Four years ago, the media dubbed the 2000 presidential election as the first test of the Internet’s potential political prowess, and today even more politicians and Americans are using the Internet for political purposes.
The Internet has crept slowly into the very nature of political campaigns. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 33 percent of Americans said they regularly or sometimes learn something about election campaigns from the Internet, a 9 percent increase since January 2000.
Although use of the Internet as a news source is growing, most people still rank television as the medium they use most. When voters do turn to the Internet they feel most comfortable using the Web sites of news organizations that have a strong basis in older mediums. Twenty-eight percent say they regularly or sometimes learn from major news organization Web sites, compared to 8 percent who learn from online-only news magazines and opinion sites.
The Pew survey also found more people are going online for the sole purpose of getting news or information about the 2004 elections. Overall, 22 percent of all Americans who go online turn to the Internet with the goal of informing themselves about the election, and 21 percent of young people reported that they regularly get campaign news from the Internet.
The same amount said they regularly watched from comedy shows such as “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “Saturday Night Live” for political coverage, according to the report. Relying on the Internet as a source of campaign information is strongly correlated with knowledge about the candidates and the campaign, according to the survey. As Americans become more Internet-savvy, campaign Web sites have become the focal point for politicans in the national, state and local races to mobilize supporters, raise funds and tout their platforms.
In the past year Democratic presidential hopeful and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean used his Web site to mobilize a legion of supporters and raise approximately $40 million, largely in small donations, according to the survey.
Even candidates for more small-scale positions recognize the power of the Internet.
ASUO Executive candidates Adam Petkun and Mena Ravassipour, who won a slot in the general election after a victory in the primaries Wednesday night, made an early choice to have a Web site, http://www.AdamandMena.com, to provide detailed information about their platform and experience.
“The idea was that when we would make contact with people on the street or wherever we could give them more detail and have more impact,” Petkun said. “We talked with a lot of people about campaign strategy who had done this kind of thing before and we heard that it was something that a lot of people had mentioned.”
Petkun said the campaign still included posters and fliers, but that each flyer had the web address in addition to other messages.
Ravissipour said as a student she knew how powerful the Internet could be as a research tool.
“I know that I’m online a lot and when I’m researching different things I use the Internet,” she said “We wanted to make sure that students and the voting population were properly educated about our information.”
However, Petkun and Ravassipour were the only ASUO executive candidates to put up a site and promote it.
Candidate Ben Strawn, who is also running for the executive position in the general election, said his campaign made a conscious choice not to use a Web site.
“We felt it was a passive move, to just put information out there and hope people come to see it,” he said.
For younger voters, such as students who turn away from traditional media sources such as network news, technology’s integration into politics has become increasingly important.
The Democratic National Committee unveiled a rebuilt Web site last week that incorporates many of the techniques utilized by the Dean campaign to help Democrats make political connections, and the Bush campaign is once again turning to its Web site, updated in January, to mobilize Republicans, according to an April 13 article in USA Today.
Director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet at George Washington University Carol Darr said that although groups had successfully used the Internet before, it wasn’t until 2003 that mainstream politics adopted useful techniques.
“There’s before Dean and after Dean,” Darr said in the article. “Dean made all the difference, he put it together. The Internet went from something people saw as bells and whistles and something they had to do to avoid looking old-fashioned to something they really wanted to do — both to raise money and organize volunteers.”