The Internet Didn’t “Just Happen” to Howard Dean
December 28th, 2007
The good Doktor Rosenblatt has weighed in on my Matt Bai piece, and the results are excellent. Among his many worthwhile points, he notes that online support worked for Howard Dean because the campaign jumped on it — they saw a wave, and they rode it for all they were worth. Other political communicators can get in on the back-and-forth:
By feeding the online discourse with messages, facts, resources, nudges, and tugs; by pushing these out to a variety of online communities; and by listening to the response and adapting message and strategy accordingly, a campaign can add strategic advantage to the organic chaos of the internet.
See also Alan’s distinction between the message a campaign uses and the actual language they use: supporters can still spread a message even when they don’t parrot a candidate’s talking points verbatim. Besides this piece, the techPrez crew has come back from the holidays in full turkey-fueled force; check out recent articles on Facebook oversaturation, John Edwards’s online ad contest and the year’s best online vidoes, both campaign- and voter-created.
– cpd
Robot-Selected "Related" Articles:
- NPR: Dean Veteran and Edwards Strategist Matt Gross on Web Campaigning
- Online Politics — A Train That Keeps Arriving
- Thursday Night: Politics and Tech at Busboys and Poets
- Learning from the Ron Paul Online Fundraising Frenzy
- E.politics Cited in Big Mother Jones Feature on Online Politics
- Interesting List-Building Tactic in a Democratic Activist Email, With a Republican Online Game for a Chaser
- Will Binding Contracts Make Advocacy More Effective? Help Find Out


2 Comments Add your own
1. Bo Arlind | December 30th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Hi,
The link to Rosenblatt’s article doesn’t work
2. cpd | December 30th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Oopsie! Thanks for catching that. Fixed now.
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