This week we are beginning our discussion of the use of the internet for campaigning. The role of the web in political campaigns has evolved a tremendous amount over the past four presidential election cycles, as you have read. The 2012 election was no different as online campaigning reached a new level of sophistication.
To get a sense of how much better the Obama campaign was as using their money effectively and efficiently than Romney's in 2012 take a look at this interesting article.
Also take a look at this fascinating article that Shaza shared with me (thanks Shaza!) about the conflict that Obama and the democrats now face with a dominant technological advantage that was built thought primarily open source technologies. What do they do with this technology: release it to the masses which would follow the entire purpose of open source technology, or keep it private in order to maintain your technological dominance?
Feel free to add your take on what the Obama team/Democrats should do with their technology or you can generally turn your gaze vision forward: Where do you see campaigns going in terms of their use of web based tools of all kinds? If you were advising the Democrats or Republicans moving forward what you suggest regarding how to best use these tools to win elections?
What we saw in 2008 really changed the way future politicians will go about campaigning for presidency. The Obama Administration used their creativity to full effect and creating a solid IT team to stay ahead of the competition. Through the use of obtaining hardware and software licenses they were able to establish the new standard of campaigning through the use of technology. Even though Romney spent more than Obama on IT services. Obama still was ahead of the curve by taking a cost effective approach. One of the ways that they were efficient in terms of campaigning was by using cloud computing and developing applications that catered to their needs. For example the open source tool that they used was Asgard which monitors information coming in and going out. Chartbeat shows real time data that provides very useful statistics. Also by balancing out hardware and cloud computing vendors saved Obama's team tremendous amount of money compared to Romney and also had a bigger impact. I think Democrats and Republicans moving forward can see the success that Obama has and build upon it. This is only the beginning of technological dominance in campaigning and politics in general.
ReplyDeleteI’m not very tech savvy at all, but it seems to me that the Obama campaign was able to use technology most efficiently by developing it in-house, and they were also able to use the cloud infrastructure as well. I’m not sure if this is just because they happened to have better IT guys working for their side, but it obviously worked out a lot better for them than it did for Romney’s team. I think the Internet is the single most significant innovation in the last couple decades that has the biggest implications in terms of how political campaigns operate. I mentioned it in my presentation, but the Democrats have their giant database, VAN, that has been and will continue to be an invaluable source of information for their campaigns. I think it will continue to evolve and become even more efficient, much like the Internet itself is doing all the time. Eventually, the Republicans might come around and develop something like VAN for their own use. There’s a definite digital divide between the two parties right now, but I think we’ll start to see the GOP come back in the next decade or so – they can’t stay completely in the dark forever. The Internet is here to stay, and I think it will soon become the driving force behind politics.
ReplyDeleteOne of the best things about the internet is that it allows for efficiency and intelligence to overcome sheer size and spending, as was seen in the case of President Obama's 2012 campaign. Rather than relying on volume of their investments Obama relied heavily on fluid and more advanced web technologies, by spreading their eggs out to many different proverbial baskets the Obama campaign team was able to democratize their web presence since it was spread out into many different ventures. This more broad approach is brilliant and allows for fluidity and maximizes on crowd sourcing, making the focus for the administration more on deciding which strategy is best and leaving the development up to a wider variety of programmers. In the future it would make sense for this process to continue as it provides different ways for new ideas to be developed and become accessed by the people.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the Obama team/Democrats should release their technology to the masses. The Ars Technica article emphasized that the Obama campaign developers want to release their code; however the DNC and Obama for America (OFA) are hesitant to release it because they are concerned that sharing this technology would give away a key advantage the Democrats have over Republicans. This argument is childish because the Democrats should believe their platform or candidate is a key advantage over the Republicans, not technology, which has nothing to do with policy issues. Campaigns focus way too much on who is “technologically dominant” and this aggravates me because the candidates, not their IT staff, are running for a position. I applaud the Obama campaign for being smart by choosing the lowest cost to receive more and better results. I criticize the Romney campaign for not utilizing their resources to maximize their potential. I believe that the technology should be released to the masses because this would give developers the opportunity to improve upon this technology. With the technology being available to both parties, I hope that we can finally start focusing on what really matters – the issues. We live in a digital era; therefore, I expect both parties to use technology and I predict the internet will continue being a significant tool used during campaigns, similar to television. I am thrilled that the internet will be used for political campaigns because this creates a cheaper way to run campaigns, thus, increasing the pool of candidates. Also, this creates more opportunities for third parties who rarely gain the necessary public attention to win more votes. Let’s hope the technology of the future is accessible for both candidates so we can stop wasting money into technologic systems that are already existent and begin investing in the American people and the future. If the Democrats decide to be stingy with their technology, then they will be buried in the background because “what is the point of having an advantage that will be worthless in four years?” as the FDL article pointed out. This also includes Republicans because I expect them to release their codes once they have technologic innovations as well.
ReplyDeleteThe 2012 campaigns of Obama and Romney utilized technology as a method to campaign to a wider audience, at a more frequent rate. This election, however, did prove that the Democratic Party has been hitting the nail on the head when it comes to the internet and the ways to campaign with it. Sean Gallagher states in his article that the Romney campaign spent more money on IT products than Obama’s. Obama was not as dependent on highly sophisticated IT products as Romney however, and instead the focus was on the administration aspect and people behind that software. Data analysis will become a bigger part in political campaigns because it enables teams to target and highlight useful information that will attract more voters. It is a lot like a lead or clue that will take you to the correct spot. Technology has ultimately shaped politics and given it a new dimension because it is a mode for gathering information. A politician can get their voice heard a lot easier through the internet, but with the right software and data mining technology, he or she would now know what some of the voters’ habits and tendencies are, proving to be a tool that can be very effective if used properly. It can be seen by just looking at the millions both parties spent on IT products, that the Democratic and Republican parties have taken steps forward in their use of technology. I would advise the Republican Party to enhance and create a successful method of gathering voter information like the Democratic Party did in 2012. Money is not the answer for the Republicans, it is getting the right coders behind their computers. If I was someone in the Democratic Party, I don’t think I would want to give my code and technology away to the masses, it takes away an advantage I had and my opponent did not. Since I am voter though, I would be interesting to see them release their technology, because there would be a balance, making both parties work harder and look for new avenues to “get to know” the voters.
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ReplyDeleteObama was not the first politician to use the internet in campaigning. However, he was the first to perfect and harness the true power of the web in campaigning strategies. Democrats capitalized on the openness of the internet and were rewarded greatly for their innovations. It would be a shame if they lost their technological edge if the DNC and OAF chose not to release the codes they worked so hard to create. In my opinion, the DNC and OAF should release the codes to the public so that the technology doesn't die between now and 2016. Just like the second article states, "What is the point of having an advantage that will be worthless in four years"? The Democrats would lose their edge over Republicans anyway,if they did not continue to develop their code. If Democrats funded the development of their code privately, they would also lose the financial edge they had over Republicans-spending less on campaigning while gaining invaluable information about potential supporters.
ReplyDeletePosted for Shaza:
ReplyDeleteOne of the biggest reasons why Obama’s campaign technology was so great was BECAUSE it was built on open source code and publicly accessible web hosts, which allows it to be much more versatile, and easier to work with and build upon, rather than relying on the expensive and significantly more limited tech Romney’s campaign team was using.
This is specifically why Obama’s tech crew wants the open source released back to the public. To, 1. return what was originally theirs and what was only possible because of their original work, and 2. to allow others to improve even more upon it. The tech used was revolutionary and could be useful for a number of different organizations and groups, and, believe it or not, still be improved on.
It is not “childish” of the DNC to be cautious here because of concerns that the republicans could get an upper hand on extremely effective campaigning technology – this is politics. Campaigning is everything. Despite the importance of issues, effective campaigning can easily eclipse those issues.
Yet, if the DNC refuses to release the code, it will become outdated in a year, not to mention how outdated it will be in four years. By then, it’s very likely the Republicans will have caught up anyways. Also, tech crews will be more hesitant to work with the Democrats due to the releasing issue and thus the DNC will have less support in improving its tech come next election. Thus they really only hurt themselves by not releasing the code back to the public.
However, I think the biggest issue we will see concerning online campaigning for the next elections will be the information the candidates will have access to. In class, we watched the video on Facebook’s new Graph Search and saw the infinite purposes it could be used for, including online campaigning.
Imagine how much more effective campaigning could be if the politicians knew EXACTLY what to say to get you on board with them. With your likes and interests they can construct an image that appeals to everyone – yes, despite their actual positions on platform and party issues. The wealth of information, not just available to them, but EASILY available to them, makes it the obvious choice for future candidates campaigning programs. Any politician that DOESN’T incorporate it into their campaign will be miles behind the rest.
The biggest theme we see with the internet is the amount of public information out there for the use, or manipulation, of by different people and organizations. Whether it be free, open source code, or free information on what kind of food and music should be at the next candidates fundraising dinner, it is all there. All free. All easily accessible. All very influential.
I don’t think that I makes any sense for the Obama campaign to make the database that it created public. It might be a cloud based system but it also contains numerous bits of information that most people don’t care about, the only people that might need a data base like this is the republicans and I see no reason why any campaign should weaken itself by sharing its tech with the opposition. The democrat organization is large enough that I don’t see that much negatives even on the program advancement side. Even if the code was released to the public coders would have trouble claiming it as their own work anyway and the dominance over the Republicans is more than adequate proof of the tech teams powers as anything. I don’t see campaigns using web based technology for much more then connecting with people that agree with them politically already. One of the greatest democratic functions of the internet is the ability to opt out on anything you don’t care about, which includes annoying campaigns.
ReplyDeleteThese articles are interesting, but they do not really take into account the fact that this is the second campaign for the Obama Camp. They were already able to do some trial and error that the Romney Camp had not done yet. This could account for some of the discrepancy in spending. Also the question is how big of a deal is this discrepancy in technology. The 2012 election was pretty close by most accounts it was not a landslide. The discrepancy in technology may also have to do with the Republican base. A lot of the Republican base is from rural areas of the country they are farmers many of whom have less contact with computers and the internet then those who live in urban areas. Not only may the Republican base have limited access to this type of technology it may also not be the best way to reach them. The group that both parties should be going after is independents and while the technology the Democrats used is good it really only targets registered Democrats. So how will both the Democrats and the Republicans be able to target the independents? Either group that can figure out how to do this effectively will have a true advantage. While speaking to your base is great they were probably going to vote for your party in the first place.
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ReplyDeleteThough Obama was not the first politician to use the Internet as a dominant resource in a campaign, I believe his team is ahead of the game in terms of being technologically savvy. His team did exactly what you said: they used their resources as effectively and efficiently as possible; an accomplishment Romney did not seem to have figured out yet. Their use of "the cloud" really fascinated me. Before reading this article, I had no idea of the importance of such an idea, or that it could be used so effectively and inexpensively in politics. I think that it is more important now than ever before to use the Internet in campaigns to one's advantage, and that it is becoming more and more important that politicians use the Internet correctly as an asset. If politicians don't have a team that knows what they are doing, they will not succeed. Simple as that. We as American citizens are putting more pressure on politicians election after election to utilize the Internet just as we do every day, and I think the pressure will only increase. Both Republicans and Democrats need to be able to step up to the plate of our expectations.
ReplyDeleteI hope the DNC/OFA keep the technology for party. In any other situation I'd probably feel differently because it was created using open source technology but to the victor go the spoils. This is more personal take on things than anything. Karl Rove, or the master mind behind the Bush campaign and RNC during the Bush Administration, didn't share his strategies for winning. One could certainly argue that he didn't do anything new and relied on others ideas to build his strategy.
ReplyDeleteI hope the DNC/OFA use it wisely to win back the house in the midterm elections so the administration can get some of the people's work done.
I'm all for sharing but I am not all for the type of hate and fear created by the Republican party leadership. I also think that it's incredibly hypocritical of the Republican party to use technology and science when the party elders look down their nose at it.
I think politicians will use technology in campaigns to come to locate likely unregistered supporters and micro target them with succinct, tailored messages that will activate targeted audiences whether that be to vote or to get involved.
I believe that campaigning online is going to become the new primary form of campaigning. Not only does campaigning online allow politicians to reach a huge amount of the population but it also is incredibly cost effective. It costs an incredibly large sum of money to mail literature about a candidate to thousands of peoples homes, but with one click an email with the same information can be sent costing nothing. This is especially huge for those who aren't campaigning in major elections like the presidential one. It allows anyone who has access to a computer the opportunity to get out their ideas and run in the race. I also believe that most politicians are going to use the internet to target people from now on because it was very successful for Obama, especially in targeting the younger generation.The internet is becoming more and more a part of our daily lives, and we as a society are becoming more dependent on it for quick and easy information. It will be vital that politicians begin using the internet as a tool as it is becoming increasingly popular, and increasingly important in our everyday lives.
ReplyDeleteThere is no doubt that the Obama campaign's use of internet campaigning was much more advanced than Romney's in the 2012 election. The experience for the Obama campaign from the 2008 campaign showed as they used the internet as an effective tool to reach the public and to allow for donations to come in. The progression in the efficiency in the use of the internet will surely be a topic as politics move forward into future elections. With the ability the Obama team showed in reaching the correct individuals with their technology allowed for them to do more with less. The problem then becomes the decision of whether to let these advances they made become public. As hard as it may be for them to release the work of the OFA it must be done. In my mind it is a necessity. If they keep the code they have written private they risk it being obsolete by the next election. If it is made public as the article pointed out there is the chance for critiques of the code to increase its efficiency. With a more efficient code that would build upon the previous they could still maintain their advantage.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the use of the internet in political campaigning I feel that it is only going to increase. The internets use in the past election displayed how it can have a significant impact in campaigning. With the role that it is taking there will certainly be a larger and larger emphasis placed upon the internet in the coming elections. It is a cost effective tool that much of the public uses every day in some form. With the amount of people that can be informed through the internet and the cost that can be spent to run it effectively the sky is the limit. By using their own in-house code for the previous election it only encourages those in the future to have no hesitation in creating their own system to fit the needs of their campaign. In regards to the best way for using these tools it would come down to reaching the largest audience who are going to be affected by the information they present. The different technology on the internet that allows you to find out what sites are visited by people or which sites are liked or visited often by individuals creates a target audience for a campaign. Having a team who can effectively utilize the internets capabilities to reach the people who are going to be pivotal to an election will be the need in the coming years.
The technology that the Obama campaign used in both 2008 and 2012 was not groundbreaking by any means, but the advantage that was given to the Democrats made all of the difference. Data mining, the computational process of discovering patterns in large data sets, has been used by marketing/advertising firms for years, but its use in politics added an entirely new dynamic to the process. One truth of campaigning that many people overlook is the fact that a small group of American voters also known as “swing voters” ultimately decide the outcome of the presidential election. The software developed by the Obama campaign allowed them to obtain voter information and target them with extreme efficiency. The campaign was able to run ads on sights that were high traffic areas for particular voter demographics thus capturing precious “swing” votes for the camp.
ReplyDeleteAlso, we read in Media Power in Politics that recent voter fragmentation has led to those more interested in entertainment news moving towards the internet because it allows them to avoid political news whereas without the internet they would at least be subjected to current events or political talking points. It can be reasonably argued that this changing dynamic was untapped by politicians until the 2008 election. The Obama campaign was able to tap into these, for a lack of a better term, politically “uneducated” voters and sway their decision using targeted ads or social media. These new votes, especially young voters, gave the Obama campaign an edge over his opponents. What the Democratic Party was able to accomplish using “entertainment style” news to target the less interested general public was ingenious and allowed the Obama camp to come out victorious.
As someone that believes in the idea of open source software I believe that it would be noble for the Obama administration to release the code to their software but I do not see a problem with the reluctance to release the code that was used for the development of the campaign’s software. Forcing the campaign to release their open source code is like saying that Coke or McDonalds must release their secret recipes for the mere fact that they use ingredients that are commonly available to everyone. The issue is essentially moot because I would have to believe that the GOP could easily replicate their system by the next election. Moving forward I feel that the internet will continue to be an increasing medium for political communication. My hope is that fact checking and transparency will allow voters to become educated on both sides of the argument as long as we can overcome the filter bubble we tend to live in. Worst possible scenario is that politics becomes even more dumbed down than it already is today and issues such as what the candidates ate for lunch becomes more important than their plan for the economy.
In my opinion, I believe the Democrats should release their open source technologies simply because this advantage will be short lived. Now that the Republicans have seen the true value of this strategy, there is no doubt in my mind that there are plans to use this strategy for the next election. Although releasing this technology would help out with Republican development, they will ultimately be developing their own technology anyways. If new technology will be created by both parties anyways, there really seems to be no harm to releasing this technology. In fact, releasing this technology could actually be of more assistance of harm. Based on my own experiences with open source technology, there are relatively few doubts in my mind that there will be individuals out there willing to take this technology and enhance it to increase their own job prospects. If they are able to improve upon programming that a paid team of professionals created, there's a very good chance these two parties will be very interested in hiring the aspiring coders for future campaigns.
ReplyDeleteWith this being said, I believe that the new battle we are going to see in the 2016 election is one of creative development. As the articles demonstrated, the power of a personal IT team can be astounding. The applications and coding this IT team was able to develop cut costs immensely by reducing the need for any middle man in these operations. While the Romney campaign utilized outsourcing, the Obama campaign had no need to do so because they were their own middle man. With this new technique used by the Democrats out of the bag, the Republicans will undoubtedly planning on trying to utilize it for their own means. When both parties start utilizing the strategy, this advantage of the Democrats will lead to bipartisan battle of coding. This coding will determine ability of both parties to not only save money but also increase productivity by reducing the need for divisions in workflow.
Yeah, I would have to agree the role of the web in political campaigns has evolved a tremendous amount over the past four presidential election cycles. I would agree with my classmates that Obama’s team has been is ahead of the game in terms of being technologically savvy. Over the last two elections he has used the web more effectively and efficiently as possible. That doesn’t mean that his opponents didn’t utilize the web, he just used it more efficiently. I found it fascinating that, “Obama campaign ran its own data analysis shop and had its own army of Web designers and administrators,” because that really helped them target their voters and get their message out. I another interesting fact that I didn’t know was that, “President Obama's campaign under-spent Romney's on IT products and services by $14.5 million, putting the money instead into building an internal tech team.” I like the idea of the open source software used by Obama campaign but I don’t think that they should release to because that could change the way elections are own in the future.
ReplyDeleteThe 2008 campaign completely changed political campaigns and the 2012 election confirmed it. The Obama team was able to use their resources efficiently and "smart not perfect" (Gallagher). They used the enthusiastic young volunteer who many have grown up with technology. They grew up with the Internet. Millenials who worked and volunteered for the campaign offered valuable skills for free.
ReplyDeleteThe open source technology the Obama team worked hard to achieve should be kept private. The power of online campaigning is known. If done efficiently, it can be very successful. Nonetheless, it is still fairly new. Therefore, it should be kept private so it can only benefit the Democratic Party.
Online campaigning will become a necessity in presidential campaigns but it will take longer for online campaigns to make a prominent impact in state or city elections. Most Americans are only focused in presidential and sometimes federal elections. Ideally, online campaigning will increase voter participation in city and state elections.
Political parties should get millenials to volunteer for them. Many millenials are more energized and idealistic than other age groups. Technology and the Internet are an essential part of their daily life. They know how to use efficiently. Therefore, parties should seek out millenials to participate in their campaigns.
Michelle Pantoja
After finding out that President Obama and his campaign team under spent $14.5 million on It products and services, I was shocked. It just shows you how smart the Obama campaign was which is why the president was elected for his second term (IMO). On another note, I think that the Democratic Party is very smart by keeping their "open source technology" private. It would not make sense for the Democratic Party to share their technological advantage with the opposing party (Republicans).
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, online campaigning will be the new base/ platform for the future presidential elections. So many people in our generation are using social networks now, and it only makes sense to connect with these kinds of people via internet in order to receive their vote and get them involved in politics. All in all, If the Republican party wants any success in the near future, they will have to improve their technology over the internet and get more involved with social network users.
I found these two articles particularly interesting due to the differences of the two campaigns. Obama's campaign was run efficiently and mostly online, compared to Romney's mostly outsourced campaign. What I am thinking might be the difference between the two candidates is their backgrounds. Being that Romney comes from a strong business background at Bain Capital perhaps it made more sense for his party to outsource. We must also take into account that this was Obama's second time around campaigning, so I believe his party could have seen the potential in creating this special team in order to save the campaign funds.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes down to the Obama team selling their software, I don't see this happening. It's a clear upper hand for the Democratic party, and even though they could potentially make advances on the technology by letting other people work on it, they could also potentially be letting the updated version fall into the hands of the Republican party. Just seeing as how the Republicans haven't had much success with their online campaigning in the past, I would wonder if they would be able to fully utilize this technology.
What I'm most interested in from this topic is the future of online campaigning and the use of the internet as a whole in the future. With the Facebook obsessed culture we live in now, I wonder if campaigns in the future will need teams to protect all of the information that has been put out there that the potential candidates don't want to be seen. There could be a whole new future to mud slinging that I am curious to see play out possibly. I think the GOP will eventually catch up on the use of the internet once this generation of young Republicans get more involved.