“The very technology that has transformed the global economy has transformed the campaign process as well, so that the race will be run as much on the World Wide Web as in union halls and town squares and on television. ”
From the introduction of “The First Campaign” , Garrett Graff
This statement explains why we have been facing with the First Campaign. It is quite hard to make further comment on the book because The First Campaign pictures whole journey how technological and political developments emerged synchronously in the last decade.
Today we have been watching political debates on TV where politicians were asked various and spontaneous questions by people because of YouTube. Today also people are invited to vote almost for everything.
As we have been examining during our class online media tools; blogs, social networking platforms, online campaigning and many other ways on World Wide Web are vital as new communication channels to say your word to people not only in your neighborhood but also to the world. This is the biggest consequences of globalization and technological revolution in today’s world. The thousand, millions of people are brought together to demonstrate their voices with only one SMS massage today.
The people are not voting only for political candidates’ appearances on TV but also they consider how much candidates response their crucial manners in their conversation and how much let people to make contributions to the conversation. As a result of that politicians have been realizing the power of the conversational communication with the society. Therefore they turn their head towards online fund-raising campaigns.
We all are aware how Howard Dean’s fund-raising campaign had been successfully accomplished. Dean’s campaign has raised $ 50 million and funds came largely in small donations over the Internet, the average overall donation size was under $100. Suchlike fund-raising has happened first time ever in political campaigning in the US history. This is an ultimate example of how much internet can be efficient in even political campaigning.
“The First Campaign” gives us the very interesting evidences about how the way of social and political communication and sharing was transformed by maximum usage of technology. On the other hand I agree that using of new technologies is not the only indicator to determine whether you’ll be successful or not. The question is how your tune is while you are reaching people through technology. Are you allowing people to join the conversation or wanting only their votes? What is your language in this sense? Monologue or conversation?
According to “The First Campaign”:
*In the fifth-season finale of Fox TV’s American Idol talent show, more people voted for singer Taylor Hicks than have ever voted for a presidential candidate in any U.S election.
*The candidates have profile on Facebook.com, the social-networking website targeted at collage students. A Facebook group for Barack Obama swelled to a quarter million people in less than a month, and when Hillary Clinton went onto Yahoo!
*By the end of May 2007, ABCPAC, the conservative fund-raising site equivalent to the left’s ActBlue, had raised only $385 for all GOP field. Meanwhile, ActBlue which draws upon the larger more organized and powerful progressive blogosphere, had raised more than $3 million for John Edwards alone, and total of some $22 million in online donations since its 2004 lunch.
