th century. Presidential hopefuls are, however, utilizing their direct messaging as a means of pushing out their messages. The Obama campaign made more considerable utilization of citizen voices-however- just in a single region (Pew Research Center Para 2-5).

Question 3

The internet can be utilized to raise voter turnout via engagement and intermingling.

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In the 2008 election procedure, utilizing new technologies and joining them with conventional outlets provided new engagement opportunities and intermingling with possible voters. In the 2004 election, advancement was shown when all the e-mails sent by Obama and McCain, used some sort of textual and technical interactivity, entailing: basic hyperlinks, embedded hyperlinks, search functions, audios, and image links, among others (Hendricks and Kaid 49). However, a drawback from the 2004 campaign was that there was absence of an e-mail forwarding device, and hence recipients were not capable of passing messages to others easily (Hendricks and Kaid 53). YouTube picked up a great initiative by meeting with almost all candidates at the beginning of the campaign season and encouraging them to begin YouTube channels (Clayton 145). In addition, YouTube developed YouChoose, a segment of the site, committed to displaying the videos of the candidates and offering a platform for individuals to participate in discourse with the candidates via video comments and ratings (Carty 80). May also took part by hosting town halls with presidential hopefuls, whereby members could watch webcasts and submit questions. In addition, they developed an Impact channel, which housed all MySpace pages of the candidates (Carty 80). In 2008, there was a merger between the old and new media so as to offer additional participation. For instance, ABC had a deal with Facebook to offer debate information (Carty 80-81). CNN and YouTube also united to present a debate, whereby individuals forwarded questions on YouTube and they answered via CNN. In accordance to Hendricks and Kaid, The YouTube/CNN debate was a major example of the manner through which the new media empowers people to voice views rather than just watching debates (169).Obama was quite engaged in certain websites, like his LinkedIn page, where he asked for opinions, regarding how the next president could assist small entrepreneurs and businesses (Holahan). Almost all candidates are aware of the benefits of social media as a useful platform for their campaigns to spread information easily, and interact with the public (Hendricks and Kaid 169).

Question 4

In the last couple of years, social media has grown exponentially. According to statistics from Chris O'Brien of Mercury News in terms of users, Facebook had grown from 100 million to 850 million users, while Twitter had grown from 6 million to 500 million users, during the period beginning 2008 to 2012 Other statistics provided by the advertising group MDG, revealed quite a dimmed outlook, concerning the same, by taking into account only users that were over the age of 18. Their study revealed that, in terms of those over 18, Facebook had grown from 44.3 million to 143.3 million users, while Twitter had increased the number of its number of users from 3.4 million to 24.1 million users, in the period spanning 2008 to 2012 Both studies show that there has been an exponential increase in users of social media accounts, supporting the arguments of the rising importance of such accounts. The MDG group also suggested that the number of individuals who had used social accounts for political campaigns had also risen, in that, about 82% of all adults received election related news via social media accounts, compared to just 26% in the year 2008 ("The SocialCampaign"). This significant increase shows the influential position of news media sources and their potential to greatly impact the outcome of elections. The huge numbers, in terms of individuals utilizing social media accounts for election news or campaigns, has been brought about by developments, such as increase in the number of new mobile phone applications and also Smartphone users. After all, during the 2008 general elections, only a paltry 10% of adults in the U.S. had a Smartphone (O'Brien Para 1-3). And by June 2012, statistics from a Pew group online study showed that 25% of adults in the U.S. owned a Smartphone (Smith). Other social media sites that came up after the successes of Facebook and Twitter include: Foursquare, which was started in 2009, it allows its account holders to give their friends their current locations by logging in to their accounts or via text messages pinterest, which was started in 2010 and allows its account holders to build virtual "pinboards" or collections of items that they have found on the internet; and the Google plus from Google, is somewhat similar to Facebook, with the major difference being.....

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