Getting Sophisticated

"A candidate who can master the Internet will not only level the playing field; he will level the opposition." - Larry Purpuro, RightClick Strategies

Steve Clift from Democracy Online once said this: "The Internet has become the main strategic communications tool behind the scenes in politics. It is not a medium to sway undecided voters. It is a medium to organize your supporters, feed them your message and get out your core vote. It may have an impact on new and less frequent voters some day, but that seems a long way off. No candidate that I am aware of has ever won because of the Internet."

But that was in 2006.

In 2008, current U.S. president Barack Obama proved Clift's statement wrong.

Joe Trippi, a political consultant, feels that Obama "used the Internet to organise his supporters in a way that would have in the past required an army of volunteers and paid organisers on the ground".

He used YouTube for free advertising and Trippi thinks the YouTube videos are more effective as compared to advertisements using traditional media because viewers chose to watch them instead of being forced to watch them during commercial breaks.

In addition, his website was "designed for common people"; individuals could view his websites the moments they typed in the link.

Hillary Clinton's website, on the other hand, gives the image of trying to force people to support her. It shows a picture of her, a quote, contact information, and a big icon that reads CONTRIBUTE in red. Other than that, there isn't a lot of information we can get out of the website as compared to Obama's.

A 2008 survey showed that "the internet is becoming an increasing part of the norm of political participation - people are using it to read the news, share their votes, or to participate in some other process to get others to take political action".

This is definitely evident in the fact that people are forwarding or writing their own political commentary, signing online petitions, and sharing online political videos among other things.

From all of these, we can see that the internet is no longer in its infancy in terms of the political arena.

However, there are certainly limitations to the internet for political campaigning, such as negative campaigning.

One example would be of PAP's youngest woman candidate Tin Pei Ling.

The 27 year-old is recently in the limelight for all the wrong reasons; her speech on her biggest regret, criticisms of her posing with her Kate Spade bag, and photos from her past.

All these was made possible with the internet; videos of her speech being viewed by many, photos taken from her Facebook page. There are even a few videos made just to mock her.

Such is the limitation of the internet.

I believe it does not just apply to politics, however.

No doubt this incident has reflected the impact of internet on political campaigning, of course in the negative sense, but more importantly it teaches us that the internet is a really scary thing; whatever has once been posted can always be dug out.