Online Social Networking, Political Campaigns, and You

[Justin]

As the Co-Founder of We Op-Ed, this will seem at best a self-reflexive, and at worst a self-defeating question to pose: does the internet, specifically the social networking boom, for all its potential as a means to connect to information and one another, pose an overall deleterious effect on our offline human relations?

Since 2004, when Howard Dean utilized his online popularity to create a short-lived but nonetheless significant political momentum, candidates have sought this new-fangled medium as the keystone to amass "grassroots" support, to organize, and most importantly, to raise money. Candidates like Barack Obama, whose campaign has been highly praised for raising online donations from over 1million supporters, use their websites and other social networks (YouTube, Myspace, Meetup, etc.) as a complement to their traditional campaign strategies and ample mainstream media coverage. More interesting, though, are the candidates that do not received the same level of attention from cable and network news and must rely solely on their online presence in order to stay in the race at all.

The embodiment and most successful of the latter group of candidates is Rep. Ron Paul. For the past year, in newspapers, magazines, and news programs, Paul's campaign has not be mentioned without the requisite acknowledgment of his overwhelming online support. CNN's Jack Cafferty said Paul's supporters were the stuff that "politicians dream about". On November 5, 2007 (Guy Fawkes Day), Paul set the single day fundraising record, amassing $4.3million online, only to break this record the next month with a single day spike of $6million (Dec. 16th, the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party). All of a sudden, this was no longer just a campaign, but touted widely as the "Ron Paul Revolution". Paul's online support now appears a momentarily exciting yet altogether fruitless phenomenon.

As most of you have noticed, Ron Paul didn't win a single primary state. He finished with only 4.5% of the popular Republican vote and a whopping 17 delegates (1%). Clearly, there remains a glaring divide between online support and actual, real-world votes. Just to give you a few more stats on the scope of his online based support:

MySpace: 130, 691 friends (#1 for GOP candidates)
Facebook: 83,878 supporters (#2 only to Obama)
Meetup: 106,092 members (#2 for all candidates)
YouTube: 49,287 channel subscribers (#1 for all candidates)
- these statistics can be found for all candidates on TechPresident

While this level of online support may have earned Paul tens of millions of dollars, only 720,082 voters chose his name in the voting booth. In the words of Bo Diddley in the movie Trading Places, "In Philadelphia, it's worth 50 bucks". Or to use another expression, Paul's prodigious online support and $2.00 will buy him a cup of coffee. To be fair, Paul did win one primary, January's Myspace Presidential Primary in which he bested the Republican field with 37% of the vote.

So what explains this discrepancy between internet action and old fashion political action? Most likely Paul’s online supporters represent the internet’s version of a “vocal minority”, easily organized via the web but not (yet) influential in the political process. They were predominantly young, fed up with the status quo, and experiencing their first foray into politics through a nontraditional medium which carried them further into the political scene than they would have been otherwise. One could also contend that there is an inherent lag time, during which this new form of political action becomes fully realized and digested. This is a fair argument, but could the realworld/internet action discrepancy reveal a fundamental and socially crippling effect of online engagement on our real world interpersonal relations?

Inarguably, the internet and all its tools (email, instant messaging social networks, news, blogs) provides a facile means of communication, but does the ease with which we now communicate diminish the emotional/physical significance of this communication. To give you an example, I just checked my profile on Facebook and I have 235 "friends". I can guarantee that I haven't made any contact or put any effort into at least 40% (easily could be a lot higher) of these friendships other than the one click of the mouse that it took me to accept them as my friend. That is not as troublesome to me as the fact that these many pseudo relationships take something away from online friendships with my actual close friends -- for social networking actions takes little effort and time and therefore thought. Online society has a leveling effect -- when viewed through our monitors every person is created equal. We each become digitized and pixelated to one another, as we perceive online society from within the margins of our individual virtual spaces -- our Myspaces -- in which our relationships get numbered, filed, and used as adornment. And if this is how we treat our online friends, you can’t expect politicians to be treated any better.

To bring this all together for discussion:
- How do you account for the disproportional relationship between online political support (donations, etc.) and election results?
- As the use of social networking for political campaigns is still in its infancy, do you have any predictions for what we might see in 4 years? 8 years?
- How have online communities effected personal relationships offline, in your opinion?

[Gray Kane]

I appreciate the way you've developed this perspective, but I have to disagree, Justin--at least to a certain extent. You're right that the vast majority of our online relationships are so superficial that they're as meaningless as a conversation with a stranger on the bus. But that's exactly the right comparison. Out of the vast real-time world of people that you encounter in your offline life, what percentage of them become important emotional investments? I doubt the number surpasses your experience online.

What percentage of offline voters take the time to learn the candidates' policies before entering the voting booth? It seems that a large percentage of offline voters make their decisions based on name recognition, party affiliation, and whether or not they like the candidate's face.

While the disproportional relationship between online political support and election results is definitely there, in the case of Obama that difference is shrinking. Ron Paul's situation was more radical because of his libertarian pledge to undo Bush's assaults on civil liberties. For those who care, the call to protect civil liberties and to restore the power of the Constitution over the Oval Office is a powerful one. His supporters likely donated more per individual than Obama's supporters donate.

Also, you can't forget that in many ways the difference between what happens online and what happens offline is the difference between hope and belief. A lot more people hoped for than believed in a Ron Paul presidency. That also would have been true for Obama were it not for the effect of his online fundraising on his ability to introduce himself to the American voter, his charisma (that Ron Paul did not have), his win in Iowa and its transformation of hope into belief, and Clinton's disorganized campaign of loyalty-based hirings (a problem that Bush had in his choosing people like Michael Brown for positions like director of FEMA or Harriet Meyers for the Supreme Court).

With each new year, more people enter online communities, and more technologies arise to facilitate their entrance. The more we can carry these communities with us as we drive, take a walk, wait in line, etc., the more social networking will have an effect on voting, political activism, etc.

My online communities haven't replaced my offline life so much as informed it. I have more information (both fact and misinformed rumor) to feed my conversations and thereby to enrich my offline relationships. As a result of my online productivity, I'm a better communicator with more to say, and so too are my friends due to their online engagements. We've become members of a highly educated and socially engaged public in ways that would have taken far more effort, perhaps more than I would have been willing to give, prior to the advent of the internet.

I hope this answer helps to get the conversation going. Great topic as usual, Justin.

[Justin]

Gray, your response is what I should read when I experience any bouts of disillusionment for the internet, its potential, and for Weoped amidst it all. I particularly liked the distinction you make between online and offline interest as one of hope and belief. Very well put, and it does rightly explain the discrepancy between online/offline support of both Ron Paul and Obama.

Also, I have to give credit to these online networks, specifically after I found out that there was a recent wave of protest on www.barackobama.com, concerning many of the recent positions Obama has taken in his move towards a "centrist" platform. The Obama campaign may have done a great job providing an online network, but they can't control it, and it's heartening to catch glimpses of populist uprisings online.

The topic of this debate has also been addressed in my interview with the authors of Millennial Makeover. They offer a similar explanation of the Ron Paul internet phenomenon and its lack of offline translation. I hope your response gets this conversation going as well. Also, if you're interested, the authors I interviewed (Morley Winograd and Michael Hais) have joined Weoped and will be ready to jump into any discussions that arise in the comments section of the interview. Their research focuses not only on the young generation, but on the impact that these communities will have.

[Justin]

Rod, as always you make some very solid points. I like how both you and Gray concisely explain Obama's online support, which translates into real votes, in comparison to candidates like Dean and Paul. I wonder if Senator Feingold could bring the inspiration in 2012 like you mentioned, or if he'd end up being the Eugene McCarthy of his era.

I admit that my original debate post, above, is slightly sprawling, and I remember having to excise large chunks of it that ended up sounding more like a Dennis Miller rant, if Miller had ingested stimulants. In general I'm not as skeptical of online communities as I make myself out to be. Hell, I started this one. But I do get the sense that we and the media have been making far too big a deal of them, because like most overblown topics of focus, we don't fully understand their existence, or at least I don't. There may be potential for social and political organization, some of which we've seen come to bear in this election already.

I guess I have just never been very impressed with sites like Myspace and Facebook. Like people who can't understand why anyone would want to play or watch golf, I just haven't caught the bug that I hear about from some of my friends who say they are constantly on Facebook. What are people doing on there? And more importantly, what are they getting out of it?

And, Ron, I can always use another friend. Tried surprising you on facebook with a friend request, but trying to search for "Ron" didn't do the trick. But I'm calling your bluff: if you're a facebook member, please feel free to request my friendship.

[Justin]

I'll take a look at Gladwell's book. I've experienced many a dinner conversation throughout which someone tries to explain the point of the book to me. After all of these, I still have no idea what they're talking about, so it's probably a good idea that I read it for myself. That's for the recommendation, my Weoped friend.

[Gunner Sykes]

Ron Paul was skewered by the mainstream media. If he had been given the respect he was due, or even treated fairly, I believe the election results would have been very different. The media did a fine job of portraying him as some sort of crank or crackpot.

The internet is still primarily dependent on the written word, and the written word demands a level of involvement that television does not. Most television viewers accept the strange notion that the opinions of people like Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly have value.

The Dean campaign was killed by television, too, with the constant bombardment of viewers with the good old Dean scream image. Television is a passive medium. People sit in front of it and accept the pablum they are fed.

I do think social networks like Youtube or Facebook (a great name-- present whatever face you choose) are dehumanizing to an extent, but not nearly as much as Google, Digg, Reddit and the like that glorify the popular. Somehow, I think we can do better than Top Ten Cities With the Best Sanitation Systems and crap like that which seems to rise to the top of their rating system.

Maybe any candidate silly enough to ask the public to think is doomed.

[Gunner Sykes]

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