Howard Dean’s campaign was unlike those of his contemporaries. He utilized a relatively new media form—the social media/web 2.0 applications—in a unique and efficient way. Edward Cone wrote in The Marketing of a President: “Using a variety of Internet tools, from the electronic journals known as weblogs to social networking sites, the Dean campaign has propelled the Vermont doctor from near -anonymity to the front of the Democrat pack aiming to replace George W. Bush as chief executive of the United States.”
However, using the web to promote Dean was not a simple operation. The internet’s influence was much larger in scope than we typically think: in addition to being another venue for increasing support, such as the radio or TV, utilization of the web was also an intermediary step in the sense that it gathered and organized people who served as another, stronger venue for information. In a May 2003 post to the Dean of America weblog, Joe Trippi announced his vision that social technology and networks should be used as tools for democracy, advocacy, and fundraising. His vision became the focus of Deanspace, an open source project aimed to create the variety of Internet tools, such as blogs, forums, calendars, and RSSs (Really Simple Syndication).
Perhaps the best way to explain the success of the online campaigning is that the focus is, surprisingly, not on the Internet community— it strives to motivate people into action offline. Dean’s online campaign consisted of three elements which differentiated it from the campaigns of his contemporaries.
As we all know, one of the most crucial—and controversial—parts of campaigning is fundraising. Running for office is expensive, and it is necessary to figure out some way to get people to donate their money. Dean’s team was able to raise $7.4 million in online donations in the third quarter of 2003—a record. The notable thing to look at here is not necessarily the total amount. By using online fundraising, the big totals are not characterized by a few enormous donations (such as is common with many high profile candidates). On the contrary, with the Internet, the donations are much smaller in amount, yet much greater in quantity. The Internet enables and convinces more people to participate even though they aren’t billionaires—in general, online donors are younger. This translates into the same amount of money… with exponentially more votes. And votes are, after all, what really matters.
Dean’s campaign utilized a variety of Internet mediums, including social networks and electronic journals (blogs), to both give information and aggregate people. The first was Meetup, a service that gets local volunteers together. Supporters are able to take matters into their own hands, which has additional benefits of allowing the very busy people in Dean’s campaign to delegate responsibility. In addition to being a fantastic source of garnering support, it is incredibly efficient.
Dean’s online campaign got another boost from blogs, in which others can post opinions, support, and links for information. This is an additional way of spreading out the campaign, making the supporters (read: voters) responsible. One of the most important components of the 2004 Presidential campaign was “Blog for America, which served as a nerve center for Governor Howard Dean’s insurgent presidential campaign.”
The creators of Dean’s campaign should be applauded not simply for their use of the Internet. Their foresight and efficiency made the campaign more successful, easier to manage, and accessible to billions of people. The medium that they employed was the Internet, but the philosophy that they utilized was the idea of decentralizing control. This philosophy made it easier for us “commoners” to get more involved in communications, collaboration, conversation, deliberation, attraction, affinity, documentation, research, etc.—and isn’t that the ultimate goal of democracy, or of so called “extreme democracy“?
