49 The Internet Usage in the Political Campaigns: The Obama Campaign Zeynep Hamurdan Abstract One of the most important events of 2008 was the election of Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States. His victory was stunning. Voting levels were unprecedented as 80% of the American population voted. The U.S. citizens chose the person who promised to change the status quo. We cannot explain Obama’s victory only with his intellectual background and today’s economic situation, though. Obama’s presidential campaign managers created a media campaign that was unique and successful in many ways. They used new media efficiently. They raised more than $500 million through online donations. At the end of the campaign, there were two million users, who had organized more than 200,000 campaign events. YouTube, Facebook and another 14 social network sites were also used as tools in the campaign. Many studies and analyses of this topic have said political campaigns are not going to be the same again; this campaign entirely changed media usage in political campaigns. Not only campaign managers, but also marketing researchers, advertisers and businessmen have been inspired by its success. This study consists of analytical and descriptive research. Its aim is to describe and explore Obama’s media usage, especially the new media, during the 2008 presidential campaign. This work tries to explain the reasons of the Obama team’s success. Politik Kampanyalarda Internet Kullanımı: Obama'nın Seçim Kampanyası Özet 2008 yılının en önemli olaylarından birisi Barack Obama’nın Amerika Birleşik Devletleri’nin ilk Afrikalı Amerikalı başkanı olarak seçilmesiydi. Obama, seçimlerde gerçek bir zafer kazandı. Amerika’nın oy verebilen nüfusunun %80’i oy kullanmak üzere sandık başına gitti. Amerika vatandaşları kendilerine mevcut durumu değiştireceğine söz veren kişiyi seçti. Obama’nın zaferini sadece onun donanımlı kişiliğine ve Amerika’nın o zamanki ekonomik durumuna bağlayamayız. Obama’nın seçim kampanyasının yöneticileri pek çok bakımdan benzersiz ve başarılı bir kampanya yürüttüler. İnternetin getirdiği olanakları etkin bir şekilde kullandılar. İnternet üzerinden yapılan bağışlarla 500 milyon dolar topladılar. Kampanyanın sonunda Obama’nın internet sitesinde Obama’nın başkanlığını desteklemek üzere 200 bin’in üzerinde aktivite düzenlemiş iki milyon üye vardı. Kampanya için YouTube, Facebook ve 14 diğer sosyal iletişim sağlayan internet sitesinde Obama’nın sayfası açıldı. Pek çok araştırma ve analize göre artık Amerika’da hiçbir seçim kampanyası eskisi gibi olmacak çünkü Obama’nın kampanyası, seçimlerde medya kullanımı anlayışını tamamen değiştirdi. Bu kampanya sadece seçim kampanyası yöneticileri için değil, pazarlama araştırmacıları, reklamcılar ve iş adamları için de ilham verici oldu. Bu araştırma tanımlayıcı ve analize yönelik bir çalışmadır. Araştırmanın amacı, Obama’nın seçim kampanyasındaki medya kullanımını, özellikle internet kullanımını, tanımlamak ve analiz etmektir. Böylece Obama’nın seçim kampanyasının başarı sebeplerini açıklanmak istenmiştir. iletiim : arat›rmalar› • © 2006 • 4(1): 49-66 50 • iletiim : arat›rmalar› The Internet Usage in the Political Campaigns: The Obama Campaign Since the Internet usage is increasing day by day, its importance has also increased in the community and changed the way we live and com- municate. This has also affected politics. Political campaign managers have started to build more open and interactive campaigns. During the presidential campaign in 2008, we witnessed the efficient usage of new media technologies. Especially the Obama campaign showed what could be done with the Internet’s power when people really want to cooperate with the candidate. The Obama campaign became an example for market- ers, advertisers, and businessmen as well as political campaign managers. This research aims to investigate the usage of the Internet during the Obama campaign. First, the relation between the Internet and political campaigns is discussed, and then second, the usage of the Internet’s effects is explored, and last, the internet usage during the Obama cam- paign is investigated. Literature Review Campaigns and the Internet As Internet use increases among the society, its role in political cam- paigns is also increasing. During the 2004 presidential election 10% of the American people used the Internet as a resource; this percentage increased to 33% in the 2008 election. Television is still the primary resource for a majority of people at 72%, but the main tool of campaigns is becoming the Internet (Pew Research, 2008). The increase in spending on new media technologies is another proof for this. In the 2000 presidential election, Hamurdan • The Internet Usage in the Political Campaigns: The Obama Campaign • 51 only five million dollars were spent, but in 2008, spending increased to 42.4 million dollars (Lieberman, 2006; see Gueorguieva, 2008; Bachman, 2008). After the Obama campaign’s success, it is expected that many cam- paigns in diverse areas will start to use the Internet to reach their audi- ences. The Internet’s power was discovered by political campaign managers as early as 1996 when candidates started to create informative web sites to promote their candidacy. E-mails were used as political campaign tools for the first time during the Jesse Ventura campaign in 1998 (Gueorguieva, 2008). From 1996 to 2000, campaign managers set up Internet tools mainly to display information. There was a limited amount of interactivity, and there were almost no organizational features. Credit card companies were using secure servers for transactions by 2000 and John McCain’s presiden- tial campaign benefited from online fund-raising in the 2000 election. However, during the 2000 presidential election, this tool was not used extensively. Interestingly enough, even though minor parties’ candidates did not have as many resources as major parties had, they did not prefer to use the Internet as a cost effective communication tool. While the Internet’s usage decreases the cost of the campaigns, even now, if we com- pare minor candidates with major candidates who have more resources, the latter are using the Internet extensively and efficiently during their campaigns (Gulati & Williams, 2007). In 2000, campaign managers used web sites to maintain the excitement for their campaigns and tried to build strong relations with their volunteers. For example, they offered down- loadable materials to print and distribute. Managers encouraged support- 52 • iletiim : arat›rmalar› ers to forward e-mails to their friends. Since organizational tools were not discovered fully in those years, activists operated individually (Gulati & Williams, 2007). Interactivity of the campaigns sharply increased in 2004. A few cam- paigns enabled supporters to chat with campaign leaders. Howard Dean’s campaign managers used blogs in 2003 and 2004. In addition, net-organ- ized house parties became popular; 450,000 supporters met at more than 25,000 informal gatherings which were organized through the MeetUp. com website (Herrnson, Stokes-Brown, & Hindman, 2007). The click rates of the presidential web sites doubled compared to four years earlier. Just on election night alone, 317,000 people clicked on Bush’s website while only 306,000 supporters checked Kerry’s site. Between August and November 2004, 1.4 billion e-mails related to the campaign were sent to supporters. The Kerry campaign attracted one million volunteers through his web site, while Bush drew 1.4 million e-activists. Online fundraising was also very successful, for the first time small donations made up the largest part of the total donation. For instance, Howard Dean’s campaign raised $54 million which was a major portion of its small donations gath- ered through the Internet (Herrnson, Stokes-Brown, & Hindman, 2007). Kerry collected 82 million dollars between March and the end of July, while Bush raised 17 million (see Politics Online, 2005). As another innovation during the 2004 election, the Bush campaign’s team decided to encourage its supporters to make independent door- to- door canvassing. Instead of getting a walk list from the party, they used the Internet and enabled supporters to download people’s addresses in their neighborhoods. In return, the campaign team wanted them to report the results of their activities. Besides this, the Bush campaign managers also applied micro targeting methods to reach voters. By doing so they were able to increase the effectiveness of their messages “by matching activists with target voters with whom they could be most persuasive” (Vaccari, 2008: 661). In addition to tools that were used in 2004 elections, in 2006, political campaigns took advantage of the popular social networking sites such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook (Cornfield & Rainie, 2006; see Hamurdan • The Internet Usage in the Political Campaigns: The Obama Campaign • 53 Gueorguieva, 2008). For example, during the 2006 Senate campaigns half of the Senate candidates created a Facebook account (Gulati & Williams, 2007). Videos that were uploaded to YouTube caused troubles for some of the candidates, such as Conrad Burns and George Allen (Republican sena- tors from Montana and Virginia) who were caught by cameras while mak- ing racial jokes. MySpace became partners with a nonpartisan group, Declare Yourself, and enabled its members to register to vote through its page (Gueorguieva, 2008). Furthermore, like Facebook, MySpace became a place that enabled candidates to