Quiet on None of the Fronts: Digital Integration in the 21st Century Campaign
Introduction
The commercial benefit of a federalist system of democracy ensures that there are elections to be conducted at every level and every year. To thrive in such a competitive environment and win elections, professional campaigners need to stay up to date with the latest techniques and practices. Since the 2008 presidential election, social media has been at the forefront of media buzz (Preston 2011) and it has increasingly become the location that voters get and discuss political information (Pew Internet 2011). Social media has become a new battle ground for political campaigns to be waged in. The familiarity of the ground war to get out the vote and the air war’s slick thirty second television spots are now being joined by Facebook, Twitter, and others as campaigns continue to march to where the voters are.
Costs of Campaigning
The presidential race in 2012 is gearing up to be the first USD$1 billion dollar race in the nation’s history. President Obama’s re-election effort alone is looking to top the billion dollar mark (Overby 2012). In the previous presidential election, then Senator Obama spent a total of $16 million on his online effort during the campaign. Thus far his re-election campaign, Obama for America, has spent $35 million on digital efforts and infrastructure (http://www.retargeter.com/infographic/the-digital-campaign-landscape-infographic). Digital ad buys are up several hundred percent from just four years ago as well, having jumped from $22 million spent by the Obama campaign in 2008 to $159 million spent by the end of March by Obama for America (http://www.retargeter.com/infographic/the-digital-campaign-landscape-infographic). In addition, conventional media buys are still prevalent and growing as well. Mass media buys are increasing in cost and rapidly becoming the purview of Super PACs. The first three Republican presidential Primaries saw spending TV ad campaigns hit $32.5 million (Wilson 2012, 1). Campaigns are becoming more costly, and efforts at the state level are no different.
Looking back at what has been covered prior through blog posts, state wide elections in Washington are on pace to become 10’s of million dollar affairs. To date Democratic candidate for Governor Jay Inslee has raised $4.8 million, while his opposition Republican candidate Rob McKenna has raised $4 million (Public Disclosure Commission 2012). Each of these campaigns has spent approximately $2 million, leaving each on an equal footing financially. These are astronomical numbers and it’s early in the election cycle. Campaigns are still hiring staff, field efforts are getting fired up, and offices are being opened in strip malls and suburbs across the US. These numbers will only continue to grow. To provide proper perspective President Barack Obama has raised approximately $191.7 million in contrast to the GOP front runner and presumptive nominee Mitt Romney and his $86.2 million (Federal Elections Commission 2012).
The new realities of contemporary campaigns are pointing towards a digital war that cannot be ignored. The potential to lose out on all manner of resources is at risk if campaigns ignore digital media and omit social media in their communications strategies; volunteers, financial contributions, earned media, situational awareness, going negative, responses to negative attacks, and information accessibility are all possible at a speed previously unattainable.
Return to the Ground War for Contemporary Campaigns
Nielsen (2012) captures the reboot that political campaigns are undergoing for the 21st century. Political campaigns are increasingly focusing on the ground war and the direct voter contact it entails through door-to-door and phone banking efforts. However, voters are now being targeted at an individual level with data driven efforts led by the major political parties (Nielsen 2012, 6). The major parties retain significant influence and power, despite campaigns rapidly transitioning to a networked structure, by granting access to a universal voter file and parsing out the technology and training to access it (Nielsen 2012, 165).
Why Social Media Matters When It Comes To Political Activism
Social media and the wide array of social networking platforms that are currently used across the world have an undeniable influence on political activism. Could the necessary awareness been raised about SOPA and PIPA ahead of their floor votes any other way? Political activism and digital activity can be problematic when attempting to define and quantify activity. Earl and Kimport (2011) argue that the Internet is capable of supporting two types of e-tactics. E-mobilization occurs when digital infrastructure supports offline political activism and e-movements are based completely on the Internet (Earl and Kimport 2011, 8-9). The authors acknowledge these two exist as ideal types and that the majority of movements opting to implement e-tactics will lie somewhere between the extremes. However, an important affordance of the Internet’s structure is its ability to lower the cost to “creating, organizing, and participating in protest” (Earl and Kimport 2011, 10). Social media can lower the barrier to becoming actively engaged with politics and conversely, for campaigns to reach out to voters.
Social media provides new access point to electorate and a wealth of potential knowledge about each potential supporter. Pew Internet (2011) recently released a study showing that voters are going online in increasing numbers for information about political campaigns. The Pew Internet (2011) study referencing the use of the Internet as a medium gaining in importance and the use of social media to increasingly discuss politics amongst friends. During the 2010 mid-term election, 73% of adult internet users used digital media to gather information on the election and individual campaigns (Pew Internet 2011, 2). While broadcast television is still the primary means by which the electorate learns about elections and campaigns, the Internet has ascended rapidly in importance. Adult voters contacted turned to the Internet 24% of the time when it came to gathering information about the mid-term elections in 2010, up from just 7% during the 2002 mid-term elections (Pew Internet 2011, 3). It also shows they are discussing politics and campaign views in real time on social media. Targeting voters through these channels can lead to persuasion and data extraction.
Integration of direct contact, existing knowledge, polling, and digital profile can lead to more nuanced and timely targeting of voters across a breadth of platforms.
No Platform an Island
Any strategic communication strategy must guide all digital channels of communication towards the goals of voters’ education and attaining votes. Secondary goals are volunteer recruitment, financial contributions, positive mentions, and information accessibility. This requires a campaign being mindful to minimize overlap between digital media and reducing redundant messages that voters may encounter as they begin to engage with a campaign across multiple platforms.
The primary or strategic goals of a campaigns digital communications strategy cannot stray from the essentials. Figure one provides a visual dynamic that clusters digital tools by their type, social media, email, and the campaign website. Figure 1 also emphasizes the orientation that digital media should have in a campaign, voter outreach and education. Strategic communication goals need to be focused on; maintaining campaign message, diffusion of platform, vote attainment. Losing track of the primary goal of political campaigns and putting the tool before the goal can complicate. The secondary goals of a digital media strategy aimed at political activism revolve around; volunteer recruitment, financial contributions, and endorsements by constituents.
Data Extraction for the Digital Campaign Effort
The most important take away of interaction with constituents via digital media is data extraction. The data harvested from interested voters can be folded back into the campaign data to strengthen the ability to provide nuanced targeting for direct voter contact during get out the vote (GOTV) operations. Campaigns need to be mindful of finding and using tools to measure and extract data in addition to the creation and management of a social media presence.
Data to Make the Wheels Turn
The magnitude of data we all create via our digital activities is immense and easy to get lost in. Campaigns should use social media to extract at the minimum the necessary information to continue to support fundraising and field efforts concentrating on direct voter contact. Johnson (2011) notes that as data volume grow campaigns will be able to better challenge conventional wisdom that particular communities are locked into one party. To further this effort campaigns need to focus initial data extraction on; name, email, phone numbers, and permanent address.
Data that is gathered via social media enables campaigns to place us in a social context. It also allows campaigns to take advantage of the presence of homophily in our social networks. We ourselves, by providing the initial contact information for a campaign can be used as entry point into broader network, guided by recent research on social network sites and political deliberation. The basic idea behind homophily is that individuals have a tendency to associate and bond with similar others. Research on homophily and how it relates to social network theory can be found in the work of McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook's work, "Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks". To corroborate this in a political context, approximately 18% of all users of social networking sites have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone because of the political content that they posted (Pew Internet 2011).
Using Social Media to Identify Supporters
Clicktivism, or online political activity, needs to encompass the mentality of “Like +” or moving beyond the bare minimum to include meaningful contribution to networked publics as they arise on a campaign. This necessitates on the part of the campaign new content by which voters can interact, appropriate, share, and contribute to; Posts, Tweets, Pictures, Tagging, Infographics, Videos, Surveys.
Clicktivism to Votes
Social media provides a powerful instrument by which campaigns can reach out to voters in a more nuanced and personalized manner. It also enables campaigns to harvest data on individual voters at a faster rate that can be brought to bear on efforts to contact voters directly. The value social media adds to political activism lies in the information that voters hand over to campaigns. There is no excuse to not tracking the actions of your audience when it comes to digital media and political campaigns. From incredibly expensive presidential contests to a local school board race, political campaigns have a proven track record of using data to target voters in hopes of identifying supporters and getting out the vote when it counts. However, the pursuit of information about voters cannot stop where the analog world ends. As voters increasingly turn to the Internet to find information about politics and discuss it, they create a rich digital profile which campaigns can begin to mine for insights into their political identity.
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