How Presidential Candidates Are Using the 'Net
On his campaign Web site, Mitt Romney is also smart enough to proudly place buttons linking to his Facebook, YouTube and MySpace pages. Other than fund-raising features, Romney provides no tools on his Web site, but he does have an interesting blog called The Five Brothers Blog, which is written jointly by himself, his wife, and his five sons. Romney manages to effectively use the social aspect of the Web to bring focus on the family unit and the family values that he has made the centerpiece of his campaign.
Unfortunately for Romney's campaign, the tech savvy ends there. The candidate's MySpace page contains no personal info (like McCain's), and serves as little else than a place for him to rack up "friends" (29,560 and counting). His Facebook profile, on the other hand, contains so much information that it is simply overwhelming. Instead of a list of interests, the page offers a long winded paragraph that begins with "Besides my family..." Oh please. His "about me" section reads like an outline for his autobiography.
His YouTube channel, like most others, misses the point completely by simply welcoming visitors with a campaign ad in which Romney talks about the cesspool of contemporary American culture over a montage of crashing waves. The focus on social media and user-generated content sites is the user (it's in the title), but most candidates don't seem to understand this. Romney treats YouTube like like it's a television station.
We do feel it necessary to talk briefly about dark horse candidate Ron Paul, a Republican who is building quite a buzz through the Internet. He has an informative MySpace page, spelling out his policies and record, and links to his YouTube channel, his Flickr channel, his Facebook profile, and MeetUp.com, the site that helped spark and organize the Dean revolution. He has the foundation of a strong insurgent candidacy, with more MySpace friends than McCain (48,000+). He is also the only candidate who comes even close to being as demanded on Eventful as Barack Obama.One concern with this new digital age of campaigning is the so called "Digital Divide." According to PEW, 32 percent of American adults do not go online. This is partially due to a fear or a lack of understanding of the technology, but also due to a lack of access. Many worry that these 65 million Americans will be left out of the political process, and it's not completely unfounded. Campaigns have not given up on the tried and true methods of old just yet, but the speed, ease and cost of digital campaigning makes it much more attractive than traditional outlets such as television. Bridging this divide will be the primary challenge of the new connected political era.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Buckwheat said 12:56PM on 7-24-2007
Good post, but you might also have mentioned *why* Mitt Romney doesn't have a link to his meetup.com page: he has 1, count' em 1, meetup group in the entire country. It has 23 members.
Ron Paul, on the other hand, has almost 600 meetup groups with over 25,000 members. It's a virtual army of self-organizing supporters, and it's growing by about 400 people *per day*.
http://www.meetup.com/topics/polact/cand/
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mfolis said 3:36PM on 7-24-2007
How can you discuss anything about candidates or the internet and not mention Dr.Ron Paul? Dr.Ron Paul has a larger internet following than any other of these other potential candidates. This article is limited and ignorant if Dr. Ron Paul isn't discussed. This is just being fair for the readers. Let them know just how popular Dr. Ron Paul really is. He's got the internet vote, because his message is just plain and simple better!
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Terrence said 3:47PM on 7-24-2007
@mfolis
If you had read through the article I do mention Ron Paul at the end. Though this article is specifically about the front runners which Ron Paul clearly is not one of.
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Maria S. Weaver said 1:03AM on 8-06-2007
Where is Ron Paul? Why does the media keep ignoring him?
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Maria S. Weaver said 9:11PM on 10-05-2007
Terrence...you state: "Though this article is specifically about the front runners which Ron Paul clearly is not one of."
Clearly Terrence dear, you have hazy vision.
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