The Obama Campagin & New Media: How they did it and why it matters

“Today’s problems cannot be solved if we still think the way we thought when we created them.”
--Albert Einstein


“Barack said to us, ‘I want this to be a grassroots campaign. I want to reinvigorate our democracy. I want to bring more people back into our government. First of all I think that’s the only way we can win and secondly I want to rekindle some idealism that together we can get things done in this country’.”
--David Axelrod, 60 Minutes


Barack Obama’s entire Presidential campaign was mounted on one simple premise: change. In and of itself, that fact is not remarkable—change has been a well-worn theme where political campaigns are concerned. What is remarkable is that “change” never became a tired cliché: in spite of its being the central message, change was a concept that was not only embraced but implemented by the Obama campaign on multiple levels. While the structure, substance, and even the style of his campaign could be classified as fairly traditional, where hope and unity functioned as central values, and logos and images hearkened back to another era, then the strategy of his campaign was where the Obama campaign radically departed from the norm. For even if Obama’s lofty aim to invigorate democracy by generating a grass-roots base seems like a quaint hope from a by-gone era, the challenge for his strategic team was to make that goal a reality by using 21st-century methods, and they did so precisely by making ‘change’ more than simply a slogan: by taking the noun and making it into a verb. They harnessed the transformative power of new media and communication methods to ignite the passions of the electorate and incite political action. They adopted change in their methods when they made the unprecedented decision to forgo federal public financing. And perhaps most importantly, they never wavered from the central tenet that Barack Obama was the agent that could more readily foresee, embrace, and create ‘change’.

In a campaign loaded with “firsts”, arguably the most important element of Obama’s strategy was his savvy use of technology and new media throughout his historical campaign, for it is the mantle upon which many other “firsts” were hung. In an era where a phone is not just a phone but a multi-media communication platform, messages today more often than not take flight digitally: whether they are spread via emails or text messages, across online social networking platforms or through viral videos on YouTube. The so-called Millennial Generation swaps information at a breathtaking clip (often in multimedia format), and carries on multiple ‘conversations’ across several platforms with ease. In order to engage this generation, Barack Obama would have to communicate with them in the manner to which they are accustomed to communicating, delivering his message to them by exploiting these very channels.

Left: Chris Hughes - Obama's Online Organzing Guru- photo courtesy NY Times

The Obama campaign made a wise decision in February 2007 to woo Chris Hughes, one of the four founders of Facebook, to head up their online strategy department. Hughes’ official title became “online organizing guru” and his central brainchild was the creation of www.myBarackObama.com, a pseudo-social networking website where a user would surrender their personal information to the campaign in exchange for a personalized online niche from within which they could document their own election experience. At MyBO.com (as it is affectionately known in campaign vernacular) a user can tabulate their contributions to the campaign in man facets, whether that means tracking their monetary donations, number of calls they have made on behalf of the campaign, or the amount of doors knocked on in the name of getting Obama’s message out. In short, they are given a small online portal within which they can explore and engage, giving them a sense of empowerment and offering a stake in the historical political battle at hand.

Certainly, implementing such a social networking strategy in and of itself amounts to a brilliant tactical move, and yet, it mirrors Obama’s very traditional desire to build a political base from the bottom up. The focus was never specifically to focus on inflating the numbers of participants, but to emphasize their engagement through the online platform. It was not enough to have someone register on the site: they wanted users to feel more ownership in the campaign by encouraging them to connect locally, talk to their neighbors, and make calls from their own homes, thus offering them a greater stake in the campaign and making them feel like they were an important component. As Joe Rospars, the campaign’s new-media director explained, “The point is not to have a million people [signed up],” although he fully expected to have over a million users on MyBo by Election Day. “The point is to be able to chop up that million-person list into manageable chunks and organize them.” Indeed, it is one thing to feel as though you are part of a large movement nationwide, happily anonymous in a sea of millions, but it is quite another to feel as though you and your neighbors are actually part of a crucial push to get the vote out in your own community, and to lending your physical presence to “putting a face” on the nationwide movement for change.

MyBo.com was the basis for the new media strategy: harnessing the power of online social networking to engage a modern version of a very traditional grass-roots movement. By sparking the imaginations of the idealistic youth and by encouraging tech-savvy young mavens to mobilize their own micro-networks, Obama was able to tap into the unbridled enthusiasm of the youth vote, exploiting their preferred channels of communication, all the while hammering home the “Yes, We Can” message.

Yet, the media strategy went much further than just MyBO.com. Obama rallied tech-savvy supporters to spread his message across media platforms of every available format. The campaign offered the opportunity to receive text messages that would allow one, for example, “to be the first to know who Barack selected as his Vice-Presidential running mate”; Facebookers were encouraged to use their status to get out the vote; an iPhone application called ‘Obama for America’ was even developed that was able to discern which contacts in the phone lived in swing states and thus, which contacts might benefit from a call from a long-lost friend, all in the name of ‘change’. In a bold move toward transparency, campaign manager David Plouffe gave regular strategy updates on YouTube, allowing field organizers to get direction straight from campaign HQ. The Obama campaign even pushed the envelope where old media was concerned, taking over-larger chunks of advertising space in order to more clearly state his stance on the issues, and wisely never injecting negative campaigning into said slots. Taking an unprecedented 30-minute portion of airtime, Obama’s “infomercial” was a new strategy aimed at spelling out his plan for America, never mentioning his opponent by name and instead allowing his undeniable charisma and intelligence to dispell the unsavory falsehoods put forth by the McCain camp about Obama’s character. Indeed, a whole section of Obama's website was devoted to "fighting the smears", and encouraged people to take action by reporting negative campaigning to the Obama camp, thereby"standing up for a new kind of politics".

This is not to suggest that John McCain’s camp overlooked such tech-forward strategies where using media was concerned, but it clear that McCain’s team fell remarkably short of what the Obama campaign was able to anticipate and activate. As of the days following the election, Obama had over 3 million “friends” on Facebook, McCain had just 600,000. Obama’s YouTube channel had been viewed an astonishing 20 million times, while McCain’s YouTube channel only logged 2 million visits. McCain's deputy campaign advisor, Mark Soohoo, claimed in June that "We don't need Facebook, they're not our voters". And while that statement is probably accurate, it proved that the Republican party was not making the effort to communicate with new voters, and to try to give rise to a new Republican voting base.

Of course, Soohoo is correct insofar as the logic that the quantity of ‘friends’, hits, or page views does not necessarily translate into votes. Here begins another key step in Obama's new media campaign, for equally important in Presidential campaigns as ‘getting the message out’ is getting the money to come in.

Here again, new media made possible another revolutionary aspect of Obama’s campaign strategy: small-donor fund-raising. It had been heretofore taken for granted that a candidate would accept public financing, taking the federal payment in exchange for agreeing to abide by a set of regulations, among them refusing private donations and adhering to what is considered a modest spending limit by campaign standards. Obama’s decision to forgo public financing
meant that he was not bound to a limit on fund-raising, and he framed that decision in such a way as to suggest that he was avoiding being bound to lobbyists and their lucrative donations, relying instead on the small donations of the common voter, whose interests he had at heart. The decision was touted as risky by the critics, for no one knew what kind of totals could be amassed by favoring grass-roots financing to lump sum donations. But by making repeated personalized appeals to his online database, and emphasizing that no donation was too small, Obama obliterated most expectations and raised over $640 million over the primary and general election period. What is perhaps just as significant as the total raised is the breadth of the donating base: according to reports in late October, over 90% of the donations that came in were less than $100, and there were over 3 million unique benefactors to the campaign.

This echoes the mobilization effect discussed previously, whereby ownership and sense of entitlement are spread broadly, in this case inviting people who have perhaps never contributed to a political campaign the chance to feel ownership in a movement to which they might have made the smallest contribution. The Obama campaign employed clever tactics made possible by this online database, such as recurring-payment programs where donors could donate something small like $25 each month to spread out their gift; or “Operation Give Again” where donors who had donated relatively large sums were called upon again and encouraged to reach their personal limit of $2,300. The success of such tactics resulted in the 2008 election being heralded as the first election where small individual donations trumped big money and corporate interests, and it is largely because of new media technology that Obama’s campaign was able to make that happen.

(Note: recent reports attempting to debunk the "small donor myth" do so on the basis that if a donor donates $50 five separate times, they exceed $200, which is the standard "small donor" limit. What these myth-busters may be overlooking is the fact that if the Obama small-donor machine hadn't been so well-oiled, those donors likely would have given money once or perhaps twice. It is Obama's return-again strategies that fueled more small donations. It is preposterous to propose that a donor who gave $250 can be equated to the big business lobby money that Obama's campaign tried to avoid.)

But as election day approached, with fund-raising records shattered, armies of volunteers weary from door-knocking, and inboxes flooded with appeals for more money, many still wondered whether these forward-thinking strategies would actually translate into
trips to the voting booth. The voting results bear witness to the remarkable mobilizing power of new media’s micro-networks: the youth vote targeted by such strategies showed up in numbers that topped turnout in any previous Presidential contest in history. Of the 5.4 million increase in voter turnout this year, two-thirds were young voters, and they preferred Obama over John McCain by a greater than 2:1 margin (66% vs. 32%). In contrast to previous recent presidential elections, a majority of young people voted in 2008 (53%), and in the competitive battleground states, youth turnout was even higher (59%). Such numbers prompted The Huffington Post to declare, “Their unified support for Barack Obama combined with their high turnout made the Millennial Generation the decisive force in his victory.”

In the end, what these strategies allowed Obama to do was to demonstrate that he was a leader capable of ‘changing with the times’: that he was able to see the potential in novel channels and exploit them with cunning. Young voters saw him as a man they could speak to on their own terms: indeed, it would be difficult to imagine a septuagenarian like McCain sending a text message or conversing on iChat, and, by extension, it would be easier to conclude that Obama would be better able to adapt to forces of change, not only in terms of technology or communication, but in any capacity. By proving himself more nimble in this area, he suggested to a legion of young followers that he will perform as adeptly when it comes to confronting change elsewhere on the horizon of the 21st century. Technology is at the heart of developments in both good and evil: it is as instrumental to developments in life-saving medicine as the development of a weapon of mass-destruction. By demonstrating that he has a team that can foresee and channel forces of change to their advantage, he is offering a reassuring vision to a generation that is keenly aware of the power of technology and the astonishing pace of change.

There is an implicit advantage in using online technology: the fact that the web is an inherently engaging medium. Where other presidents have forged ahead with communication technology in the past, it has largely up until now been one-way media. Ranjit Mathoda, a lawyer who blogs at Mathoda.com, points out that “Thomas Jefferson used newspapers to win the presidency, F.D.R. used radio to change the way he governed, J.F.K. was the first president to understand television, and Howard Dean saw the value of the Web for raising money". However, Obama has engaged a whole generation of thinkers and voters by utilizing media that operates flow of information in two-ways. Mathoda continues, “[W]hile John F. Kennedy may have been the first television president, Ronald Reagan may have perfected speaking to the camera, and George W. Bush has utilized the power of a sympathetic television channel and talk radio hosts, each of these prior technologies have been largely one way mediums of communication channeled through media companies that distort the relationship a politician seeks to have with their constituency.”

Right: Facebook Graph courtesy techpresident.com

Enabling two-way communication increases the engagement and the ownership on the part of the voter: users were able to share their election experiences on MyBO.com; they left comments on his MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube pages; they were able to text message campaign headquarters with feedback. Creating room for dialogue allowed for an unprecedented wave of participation in the political landscape, and further, it helps to ensure that those who logged on during the campaign will
remain engaged down the road. As David Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School at Harvard, explained to Rolling Stone magazine, “The emergence of this millennial generation as a force in American politics is going to be one of the biggest stories in the country over the next 20 years or so. We know from past history that when young people vote for one party a couple of times, they tend to vote for that party during their adult lifetimes in disproportionate numbers… So this is an enormous potential asset for Democrats.”

What this means is that Obama has taken a very powerful step in circumventing traditional information flow in our society: where the Bush Administration was able to exert their power on mass media by doggedly remaining ‘on message’ and saturating the media outlets with pithy soundbites to echo to the masses, Obama now has a coalition of citizens who are connected directly to his agenda, and who will digest his messages without benefit of spin from a major network. During the campaign, for example, he was able to counter the negative personal attacks from the McCain camp by dispelling them directly in an email to his supporters.

Obama’s ability to communicate directly with his electorate not only allows for targeted delivery of a message without commentary from critics, but it does so instantaneously and in a cost-effective manner. Karl Rove’s targeted mail strategies in 2000 and 2004 were expensive and time-consuming. By contrast, the network that Obama currently has in place could prove to be a very effective tool for governing now that he has been elected: not only can he keep his electorate informed with the push of a button, but he can mobilize them in targeted ways, encouraging local networks to put pressure on their congressmen to support or oppose certain legislation. Indeed, the emergence of this technologically-connected base may prove to be an unprecedented tool for governing insofar as being able to co-ordinate citizens politically on a mass scale in expensively and instantaneously. Obama shows no signs of halting his exploration of using new media to keep the electorate engaged, already creating a web presence for his transition team at www.change.gov and inviting people to share their thoughts on what is important for his administration to address when they take office in January 2009.

By anticipating the massive impact that new media devices and networks could have in this historical campaign, the Obama team was able to come out on top, proving themselves the more adept party at harnessing the power of change. One might go so far as to say the role that Obama played in inner-city Chicago – a position for which he was mocked by his opponents-- was a harbinger of things to come, for by harnessing the power of new media, he proved that the internet and new media are the ultimate tools for community organizing, and he now has a community of millions that he can dispatch at will. It is not overstating the case to say that the strategic methods adopted by Obama team throughout his campaign are nothing short of revolutionary—indeed, revolutionary in the true sense of the word, for Obama was able to subvert traditional hierarchies of power and paths of information to create his own unified, engaged, and electrified electorate; a political base that is unprecedented in its diversity and fervor, and an electorate that has embraced politics in a manner that will change the face of democracy forever.