"And when it came time to vote, everyone showed up, waiting in those five hour lines to have their voices heard. This is the most engaged electorate in modern times, and encouragingly, it's the youngest generation that seems to be the most intent on participating in the system. So I look out at that landscape, and I think: yes, the country is in a terrible state, and it's going to take an immense amount of work and sacrifice and intelligence to turn things around. But the system that lets us choose our leaders seems to me to be as healthy as it has been in a long time."
Since Barrack Obama won the US presidential election I've been meaning to write a post (or two) on how the Obama digital campaign transformed the US democratic process and why this is of significant interest to 4ip.
To my mind, Obama's digital media campaign is one of the best multiplatform offerings of the year and Blue State Digital (BSD), the company behind the digital campaign, clearly have a very sophisticated understanding of the latent power of networks as well as contemporary media in general. Just like the 4ip BSD recognised how open networks provide a powerful force for evolving connections, organisation, participation and conversation rather than merely an alternative way of broadcasting to presupposed passive audience.
Just like lots of web innovations, the Obama campaign didn't actually invent anything technically new. They bolted together the most appropriate social media and participatory feature sets under the banner of a movement to create a powerful force that bled out of digital networks into the real world and ultimately into the ballet box. Without going into exhaustive detail I'll explain some of my favorite bits:
Supporters' database
On February 10, 2007, Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States in front of the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois but more significantly for me this was the day he launched MyBarackObama (MBO). MBO is a bespoke social networking site that built not just a political base but a database of supporters who could be engaged almost instantly. Unlike traditional 'support sites', this was no afterthought and no token bolt on but integral to Obama's campaign. For the next 20 months Obama grew a database of supporters from the ground up who could be queried, filtered, contacted and motivated as the situation required.
With almost 1 million individual members never has a US presidential candidate has such an opportunity to take his message directly to voters circumnavigating both special interest groups and the media.
Digital to real world engagement
Once a visitor registers as a MyBarackObama member, he or she can post blogs, join discussion groups, send each other messages, organize events, and create networks of friends, just like other social network. While the ability to contact other local voters and build support for Barrack digitally was good it was propelling users the digital to the physical that set the site apart. The tools provided for calling and walking campaigns were the most impressive.
With a walking campaign you could print out a walk list with the names, addresses and map of voters to visit with a script to help guide your conversation.
Critically the site the incentives you, through basic game mechanics, to come back and report your progress so the campaign machine could use and learn from that information. This is an online presence that begot offline behaviour that was all the more important on polling day.
Of course, fundraising was another high profile feature reportedly adding $500 million to the campaign war chest. In the style of JustGiving members were encouraged to set fundraising goals and badger their nearest and dearest for donations. Not rocket science but the right functionality in the right space at the right time.
It's the platform stupid
Without dwelling too much on my pet subject Obama wasn't guilty of trying to shoehorn functionality developed for the web onto other devices. The iPhone app was beautifully executed. Rightly, for a phone, its primary function was to encourage you to call your fiends and persuade them to vote Obama. If you wanted to donate it didn't connect you to a web page where you'd go mad trying to enter your credit card details it dialed a campaign line. The application gave you the latest media from both official and user generated sources while tailoring it for your phone's current GPS derived location.
As Obama moves from presidential elect into office we'll seen how the new administration engages with citizens in a more open and participatory manner. It's one thing to use the power of the web to inform, organise and motivate potential voters it's another matter altogether allowing the web to influence, shape and define policy.
Nevertheless, the signs are positive. Enter Change.gov, a site launched just three days after the election that's designed to continue the social media communication methods leveraged successfully in the campaign. Let's hope this mean that we see the beginnings of a highly accessible open source government.
