Campaigning Online
As the Internet expands, online media claim a larger role in the world of political campaigns. First used as a new tool to sign up volunteers and solicit campaign contributions, the Internet became an integral communications tool between candidates for office and American voters in the 2000’s.
According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 55 percent of the adult U.S. population went online to participate in or to get news and information about the 2008 presidential election campaign. The study, The Internet’s Role in Campaign 2008, released in April 2009, also found that voters were using the Internet’s social-networking and interactive capabilities to follow political events in new ways. The survey showed that one in three Internet users forwarded political content to friends or family; one in five used a blog or social-networking site to express their own thoughts on the campaign.
“ A MySpace profile could excite their interest in ways they are used to,” he says. “In the same way they learn about their friends, they could learn about a candidate.”
