Alan Rosenblatt has written an excellent article on his Dr. Digipol site responding to my campaign wrap-up from the other day. One thing he brings out explicitly is the need to think of online campaigning and offline campaigning as fundamentally intertwined — integration, anyone?
There will come a time when we no longer talk about online strategies and offline strategies, but rather strategies with online and offline components. I suggest that that day has arrived, maybe not universally, but certainly noticeably.
He also suggests that I may be underestimating the ‘net’s potential as a tv-style mass persuasive medium, pointing to the ease with which microtargeted communications can spread virally and about the branding/persuasive ability of online advertising and online messaging. He may be right, particularly as more and more of us receive the bulk of our news and information online and as advertisers become more sophisticated at zeroing-in messages and encouraging us to pass them along.
Alan also makes good points about the potential of online social networking and about online fundraising. Well worth a read! And if you’re not completely saturated with post-election analysis when you’re done, take a look at the second and third installments of Personal Democracy Forum’s look at the role of technology in this year’s campaigns.
– cpd