December 2014 – University of Massachusetts Amherst, University Without Walls, Reflections on Technology – by, Pamela Leavey

How Online Democratic Innovators and Influencers Shaped Election 2004 and the Future of Internet Politics

            In the winter/spring of 2003, liberal and progressive political innovators and early adopters[1] had taken to the internet to protest the Iraq War and discuss the pressing need to defeat George W. Bush in the 2004 election. Political blogs, online discussion groups and political forums were a relatively new form of communication born of the computer and the internet in the late 1990’s, which grew out of the first online communities similar to Usenet.[2] While both sides of the political aisle adopted this form of communication, democratic operatives and activists had a mission steeped in their early adoption, to use blogs and forums to take on the “Republican Noise Machine”[3] whose primary outlet was Fox News, but included much of the mainstream media of the time. These technological innovations in digital communication rose in prominence to shape the liberal/progressive online activism in the 2004 election cycle and the future of politics online.

Many of the innovators and early adopters participating in this new lectern of political activism embraced the open sourced technology that Vaidhyanathan refers to in Open Source as Culture/Culture as Open Source.[4]  Popular open source platforms that “enable and empower e-mail, the World Wide Web, IRC (Internet Relay Chat), and just about every activity on the Internet all emerged from community-based project teams, often ad hoc and amateur,”[5] became the platforms for online communities which proved vital to Election 2004. These open source platforms provided the vital technology for political blogs and forums, with programs like Google Blogger, Word Press, Moveable Type, and TypePad, as well as open source forum platforms. Candidates as well as independent bloggers utilized open source technology to encourage political discussion online.

Through this technology, political campaigns and other partisan groups and organizations, created online communities that facilitated a new opportunity for candidates to engage with supporters and undecided voters, as well allow supporters to discuss vital topical political issues. Individual bloggers swiftly became citizen journalists[6] and commentators, in the midst of the election cycle, reporting on political news, campaign events and speeches, and the culture of remixing political news into mashup videos, recordings, and graphic memes[7] became a popular mode of political expression as people indulged in new modes of cultural sharing.

Pew Research Center’s Internet Project called Election 2004 “a breakout year for the role of the internet in politics.”[8] Statistics show that “75 million Americans – 37% of the adult population and 61% of online Americans – used the internet”[9] during the election cycle to access information about the candidates and political news, as well as discuss and debate the candidates and issues online and via email. The internet also proved to be a popular mode of direct participation as candidates websites provided webpages for grassroots volunteers to sign-up and volunteer for campaigns both online and on the ground. Research shows that the internet offered “greater precision in campaign targeting at each stage of the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) process: locating likely supporters, establishing communication lines with them, delivering messages to them, affording them opportunities to help the campaign, and making sure that they registered and cast their ballots.”[10] Finally, the internet also facilitated an easy means for making political contributions to the candidates with pages on candidates websites, set up specifically for donations.

As an innovator and early adopter in online politics, I was actively engaged in Election 2004 and Election 2008. My career as a political blogger and social media activist began in the winter of 2003, as Election 2004 was just beginning to heat up with online debates focused on the various Democratic candidates. At this time, Howard Dean had emerged as the internet savvy favorite, while John Kerry, the eventual Democratic nominee, had little presence on the internet.

As technologies grew in scope and use in the political arena, it was the innovators, early adopters,[11] and opinion leaders,[12] who paved the way for the future of online politics with their “desire for civic engagement.”[13] On the heels of successfully self-marketing my online business for the past five—six years, I began to get involved in online social activism and political conversation about the upcoming 2004 election. Noticing that Howard Dean was getting a great deal of attention online, and my preferred candidate, John Kerry was not, I decided that if I had been successful in marketing my own business online, with $120,000 in gross sales in 2002, then I could successfully market my support for John Kerry online as well. I began to write about Kerry on online discussion boards and soon I was invited to write on the first unofficial John Kerry for President Blog.[14]

It would take a few months for the Kerry campaign to catch on to harnessing the power of the voices of the innovators and early adopters of the 2004 election, the bloggers and online activists who would influence many potential voters over the course of the election cycle. Nonetheless, the Kerry campaign did catch on, with the help of a few outspoken volunteers, including myself who had coalesced on various online Democratic forums and unofficial blogs in support of his candidacy. My role as an innovator in Election 2004 swiftly positioned me in the midst of the Kerry campaign, as the campaign blog’s “First Blogger,” as I began writing for the Kerry campaign blog in the late summer of 2003. My skills garnered from running an online business were quickly adapted to other responsibilities for the campaign. I organized early online volunteers, distributed campaign talking points to the volunteers, and I was a key moderator for the Kerry campaign blog and forum from fall 2003, through the primary season into the Democratic National Convention. In this capacity, I had a wide variety of participatory experience on the effects of the internet on the early stages of Election 2004, which afforded me a unique understanding of how the innovators and early adopters on the internet helped shape and define Election 2004.

Online campaign blogs that allowed comments and discussions on blog posts, as the John Kerry Campaign Blog did, gave “ordinary citizens a better chance at being heard than such control-heavy media as television”[15] and other traditional media. Suddenly, ordinary Americans had the opportunity to speak their minds directly to the candidates and their staff and express their opinions online on important campaign issues. Online activists could feel for the first time that their voices were heard in ways they had never experienced in past presidential elections. They were able to feel as though they were part of the campaign in a much more direct way than ever. Indeed, this was evidence that the Internet was “transforming the basic vehicles for voluntary political action on a broad scale.”[16]

As the Kerry campaign’s first volunteer blogger, I was also a political novice, small business owner and single mother. Regular visitors to the campaign blog, who read my posts and conversed with me in the comments section, came away with the sense that Kerry’s campaign was open to the opinions of the online activist. The media had noticed this attribute with Howard Dean’s early use of the blog as a website tool for his campaign. As the media primarily focused on the Dean campaign’s use of online activists, volunteer bloggers, and his fundraising prowess online, the Kerry campaign was steadily building their own team of online activists, under the wire, who would prove to be of great value in Kerry’s successful bid for the Democratic nomination.

In the early days of the Kerry campaign blog, fall 2003, with access to the back-end moderation panel, I worked with the blogmaster Dick Bell, to reach out to members who had signed up to comment on the campaign blog. With a discerning eye towards commenters who seemed to have genuine interest in the campaign, we courted members to work on various independent democratic blogs and forums. The goal was to utilize volunteers to share talking points distributed by the campaign. This was uncharted and risky territory for a presidential campaign, trusting the dissemination of talking points to a small contingent of grassroots volunteers.

As the contingent of grassroots volunteers worked behind the scenes as socially integrated online opinion leaders[17], it became clear to Kerry’s campaign staff that there was merit in utilizing the internet as a means of campaign communication. The majority of the group of “knowledgeable and well informed[18],” opinion leaders were well-informed news consumers who used their “personal influence to help[19]” others form positive opinions about John Kerry as well as encourage them to volunteer for the campaign. As the group of volunteers, I managed grew in numbers, we shifted from utilizing an email list to disseminate campaign information, to a private, independent open source forum for members of the team.

Within a short time, it became evident that the campaign would benefit from a similar online forum, separate from the campaign blog, and I reached out to Kerry’s campaign staff to propose an online campaign forum that a team of volunteers would run, under the campaign staff’s supervision. As soon as the campaign approved the proposal, the campaign installed the open source forum technology on the campaign website, and a private section of the forum was set up for the volunteers and campaign staff to continue their work behind the scenes. With this forum, the campaign had widened its scope in the use of technology to enable another facet of communication for internet users interested in the campaign.

Both the blog and the forum provided valuable information to the campaign on the pulse of opinion on the candidate and the issues that were important to supporters. Volunteers would report to staff on topics they felt were of importance to the staff and the candidate. There was a great feeling of democracy in action distilled among those who participated in this grassroots effort for the Kerry campaign. While dissent and debate were inevitable parts of the conversations on both the campaign blog and the forum, volunteers labored to change the hearts and minds of those dissenters not clearly identified as internet trolls.

The discernable shift in political campaigning that had primarily been an on the ground operation, shifted to a dual focus, on the ground and online. Common sense guidelines in communication online were necessary for the grassroots volunteers who were, for all intents and purpose, the face of the campaign and the candidate. Just as a verbal gaffe made by a candidate could prove troublesome, so too could the words of volunteer or unaffiliated commenter, be taken out of context and used as political ammunition.

Online campaign platforms like emails, blogs and forum quickly became source for fodder in the news and for political opponents in the primaries and then the general election. While the internet could be seen as a boon to political campaigns in the 2004 election, they were still uncharted territory and every candidate’s campaign staff was learning on the fly how to harness and utilize this new technology effectively. No one had written the book yet on campaigning online.

The concept of independent political blogs was relatively a new phenomenon that was just taking hold in the 2004 election cycle. The 24/7 news cycle was not quite in full swing during the 2004 election cycle, as it is today, however, it did not take long for independent bloggers to latch onto to an item found while browsing a campaign blog or forum and disperse it online. If newsworthy, the media would swiftly latch on to story as well, because members of the mainstream media were reading[20] and paying attention to what was said on campaign blogs and independent blogs as well. However independent blogs were making inroads, some bloggers quickly rose in influence as both media, and campaign staff paid heed to what bloggers were saying outside of the sphere of the candidate’s blogs. In fact, the influence of leading democratic leaning blogs had enough impact for the 2004 Democratic Convention to be the first national political convention to give press credentials to bloggers, as well as the media.[21]

There was a consensus among democratic and progressive bloggers that the Republican Noise Machine essentially controlled the media. The goal for many left leaning bloggers was to drown out that noise machine through the emergent form of independent media, blogs. For democratic news seekers on the internet, these blogs provided an independent news source beyond the republican controlled media, which often presented a conservative bias towards political issues. Not only were liberals building their own brand of democratic news outlets in the popular medium of blogs which blossomed rapidly during the 2004 election cycle, they were also building social communities online with the express purpose of bringing democrats together to discuss the ideals and issues that were important to them.

Research shows that in 2004 election cycle, “52% of internet users, or about 63 million people, said they went online to get news or information about the 2004 elections.”[22] Of that 52% of internet users, 11% or “more than 13 million people, went online to engage directly in campaign activities such as donating money, volunteering, or learning about political events to attend.”[23] While these statistics show a substantial increase in internet use between Election 2000 and Election 2004, it is worthy to note that the democrats held a social edge in the 2004 election. The Pew Research Internet Project report on the 2004 election shows “Kerry supporters in the internet population were more active in online politics than Bush supporters[24].” While this did not secure a win for the Democratic nominee, John Kerry in the general election, it did signify a social progressive movement that was coalescing online in response to the perceived conservative bias in the media of which Fox News was the leading concern in right wing bias in the media[25].

There was exponential growth in the everyday audience of online news seekers as the general election neared in the fall of 2004. Online newsgathering had jumped 15% since the middle of the year, showing the “growth of nearly 75% in the daily online news audience from the middle of 2000.”[26] More and more people were turning to the internet as their primary source of news in general. We saw the advent of campaign events being live broadcast online as well as on the mainstream TV news stations. We also saw a greater proliferation of attack politics as the internet became a viable outlet, in conjunction with the mainstream media, to serve lies to the general public who were obtaining their news online.

Most notable in the proliferation of lies spread via the internet was the Swift Boating of John Kerry, which every conservative blog jumped on in a fury to discredit the Democratic nominee. In this, we see the adverse effects of the internet on politics in campaign 2004, for “the smears on Kerry by the Republican attack apparatus and Bush-Cheney’s systematic lying throughout the campaign represent a low point in U.S. electoral politics.”[27] Here we see with politics, the “dangers of looking for a technological fix for all our ills,”[28] on the internet, for internet can also cause great harm to our democracy in that the proliferation of political information shared online is often highly biased and or false, as it can be in the mainstream media. However, the internet is capable of making a vast amount of information available to a larger amount of people, than any other technological tool used in communication in history.

It is precisely this advantage offered by the use of the internet, which promotes the “potential for a democratic revitalization of the public sphere[29],” despite the need to keep a discerning eye on all information accessed online. The ability to have “two-way communication and democratic participation in public dialogue,” online is an “activity that is essential to producing a vital democracy.”[30] Indeed, the computer and the internet have had a great impact on political participation since the onset of online politics. Campaign 2004 became the breakout election cycle for internet politics leading to record participation of the public online.

Greater access of broadband for more people in America led to a greater number of Americans seeking news online and participating in the election process through candidate’s websites. For the Democrats, there was a greater push to share news through independent sourced media, in the form of blogs. These blogs and other independent news sources on the internet became the battleground for push back against mainstream news bias, which favored the incumbent president George W. Bush, despite the many scandals of the Bush administration, which “corporate media failed to investigate in any depth.”[31] Although the Democratic nominee, John Kerry was not victorious in 2004, his campaign was pivotal in preparing the way for the future of online politics, with the help of many innovators, early adopters and influencers throughout the entire election cycle. While I have focused here on the impact of volunteer activists and independent bloggers, it should also be noted that many professional innovators and influencers also worked tirelessly throughout the election cycle to forge the emergent path of online politics.

As Election 2004 proved to be the Internet Election[32], the evolution of technology and politics swiftly shifted onto social media platforms such as Facebook and Myspace, by Election 2008.[33] As presidential campaigns continued to utilize the technological platforms like blogs, forums, email and online videos, which were utilized in Election 2004, they also began to embrace a greater use of social media as an adjunct campaign tool in Election 2008. Following the wake of John Kerry in 2004, the Obama campaign successfully utilized the internet to an even greater extent than Kerry had in Election 2004, effectively organizing communities online and offline, as well as employing the internet for prolific small donor fundraising. Since his election, the Obama administration has successfully harnessed many of these early online tools and platforms to provide the most technologically advanced White House website to date.

In conclusion, participatory democracy has made great strides online in the past decade, much in part due to the influence of liberal/progressive innovators and early adopters who took to the new political frontier with a passion to participate in social communities whose sole focus was fostering political discussion and involvement. This participatory democracy has benefits and drawbacks and ultimately one must carefully discern the source of news and information online, just as they must with the media. The evolution of internet politics took a huge leap during Election 2004 due to the hard work and dedication of the innovators, early adopters and influencers involved in the political process of that election cycle, and we are still adapting and adopting how we utilize the internet for politics today.

References

Appleman, E. M. (2006). Kerry Supporters On the Web: Early Activity . Retrieved from Democracy in Action: http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2008/kerry/kerrywebactivity.html

Brock, D. (2004). The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. Crown.

Carvin, A. (2007, December 24). Timeline: The Life of the Blog. Retrieved from NPR Special Series: The Evolution of the Blog: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17421022

Ceruzzi, P. (2003). The “Problem” of Computer-Computer Communication, 1995-2000: A Technological Fix? In P. Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing. Routledge.

Cornfield, M. (2004, Winter). Grassroots Toolbox: The Internet and Political Campaigns. Insights on Law & Society 4.2, 1 – 4. Retrieved from http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/insights_law_society/politics_Insightswinter04.authcheckdam.pdf

Farrell, H., & Drezner, D. W. (2008). The power and politics of blogs. Public Choice, 134, 15 – 30. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com.silk.library.umass.edu/article/10.1007%2Fs11127-007-9198-1#

Green, L. (2002). Chapter Two: Technology, Adoption and Diffusion. In L. Green, Communication, Technology and Society. SAGE Publications Ltd.

Kellner, D. (2005, August). The Media and Election 2004. Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies , Vol. 5(No. 3), 298 – 308. Retrieved from http://csc.sagepub.com.silk.library.umass.edu/content/5/3/298.full.pdf+html

Lessig, L. (2012). REMIX. In M. Mandiberg, & Editor, The Social Media Reader. NYU Press.

News Audiences Increasingly Politicized. (2004, June 8). Retrieved from Pew Research Center for the People & the Press: http://www.people-press.org/2004/06/08/news-audiences-increasingly-politicized/

Rainie, L., & Smith, A. (2008, June 15). The Internet and the 2008 Election. Retrieved from Pew Research Internet Project: http://www.pewinternet.org/2008/06/15/the-internet-and-the-2008-election/

Rainie, L., Horrigan, J., & Cornfield, M. (2005, March 6). Part 1. The political and media landscape in 2004. Retrieved from Pew Research Internet Project: http://www.pewinternet.org/2005/03/06/part-1-the-political-and-media-landscape-in-2004/

Rainie, L., Horrigan, J., & Cornfield, M. (2005, March 6). The Internet and Campaign 2004. Retrieved from Pew Research Center’s Internet Project: http://www.pewinternet.org/2005/03/06/the-internet-and-campaign-2004/

Sosnik, D. B., & Dowd, M. J. (2006). Applebee’s America. Simon & Schuster.

Vaidhyanathan, S. (2012). Open Source as Culture. In M. Mandiberg, & Editor, The Social Media Reader. NYU Press .

Williams, A. P., & Tedesco, J. C. (Eds.). (2006). The Internet election : perspectives on the Web in campaign 2004. Rowman & Littlefield. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=GYZjlgs0wOIC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=related:QPYEbOYQ26wJ:scholar.google.com/&ots=YsHs2p8Tsu&sig=L_1wXIUE1_8LOOdiiO1SFOkacVA#v=onepage&q&f=false

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[1] (Green, 2002, p. 31)

[2] (Ceruzzi, 2003, p. 211)

[3] (Brock, 2004)

[4] (Vaidhyanathan, 2012)

[5] (Vaidhyanathan, 2012, p. 27)

[6] (Sosnik & Dowd, 2006, pp. 172 – 176)

[7] (Lessig, 2012)

[8] (Rainie, Horrigan, & Cornfield, 2005)

[9] (Rainie, Horrigan, & Cornfield, 2005)

[10] (Rainie, Horrigan, & Cornfield, Part 1. The political and media landscape in 2004, 2005)

[11] (Green, 2002, pp. 31-33)

[12] (Green, 2002, pp. 36-38)

[13] (Sosnik & Dowd, 2006, p. 147)

[14] (Appleman, 2006)

[15] (Cornfield, 2004, p. 4)

[16] (Cornfield, 2004, p. 2)

[17] (Green, 2002, pp. 36-38)

[18] (Green, 2002, p. 35)

[19] (Green, 2002, p. 35)

[20] (Farrell & Drezner, 2008, p. 23)

[21] (Carvin, 2007)

[22] (Rainie, Horrigan, & Cornfield, 2005)

[23] (Rainie, Horrigan, & Cornfield, 2005)

[24] (Rainie, Horrigan, & Cornfield, 2005)

[25] (News Audiences Increasingly Politicized, 2004)

[26] (Rainie, Horrigan, & Cornfield, Part 1. The political and media landscape in 2004, 2005)

[27] (Kellner, 2005)

[28] (Ceruzzi, 2003, p. 215)

[29] (Kellner, 2005, p. 304)

[30] (Kellner, 2005, p. 304)

[31] (Kellner, 2005, p. 299)

[32] (Williams & Tedesco, 2006)

[33] (Rainie & Smith, The Internet and the 2008 Election, 2008)

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