SaysDave.com

Accessibility is the hallmark of the internet.

How does the public access to weblogs (blogs) affect our culture? Recently, online pundits have considered the effect that blogs have had on our nation’s political process. The presidential election of 2004 was the first to receive significant effect from bloggers, rather than just from those pseudo-journalists who report live from the national political conventions. Both major parties, the Republicans and Democrats, as well as the second-tier parties made full and good use of the low-cost (free) and concurrent interaction afforded by the blogosphere. I call this concurrent interaction because blogging allows readers immediate access to posted articles.

Just as soon as an article is posted to a blog, by the blog’s author, it is available to be read by anyone, anywhere in the world using no technology more sophisticated than a web browser.
Not only blogging, but also branding and the creation of a vertical mass of support came on the wave of digital activism in the 2004 election. Gradually, as with most new media, the net, blogging in particular, became an essential component of American politics.

However, like a hometown newspaper, yet to a global venue, the internet served the purposes of the candidates, themselves; the professional journalists in addition to their traditional outlets of television, radio, magazines, and newspapers; the active political voices: pollsters, pundits, and activists, both organized and individual, and citizen individuals, in addition to offering front yards and automobile bumpers and letters to the editor, through digital publications, including blogs and their follow-on comments and feedback tools.

An excellent example of the net’s political power netted candidate, Vermont Governor Howard Dean a half million dollars in a digital campaign to raise donations in competition with a forthcoming Republican fundraiser. The Republican fundraiser, a $2,000-a-plate luncheon netted a quarter million dollars in donations, while in the same time, the online Dean campaign netted a cool half million dollars. Also of note, the Republicans touched only 125 guests (donors), while the Dean campaign touched 9,700 donors.

Not only did the Dan campaign raise significantly more money and tap almost two magnitudes more supporters, it did so for less cost and effort.

Dean’s campaign slogan, “You have the power,” reflected not only poetically, but also, directly, the influence of digital politics.

However, by the time of each major party’s convention, the lessons of Howard Dean’s campaign were already forgotten–or maybe they were yet to be internalized–because at nether convention were leading candidates’ website URLs prominently displayed or promoted.

Further campaigns will likely play out in the digital arena, more so than in the past. Driven by a desire to promote populist values and inclusion of an increasingly diverse electorate, candidates’ managers will seek to parlay the low-cost, immediate publication of simultaneous interaction services of the net; blogging is but the first of the new technologies to be developed.