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Much like everything else the web is changing politics. In 2004 blogs and bloggers changed the way campaigns and political news was covered. Citizen journalists became the craze and blogging went mainstream.

Two years later the internet is a different place. We have Web 2.0, a burgeoning bubble, video craze, search engine marketing, viral marketing, and social network and media sites. How do these changes and enhancements affect the political landscape and upcoming elections?

Let’s start with the recent article from Tom Zeller Jr in the New York Times. In, “A New Campaign Tactic: Manipulating Google Data“, Tom discusses the plan of Chris Bowers of MyDD.com to “Google Bomb” republican candidates running for election next week.

“Fifty or so other Republican candidates have also been made targets in a sophisticated “Google bombing” campaign intended to game the search engine’s ranking algorithms. By flooding the Web with references to the candidates and repeatedly cross-linking to specific articles and sites on the Web, it is possible to take advantage of Google’s formula and force those articles to the top of the list of search results.”

Not a bad idea actually and I imagine by 2008 this will be a campaign tactic adopted by the Parties’ growing arsenal of IT geeks. They will claim it’s “Search Engine Optimization“, which in a sense it is. But is it ethical?

Everybody has heard of social networks like MySpace and Facebook and social media sites like YouTube. These technologies are excellent facilitators of campaigns and viral marketing efforts by candidates running for election.

Grant Ross recently wrote an article for CIO.com on this very subject entitled, “Is MySpace the Next Killer App in Politics ?“.

He writes,

“The reach of MySpace and YouTube now extends to the White House: Social network sites are reshaping how candidates run campaigns, said experts at a recent conference on social networking, hosted by the George Washington University Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet.”

For candidates these days social networks and social media are must haves on the campaign trail. If you don’t have a MySpace page and your opponent does it is possible they are reaching millions more people than you. Many politicians have MySpace pages, including John McCain and John Edwards.

MySpace recently started a voter registration drive to lure their members into registering to vote and participating in campaigns and elections. You can listen to PodTech’s interview with Jeff Berman, Sr Vice President of Public Affairs, about its partnership with Declare Yourself and the effect of social media in the political landscape .

Facebook.com took it upon themselves to create profiles for 1400 candidates with all the information about them. Currently about 300 are actively updated by candidates and / or their staff.

Searching for candidates on YouTube yields thousands of results ranging from clips, parodies, debates, and commercials. All the candidates have podcasts as that has become a must have for any candidate running for any position. Taking a look at the iTunes store today reveals a featured section on ‘Political Podcasts’. Clicking on this takes you to a directory of political related podcasts of which a majority are produced by the clients campaign themselves.

These tactics of using social media and social networks often spawns valuable viral marketing efforts. As we have come to see these viral marketing is about impossible to plan but when it works it works great creating grassroots and almost cult-like followings. Although sometimes these viral spreads can be detrimental to a campaign. You may have heard about Kerry’s remarks yesterday concerning Iraq and our troops. The next day he is the two of the top searched items on Technorati, the most popular blog search engine. He’s also one of the hottest tags at the moment.

John Edwards has done the best at embracing the web and new media. He’s got his website, a Flickr account, a blog, podcast, videos, he’s on YouTube, uses Frappr. On a recent campaign trip in Connecticut he asked to meet with bloggers rather than the mainstream press. He answered questions from one for a video blog that then got posted on YouTube. He’s got Yahoo! Groups in every state. Hell, he was even on Rocketboom! And, he’s got a form where you can sign up to be a ‘citizen journalist’.

“Through blogging, video blogging, and podcasting, citizen journalists provide information and insights from many sources in addition to traditional media sources. We at the One America Committee embrace citizen journalism, and we encourage you to become a citizen journalist if you aren’t one already.”

What are the advantages for politicians to embrace social media and social networks? By using means ‘New Media’ provides the cost of campaigning is decreased dramatically. The ability to reach millions of people using free social networks and social media distribution the message can be distributed for free. Another factor is that it can create viral campaigns that extend the grassroots ideology to the web where the message is spread faster and louder, albeit with far more uncontrollable noise.

Here in Iowa they are still stuck on old fashion campaigns. Of our two gubernatorial candidates (Chet and Jim) one has a blog and podcast. The podcast has two posts and has not been updated since July. The blog is by the campaign staff and has about ten posts, although it hasn’t been updated in over a month (and we are in the home stretch of the campaign). Embarrassing.

Tags: politics, web, media, campaign, viral marketing, social media, kerry

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