THE ARMY OF BLOGGERS - July 20, 2008

Can you become the president of the United States or get elected to the Senate or the House without having influential bloggers working for your campaign? Not really. Not anymore. As Obama’s presidential campaign proved it this year, the internet campaigning is as much efficient (if not more) as the traditional one. Additionally it has considerable advantages over the old, conventional methods.

Internet campaigning:

(a) effectively cuts costs,

(b) allows to communicate with each other instantly,

(c) makes it possible to reach out in real time to online or mainstream media,

(d) to organize groups of supporters and activists, who never met with each other or have nothing else in

      common but political beliefs,

(e) enables to manipulate the stream of the headline news,

(f) helps with raising considerable funds within a short period of time

(g) or simply gains new supporters (especially the young voters), who cannot be reached out effectively

      otherwise than through the internet or text messaging.

It is no longer enough for a candidate just to maintain a simple website, if he or she runs for the office. If one really intends to get elected one needs an army of bloggers working and writing for them.

THE SWINGING STATES

Blogging and internet campaigning may be especially important in the swinging states. Take for example Florida , where few thousand votes going either to the Democrats or the Republicans may decide who wins the general election. What if you are a Florida-based blogger, who has the potential of influencing those few thousand swinging voters and making them to cast their ballots for a particular candidate? Does it make you important for the political process?

In the 2000 presidential election between Al Gore and George Bush it was all about Florida . Whoever carried the state that one would be the president. After all, Bush ended up with a little over 2,000 votes more than Gore, however a recount (later stopped by the Supreme Court) lowered this margin to only 500 votes. There is no doubt that it is possible for one skillful and popular blogger to effectively influence two or three thousand Florida voters. As a consequence, it may result in a paradoxical situation that one charismatic writer may have a decisive say about, who becomes the president. The fate of the whole nation and the entire world may be decided in a small, dark room, where some political maniac keeps blogging on a wore-down, $600 computer.

THE DANGERS OF THE INTERNET BLOGGING

There is also a different, more ominous side of this phenomenon. Moving a political campaign to the internet creates a sort of global democratic system, which spreads far beyond any country’s boundaries and in which everybody, regardless of nationality, has something to say.

Blogging is many times conducted anonymously or under a nickname. It creates an opportunity for all other countries to use it as a cheap and effective tool of manipulating a domestic political scene in any chosen state. For example, there could be some anonymous bloggers on the payroll of the Russian intelligence writing tirelessly for Obama, because they believe that Obama’s foreign policy toward Russia would be more convenient for their country. On the other hand, there could be some other bloggers paid by the Israeli intelligence to organize support for McCain so that Florida goes to him in the general election, because he is more likely to be tougher toward the Iranians and their nuclear program. Of course, these are only examples, but quite realistic. Once the electoral victory is narrowed to merely a few thousand votes, every factor and every blogger becomes extremely important.

Even when blogging under their real names, websites and bloggers from other countries could influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. It can be done by taking part in open internet debates at numerous political forums (some of them are visited by thousands of readers daily) or simply by directing internet traffic to a candidate’s website. Usually, an increase in the readership results in a bigger number of monetary contributions and therefore helps a candidate to raise funds necessary for continuing his or her campaign.

We do have some direct experience in that at the EuropeanCourier.org. In March/April this year we took part in a charity campaign to help raise money for a heart surgery for a Polish child. The parents founded a website for him written in three languages (Polish, German and English), however the statistics were showing that 100% of the readership came from Poland only, and the website placed far behind in the internet rankings. We created a podcast (a 3 minutes long video) and uploaded it to three popular social networking websites (Google Videos, YouTube and FilmAnnex.com), we additionally linked to the child’s website from our homepage and so did FilmAnnex.com. The video itself was watched by more than 10,000 viewers at Google Videos and YouTube only. The result of it was that within 2 weeks the readership of said website increased approximately three times (making it into the first one million in the ranking at Alexa.com) with over 40% of the readership coming from outside of Poland, predominantly from the United States. Subsequently, a few thousands of dollars/euros were raised through the internet with contributions coming from the United States , Canada , Italy , Finland , Belgium and Great Britain . It was a very small campaign but it perfectly illustrates that a real difference can be made merely by directing internet traffic to certain websites. The same rule applies to political fundraising, with this distinction that politics is much more popular than charity and philanthropy, therefore has a greater potential of generating better financial results.

Presently almost every serious, foreign political website has some readership from the United States. Theoretically, they could be able to influence (to some extent) the outcome of a particular election by directly appealing to their reders – of course providing that they have users in a geographical area pertinent for that election.

The online campaigning, in some respect, de-Americanizes presidential election by making it an international (internet) issue in which almost everybody has something to win or lose. Different people from different continents feel prompted to organize as much support (including fundraising) and drive as much traffic to a candidate’s website as is in their ability. This tendency is already visible. For example, BarackObama.com has almost 20% of its total readership coming from outside of the United States , while for JohnMcCain.com it is around 10% (as of today).

COURTING THE BLOGGERS’ COMMUNITY

It is no longer possible to run only a traditional political campaign and win an important election.

This last weekend, DailyKos.com/NetrootsNation.com organized a conference in Texas for liberal bloggers, who support the Democrats (around 2,000 of them as compared to only 800 conservative bloggers active in the net). The speakers at the conference included Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi and other prominent politicians. It pretty well evidences how important blogging has become for the American political process. Recently such privileges of being addressed by the Speaker of the House or the Nobel Peace Prize winner were reserved only for prestigious and elite audiences like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution or for anybody who was willing to pay $100K for a speech. However, the blogging community has outgrown in political importance all those organizations and did so in a very short period of time.

THE 2012 RACE

The presidential race this year is the last one, where conventional campaigning and traditional - TV and printed - media are still playing a decisive role. The race in 2012 will be mostly about the internet campaigning.

Some of the politicians seem to grasp it already. Mike Huckabee, after dropping out of the race for the Republican nomination, founded the HuckPAC.com, which is helping the Republican candidates in different states to get elected in the forthcoming elections. It has been a smart political move, because those who get elected thanks to his support will return the favor by endorsing and campaigning for him in the 2012 presidential race. More importantly, though, his website is designed as a serious, long term project, with some ambitious objectives. Not only it started raising funds through the internet for the potential candidates, but it also began organizing the conservative bloggers' community. HuckPAC.com already attracted over 100 active bloggers with their own, independent websites. Recently even Huckabee himself started blogging quite frequently and if his project develops successfully, then in a period of 4 years, he may become as strong in the blogosphere as Obama is now. Huckabee has also begun taking on some trends and issues popular in the internet (which he neglected in his presidential bid). For example, he is visiting Kigali in Rwanda, where a murderous genocide took place in 1994 – a move which can boost his support among the human rights activists/networks as well as among fighters against HIV/AIDS and poverty.

McCAIN IN TROUBLE

For McCain, it is perhaps too late to catch up with Obama’s internet machine (what most probably will cost him greatly in the November election). Moreover, his remarks that until recently he has not known how to use a personal computer (not even mentioning how to browse through the internet) are not helpful at all to spark enthusiasm in the blogging community.

For the 2012 contenders it is already the high time to begin assembling an army of friendly bloggers, who could elevate them to prominence and help to win a crucial battle for support and funds for the next presidential race in 4 years.

  Sebastian Aulich