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In 2006, I founded ZapBoom Consulting, which specializes in the analysis of how digital
tools like cell phones and the Internet can be used in social change campaigns in developing countries. I have
researched and written reports on topics ranging from 
candidates treat the Internet as a soapbox and tip jar, but it's so much more
Matt Bai writes in this week's New York Times Magazine about how the presidential candidates still don't understand how the Internet works, even after Howard Dean:
- ...It seems clear that the candidates and their advisers absorbed the wrong lessons from Dean’s moment...these things can’t really be orchestrated. Dean’s campaign didn’t explode online because he somehow figured out a way to channel online politics; he managed this feat because his campaign... became channeled by people he had never met.... In the new and evolving online world, the greatest momentum goes not to the candidate with the most detailed plan for conquering the Web but to the candidate who surrenders his own image to the clicking masses...
Bai's point isn't new, but it is true. Most of the front-runners still think the Internet is a huge soapbox, a many-to-many medium only in the sense that their message goes out to millions of people and lots of money comes back.
But the Internet isn't about broadcast, it's about listening. You can't build a wave. You can only hope to inspire one and have the savvy to ride it all the way into November.
Candidates should be tapping into the concerns of the voters, rather than pushing their own concerns onto them. This is the old "look-at-me" politics which asks voters to worship the candidate. The Internet encourages "look-at-you" politics which empower the voter to become the center of the campaign.
Voter empowerment is the real message of the Internet and the candidate who realizes it will have an army of passionate voters willing to fight for him (or her), because he is the candidate who helped them realize that they had a voice.
View from a Sixties Woman
I agree with your comment about voter empowerment. Can a voter be empowered without candidates who are willing to use the Internet in the way you describe?
For effective Internet communication, the politician has to have a desire to communicate and listen to others. It seems that many from the current field of candidates of both parties do not show evidence of such a desire. Though some candidates solicit a connection to voters via the Internet, the candidates do not seek dialogue. It is disappointing that the technology is not better understood by the group from whom the next US president will be chosen. Or is it understood by the group who then choose to reject a true dialogue? Too risk? Too unpredictable?
MGE