The 2008 Presidential election signified a revolution, most notably in that the United States elected its first African American President. It was also the first election which saw a female candidate running head to head against an African American man in the primaries. Yet the election broke ground in another significant way, for it was the first election that used the Internet and email in a major way.
The Internet has been around, in general use, since the early 1990s, yet it was only in the late 2000s that politics finally harnessed its power to communicate a campaign’s message. The Internet was first used in a significant way, politically, in the Howard Dean campaign in 2004, when Dean’s campaign, run by political consultant Joe Trippi, used email to raise campaign contributions from a wide range of voters. The Internet came back to bite Mr. Dean, however, when a clip of his over-the -top “Dean scream” speech at a rally was played endlessly on television and the Internet, making him a comical figure to many voters.
Yet Howard Dean’s campaign set the stage for wider use of the Internet as a cost-conscious and also incredibly powerful communications tool. The Obama campaign used interactive tools on the Internet to reach voters with an ever-evolving political message, responding quickly to political attacks with new messages and counter attacks. The campaign’s use of YouTube was groundbreaking. According to Mr. Trippi, in the New York Times, the Obama campaign put out 14.5 million hours of programming on YouTube. That level of paid advertising on network television would have cost close to $50 million. The Obama campaign’s effective and budget conscious use of the Internet proved revolutionary and just plain smart. Obama’s win over his republican opponent John McCain (who was forced to admit he was computer illiterate and didn’t use email) signified a major change in the way technology is used today and in how political campaigns should be run.