Online activism may make the difference on Election Day

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Seattle - More and more, Congressional candidates are turning to the Web as a tool to mobilize their base and build credibility with undecided voters, according to findings in a new book by a University of Washington researcher.

"We're seeing a slow-but-steady increase in Web mobilizing," particularly in competitive House and Senate races, said Kirsten Foot, an associate professor of communication.

 

Seattle - More and more, Congressional candidates are turning to the Web as a tool to mobilize their base and build credibility with undecided voters, according to findings in a new book by a University of Washington researcher.

"We're seeing a slow-but-steady increase in Web mobilizing," particularly in competitive House and Senate races, said Kirsten Foot, an associate professor of communication. 

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Her just-released book, "Web Campaigning" (MIT Press), co-authored with Steven Schneider, political science professor at the State University of New York Institute of Technology, is a comprehensive look at cyber-campaigning's roots and future. A digital supplement is publicly available at http://mitpress.mit.edu/webcampaigning.

Gone are the days, Foot said, when congressional campaigns could build a Web site in the summer of an election year and leave it untouched until November. As part of that shift, campaigns no longer see their sites as cul-de-sacs. Instead, they have embraced a more dynamic approach, linking to other sites as part of a larger "Web sphere." 

Control of the next congress and, in two years, the next president, could hinge partly on who does a more effective job at harnessing the Web's mobilizing power, particularly as the influence of traditional media wane, Foot said.

The authors studied more than 3,000 campaign sites erected for two presidential primary elections and three general elections between 2000 and 2004. They interviewed campaign officials, Web site producers, and site visitors. 

The book traces the increasingly sophisticated use of the Web to build support through databases to connect and spur volunteers to host rallies and other events, contribute money, and write letters to the editor, among other activities.

The interactive nature of the Web is such that there's a constant stream of action "affecting how the campaign's message is being interpreted and whether a campaign's strategies are going to be rendered futile because they're gimmicky -- or given traction because there's a critical mass of people on the Web who say, 'You know, that's really cool and that's going to advance the political issues I'm concerned about.' " 

The research also shows that campaigns are adept at monitoring and copying each other's online moves, Foot said. The book quotes the campaign manager for an independent congressional candidate in 2000 who explained:

"We want to be able to match what other campaigns are doing, so we consistently monitor their Web sites to see what they have up…It's almost a competition with other campaigns. You want to make sure you're matching what they have up…and in some cases, maybe we could take the lead." 

Foot recounted how Howard Dean raised the bar when he came out of nowhere to mount a strong campaign using the Web in 2004. When Dean faltered, Kerry and Bush picked up where he left off. Both understood, Foot said, that they "could not have launched credible presidential campaigns without co-opting the tactics that Dean had pioneered."

Two years later, we're seeing the same intensity move "down ballot," with U.S. senatorial candidates Mike McGavick and Maria Cantwell embracing "all-out" mobilizing strategies, Foot said. They've done so, she added, because they otherwise wouldn't be perceived as "front-runner, tech-savvy candidates for Washington State." 

Building online forums, e-postcards, databases and other types of mobilizing structures into Web sites -- and keeping them updated -- take significantly more time than constructing simpler Web sites. But part of the potential pay off for making the investment is the attraction such features hold for a special breed of the voting citizenry dubbed the "influentials" because of their ability to affect others, as documented by researchers at the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, housed at George Washington University.

The influencers' role could become increasingly critical, Foot suggested, as mainstream media gradually lose audience share to other news and information sources.

Funding for the research that led to the book came from the Pew Charitable Trusts and the University of Washington.

 

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