Barack Obama’s Election Victory - an e-Democracy milestone?
Commentators are now echoing the claim made by the Sun newspaper when it stated that it secured the win in the 1992 General Election for the Conservative Party. Yesterday’s media however has now been replaced by Web 2, and instead of the Conservative Party it’s Barack Obama who is the beneficiary.
There has been lots of analysis on the topic but I found the Guardian’s Tech Podcast particulary helpful.
So did the internet secure an election victory for Barack Obama?
If it did what are the lessons for UK local government and indeed local government improvement?
The basic proposition is that Barack Obama used the internet to manage his campaign. There seems to be at least three elements to this: fund raising; supporter and voter engagement; and voter generated content.
The fund raising element of his success is perhaps his best known use of the internet but remarkable non the less. It’s worth remembering that he was up against what was previously the most powerful fund raising Democratic Party machine, the Clinton family, and the extent of his success meant that against McCain he was completely free of the constraints of federal funding. The internet model meant that, in addition to traditional large funding donations, the campaign benefited from a huge number of small sub-hundred dollar contributions which, in addition to financing, strengthened support and created a sense of ownership. An American friend and contributor testified that once registered in the system you were constantly kept in touch with what was going on with further requests for funding (money bombs) hitting you at specific points in the campaign.
Supporter and voter information is key to the whole process and the very first thing you see when you go the Obama website is the registration page. A limited amount of information is asked for, but it provides the campaign with the essentials for supporter and indeed voter mobilisation. The website is impressive but behind it are a whole series of Web 2 features including: mybarackobama.com; facilities to organise your own local campaigning; and mobile phone sign ups and feeds. All these tools are designed for one thing - to get Barack Obama elected. A supporter can go onto the site and get a list of potential voters and start campaigning. As one contributor to the Guardian podcast pointed out it takes $1.50 to get a voter out using a mobile phone compared to $20 to $30 using traditional methods.
Numbers bear witness to the success of the approach. The site generated 1.5 million members who self organised into 35,000 activist groups. The scale of the success will clearly transform thinking for American elections and will inevitably have a impact worldwide. The opportunities are obvious. New forms of political interaction, liberation from the constraints of traditional media (not least in this country highly centralised media ownership and control) and connecting with a whole generation who, until this election, appeared lost to participative democracy. The threats are also apparent however. While the generation of “digital natives” find the new media appealing its not equally familiar and accessible to all groups. It also provides an obvious and already sadly well used route for groups of extremists not sharing the democratic ideals of the Obama campaign.
The election should provide a boost to the work the IDeA has already done on e-democracy and the work of pioneering authorities like the London Boroughs of Richmond and Redbridge (see Redbridge for a particularly interesting example of what can be achieved in this area).
I am the Director of Services at the 
As someone who had followed the campaign by Barak Obama closley, and who has relative in the States, who were excited about his leadership and the communication channels he commanded, I found this article both interestig and thought provoking. Whether you like his brand of politics or not, the man has inspired people of all ages to re-engage with politics, and to defy the stereotype that nowadays, apathy is the mantra. I was inspired by Barak and what he achieved, but as your blog points out, he did this in a very structured way, utilising new technologies and reaching wider and varied audiences across numerous cultures, economic classes, faiths and age groups. One might think that Barak appealed only to younger people by using the web and text messaging for instance, but I head an American political commentator say that under further scrutiny, the figures for the middle age range are impressive (e.g. 30-50years old)and generated a lot of money.
The immediacy of new technology and new media forces us to think about communication, who can hear the message and how it can be presented. Reaching people who might otherwise be physically isolated or disenabled from social networking will have a profound affect not just on the way we persuade people (e.g. to engage, and to vote) but also how we do business, how we influence and lobby and shape views and services.
Im not a technocrat, but I can see that a well designed site/campaign can make people realise that they can make a difference - be that by donating dollars or diatribes.
One of the most impressive things I saw during the campaign was the Mammas for Obama fund raising - women with children having child caring coffee mornings to raise money for their president elect. The digital narratives or digital diaries have helped people like that share views, and share dreams. It is they who can reclaim the tools that have hitherto been exploited by extremists groups. In Germany, digital diaries are used to great effect by migrant workers, in aiding their integration, in helping host communities to understand the trauma of passage and the aspirations and dreams of new arrivals. Digital juries have long been used by the Hansard Society to engage young and disenfranchised people on key issues, and feeding the results directly/simultaneously into MPs sitting on Select Committee enquiries so they can use the evidence in their policy recommendations.
The IDeA is leading the way on use of some of these tools to promote democracy and engagement, but like hedges that can overgrow, they need to be pruned, monitored for healthy development, and given tender loving care. The Beacon COPs are an example of trying to unite more traditional learning and knowledge models with new technology - and I for one hope that an exciting new hybrid species can emerge.