In March 2007 I told Senator Obama how much he was improving America’s image abroad – he replied that greater changes would come with his election -. Indeed most of the world applauded the president-elect and there was fascination on advanced communications that supported his campaign.
This post collects some information on innovative e-politics, infrastructure and policies for communications from this election campaign.
Innovations in e-politics
Internet adoption by Americans to get political information jumped to 40% of (compared to 31% in the 2004 campaign) as reported by a Pew research on a sample of 2,251 adults. Politicians and supporters could gained easy assistance to move on-line from groups like e-politics or the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. Obama has been called "tech president," as democrats demonstrated better use of technology than republicans or previous presidential candidates as summarized by Sarah Lai Stirland in Wired
The Webwas the dominant media. Chris Hughes blogs about the future of My.BarackObama site. The site has 1.5 million accounts and this community created 35,000 local groups, hosted over 200,000 events.
Online video in particular stormed the stage: 35% of Americans have watched in absolute time (views * video length)around 15 million hours (Obama 14.5 McCain 0.5) including campaign commercials, debates, interviews, and speeches. David Burch of TubeMogul analyzed the value of this channel.
Social networks and blogs were used by up to 49% of online users: on Facebook and MySpace supporters had 3.6 million pages (Obama 3 McCain 0.6)
Mobile communications included SMS and downloaded applications. SMS alerts from short code 62262 (OBAMA) delivered messages such as this oneLess than a week until Election Day on Nov. 4th! Barack needs your help. REPLY to this msg with your 5 digit ZIP CODE for local Obama news and voting infoBarack Obama sent 3 million SMS to supporters to announce Senator Joe Biden choice for vice president (Mobile marketer). Similarly Rock the Vote, encouraged young people (18-29, 18% of electorate) to vote, using text-messaging campaigns to over 100,000 subscribers and called 13’000 on election day. The Obama campaign also set mobile web site at http://obamamobile.mobi or http://m.barackobama.com . The Mobile future coalition has recorded a panel discussing mobile impact of elections.
Online fundraising and advertising
This campaign broke records in both raising and spending money on media. Nearly 10% of internet users donated money online to candidates in 2008, compared to 3% in 2006, according to Pew Research. In 1999, MoveOn has been the pioneer in internet fundraising (MoveOn had 1 million making 370,000 donations totaling $88 million for Obama'08). In total Democrats raised a record-breaking $780 million in contributions from more than 3 million people, many of whom donated through the web. Republicans raised $340 million. [Federal Election Commission, September]
Obama's campaign spent $293 million on TV ads, according to TNS Media Intelligence. In addition $8 million was spent on Google, Yahoo, Facebook, news Web sites, ad networks, and in-game ad firm Massive. McCain spent $132 million on TV ads during the same period. (campaign spending in media was close to $500 million and 50% of the contributions).
Hopes for a better communication infrastructure
Despite the great shift to online campaign, some issues remain. Pew research noted that 60% of online Americans feel that the internet is a megaphone for extreme viewpoints and a source of misinformation. Responding to this rise of media on the Web, along with the decline of public trust, Newstrust recruited an online community of 8’000 news consumers, journalists, educators and students. They launched an election news hunt initiative in July to recommend the best coverage on the presidential elections, using community review tool.
How can the momentum be sustained beyond the campaign, for 40% of the electorate who went on-line? The technology engaged people to participate in volunteer groups and to organize off-line events that could support better government. But will this all stop when the funding and marketing efforts disappear ? The Obama web site promises to create a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for America’s citizens….Obama will appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (will it be Google’s CEO ?) to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century.
About the competitive infrastructure, the programs focuses on net neutrality and spectrum expansion. Net neutrality through federal legislation will allow all applications, services and devices to operate on all access networks. It announces a review of competition in the wireless space and "smarter, more efficient and more imaginative use of spectrum” meaning the 700MHz auctions. Telecom employees had mixed feelings and contributed $3.5 million to Obama versus $4.1 million to McCain.
There are other good intentions to support innovation in communications. Obama's program promises to expand funding of broadband infrastructure to compare with Japan, South Korea and Finland. And Silicon Valley is likely to benefit from an increase of H-1B non-immigrant visas to recruit engineers and scientists. Tech employees seemed pleased and backed Obama in a 5:1 ratio donating $21 million ($1.5 million at the 20 largest Silicon Valley companies).
Many other blogs have been written on this topic. NewsFeedResearcher offers a consolidation of them.
