Change Is Here

Barack Obama changed the political landscape in the US and globally by harnessing the power of the Internet and maximizing its use to his advantage. His triumph may be attributed to a confluence of other factors such as his personal charisma, intelligence, determination, seeming sincerity and academic and family background. But without the Internet at his disposal, Obama could not have gone on to win the election. Thus, what seemed like an impossibility, given his demographics, was made possible by the great equalizer of our time---the Internet.
The biggest push that the Internet gave Obama was how he was able to use the Internet to raise money. Ironically though, it was the Republicans who blazed the trail decades ago in campaign fundraising by using computers to manage mailing lists of donors. But Obama used the Internet to raise over $600 million in contributions from over 3 million donors thereby destroying the concept of public financing of major political contests.
Another big factor in the Obama campaign is how they were able to use the Internet to attract and organize volunteers. With his personal experience in campaigning for the State Legislature of Illinois, he came in with a solid experience and background in grassroots organizing and Obama used the power of the Internet to effectively rally and organize his supporters. It was also crucial that he was able to use the Internet to manage his rapidly growing numbers of supporters and volunteers, a strategy not matched by McCain. Wired.com reports that myBarackObama.com chalked up some 1.5 million volunteer accounts during the campaign.
Such organizational ability coupled with Internet fundraising dramatically altered how campaigns will be waged in the future. Obama's campaign efficiently utilized web 2.0 platforms marking a dramatic turn in electoral politics in America and across the globe, shifting from old-style political machines towards online social networks. This translated to a solid mass base and record-breaking grassroots fundraising totalling more than $160m (£80m) from people who gave comparatively tiny amounts of $200 or less. More importantly, Obama's online advertising of $7.97m (£4m) was tiny and therefore cost-efficient compared to his costly TV exposure. $3.5m of the online expenses was on adwords by Google searches. The figures for Facebook was even smaller at $467,000 total, almost all ($370,000) in September.
The Internet was Obama’s lucky charm if ever he had one---outrageously cheap but with maximum impact. He succeeded because surveys indicate that around 46% of Americans used the web, email or text messaging for news about the presidential campaign, to contribute to the debate, or to mobilise others. Some 35% of Americans said they watched online political videos three times more than during the 2004 presidential election because YouTube wasn’t around yet then. Roughly 10% said they logged on to social networking sites to engage in the election.
Obama, who is inseparable from his BlackBerry, clearly understood the power of the Internet. His campaign used Facebook and YouTube, but also MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, BlackPlanet, LinkedIn, AsianAve, MiGente, Glee, among others. He knew the value of YouTube, Facebook and links to various websites and even blogging. A clip of Barack Obamba discussing on a radio show his desire to "spread the wealth" around was viewed on YouTube 2,393,392 times and this changed political marketing forever. Political news watched via Internet video clips has now gone mainstream illustrated by the huge viewing numbers for election day on CNN.com: CNN.com Live: 4.9 million live streams and an additional 6.7 million on-demand video streams.
The 2008 election also solidified the political blogger as an authoritative voice in politics. Non-partisan political sites like RealClearPolitics.com and Politico.com have also become mainstream. The RealClearPolitics.com poll average map in particular has been routinely source-referenced by the major television networks and news websites. This in turn changed news organization report on poll data and made people more understanding of variations in polls whereas outlying poll results were not given as much credence in the past.
Obama’s use of the vast powers of the Internet has transformed such strategy and will continue to evolve to become one of the most powerful weapons a candidate has in their quest to organize, rally, raise funds, and ultimately win the election.
Now, may Obama’s feat be replicated in the Philippines? Yes, but only to a certain extent. When even the United Kingdom is hard pressed to follow Obama’s act because of the lack of awareness of the public in terms of how the Internet can transform electoral politics, how much more in our Third World setting?
How can the Internet be instrumental in our political panorama when not even quarter of our entire population is able to use the Internet?
As Dr. Llana put it in his discussion on Open Service/Open Access, internet usage in the Philippines is only pegged at 20% and this is only concentrated in the urban areas. Yes, Obama’s strategies will work here in the Philippines but only to the extent that the Internet has reached the public.
In farflung rural areas where there is hardly even any Internet access, traditional grassroots organizing will still do the trick. And this lack of access to information is sadly being used by our traditional politicians to their advantage.
How can an Internet Campaign be done on the cheap in the Philippines? No, it cannot be done on the cheap given the lack of infrastructure in the country. One must invest, in the long-term, in equipment and infrastructure to wire a nationwide campaign. In the short-term, one may provide one’s political contact points with a laptop with wifi-access such as Globe Visibility, PLDT WeRoam, SmartBro and also Sun service. But again the success and effectivity of such campaign tool will depend on the reliability of the network provider.