Georgetown Independent

Issue date: 1/30/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Meredith Ponder

Media Credit: Anna Cheimets

Media Credit: textually.org

Media Credit: mittromney.com

In the last ten or fifteen years, the internet has opened up a whole new avenue for channeling money, information, misinformation, enthusiasm and power between people and candidates. The accessibility of the internet to large numbers of people means that it could potentially open the floodgates to political involvement across a broad spectrum of the population. Realistically though, the percentage of the population getting involved in politics remains woefully small.

The emergence of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, is connecting thousands of teens and young adults. Looking at Facebook today, it is impossible to miss the explosion of pages and groups supporting or bashing political candidates. There are over 500 groups that come up when searching "Mitt Romney" alone. Granted, some like "Mitt Romney (One Million Strong for Mitt)" are more serious than say "If Mitt Romney Becomes President, I'm Moving to Canada."

These political pages might lead one to believe that young voters are more engaged than ever in this election. It is true that the percentage of young people ages 18-25 actually voting in elections has been on the rise since the 1990's, but in reality, the tens of thousands of Facebook political supporters and hecklers do not necessarily translate to tens of thousands of votes. Some students and recent alumni are making serious use of these social networking sites to really make a difference in this election, but they may just be a small minority is a sea of the half interested or apathetic.

A Student Movement

It was 9:51 a.m. when Famid Sinha received the Facebook message requesting an interview, and it was 9:57 when he responded. Sinha is a senior at UPenn and the Director of Communications for Students for Barack Obama, the official branch of the Obama campaign targetting students and young adults. He and the rest of the officers of Students for Barack Obama are among those seeking to use Facebook to its fullest potential. In the summer of 2006, Sinha and a small group of students started a Facebook group in support of Obama for president. At its inception, interest in the group soared. "We had a really humbling amount of support," said Sinha.

In February of this year, Students for Barack organized a rally at George Mason University which Obama attended. As a result of the rally's startling success, 3500 students attended, and the Facebook group and the growing student organization it spawned became the official student wing of the Obama campaign.

Although Students for Barack Obama is now being advised by Obama's official youth vote director, Sinha said each of the 600 chapters of the organization are able to maintain much of the autonomy of the original grass roots movement.

"We are not a political machine, we are a political movement, and that's why we have people organizing themselves," he said.

Without Facebook, none of this would have been possible. The group took off at the same time that Facebook introduced global groups, which for the first time allowed communication between all of the networks. Many of the officers of Students for Barack Obama have only met a handful of times, but they keep in constant touch over the internet and Facebook. Furthermore, gathering support from so many students around the country would never have been possible without a method to connect them all.

"Young people are a subset of the hundreds of thousand across the country who have been shaken out of political apathy," said Sinha. Primarily, Sinha attributes this "awakening" to Obama's personality.

"He has a quality that gets people into politics," said Sinha. "We see through the phoniness. We want to see honesty; we want to see candor; we want to see a normal person."

In this case, Facebook allowed a group of students to have a greater impact in politics than they could have imagined, but how many of the roughly 279,000 supporters on Obama's personal Facebook page will turn out to vote remains to be seen.

From the Other Side of the Aisle

As of January 24, there were 32,618 supporters listed on Mitt Romney's Facebook page. That is roughly 4,000 more than there were two weeks ago, and 3 more than there were 5 minutes ago. Stephen Smith, the Director of online communication for Mitt Romney's campaign, noted that the people who frequent Facebook generally do not overlap with those who visit the official Romney campaign site, so creating a Facebook page was a way to reach out to a different group of voters.

So far, Facebook support for Romney has had a tangible effect. Before the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) met in March of 2007, the Romney campaign noticed that there was considerable amount of support for the Romney and CPAC on Facebook. The largest group, "One Million Strong for Mitt" has 22,439 members. The Romney campaign reached out to many of these online supporters and encouraged them to help out at the CPAC convention.

"They were wearing the t-shirts and holding the fliers," said Smith.

In the end, Romney won the straw poll and Smith attributes some of the success to impact of the Facebook supporters.

But internet support is just one facet of the Romney campaign. Smith remarked that while the campaign receives numerous "small dollar contributions" on the official website and a few from PayPal badges on MySpace, online donation is growing but is not the most important source of income. Romney's campaign, like the others, receives much larger sums of money from events where wealthy supporters can donate up to $2000 out of pocket.

The Facebook and MySpace pages are certainly not financially driven, said Simith. Without the monetary support to back up the numbers, the impact of these social networking sites appears to diminish. Smith repeatedly referred to those who visited the official Romney website as more engaged than those who are supporters on Facebook. In other words, even though young voters can click on a Facebook page and show up in huge numbers on the web, adults with money to spend may still be having a greater impact.

Financing a campaign

Since the 1990's the impact that the internet has had on campaign fundraising has varied based on the candidate. Howard Dean raised an unprecedented amount of money online in 2000. According to Dr. Michael Bailey, Associate Professor of American government at Georgetown, Dean "just went completely off the charts." This time around, Obama has been extremely successful with internet contributions. "Barack Obama sits there and it flows," said Bailey.

Since the same internet resources are available to all of the candidates, clearly the advent of the internet is not the sole catalyst for small donations. The percentage of a candidate's total campaign money coming from small donations depends mainly on the demographic composition of his or her supporters. The main reason for the success of Dean and Obama is the fact that their supporters tend to be wealthy, educated and politically involved, said Bailey. Obama and Dean are "wine candidates," according to Bailey. On the other hand, a candidate like Mike Huckabee is more of a "beer candidate," whose main support base is middle and working-class Americans who do not have the same amount of disposable income.

Surely the internet opens up the possibility for a greater number and variety of people to get involved in campaigns; not many people can foot the bill for a grossly expensive fundraising event. There are hundreds of blogs out there, but Bailey was hesitant to assume that this means that the internet has drawn large groups of people into politics who were not already there. Many of the people who are the most active online were probably already active in politics before but have just found a new way to be involved. According to Bailey, these people may not be the financial elite, but they are the informational elite.

The internet is a powerful tool for expressing opinions and giving money but it can only empower those who choose to utilize it to its full potential, and so far, many of those making their voices heard may have already held sway in the political world to begin with.

Internet Impact on Democracy

Even if the internet has not yet brought in a surge of totally new voices to the election, people are getting engaged in politics again. According to data reported by the Center for Information and Research on Civil Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) the percentage of Americans voting in elections has been on the upswing since 1996. That year, when Bill Clinton was running for reelection, 61.6% of Americans over 25 years old voted. In 2000 this number increased to 62.9%, and it increased again to 66.3% in 2004. The participation of voters aged 18-24 increased from 35.6% in 1996 to 46.7% in 2004.

It is difficult to tell what factors led to the increase in voter participation but much of the reason for the increase appears to come from the nature of the elections themselves. Bob Dole did not pose much of a threat to incumbent Bill Clinton in 1996, so few voters showed up to the polls. In 2000 there was no incumbent president so voter interest increased. In 2004, Bush's controversial presidency drew even more voters.

This election promises to continue the upward trend because President Bush's presidency has created a sense of urgency among Americans for change. Additionally, as noted by Dr. Diana Owen, Director of American Studies at Georgetown, this is the first election since 1928 without an incumbent president or vice-president as a candidate.

Anna Quindlen, a columnist for Newsweek, related the unexpected results of the New Hampshire primaries to an increase in voter participation and independence. In the article entitled "The End of Apathy," Quindlen posited that voters are no longer simply sheep that can be easily predicted by the media, but are instead taking matters into their own hands and voting based on the very strong ideological preferences and prejudices brought to light by the nature of this year's candidates. "Typically you have mainstream media behind one candidate," explained Owen. Since this is not the case in this election so far, Owen sees it as a "sign that the public is back engaged."

The internet is certainly having an effect on the way that voters can influence the topics discussed by candidates during the campaign. While all of the issues that have come up in the campaign so far would have come up regardless of voter involvement, Owen noted that websites like YouTube and Facebook are allowing for what she calls "secondary agenda setting." That is, voters are having an effect on which topics get priority for discussion. Candidates may not directly answer the tough questions posed to them during the Facebook debates, but what is important is that the topics are being brought up by voters themselves.

The Internet's Growing Influence

Polls conducted by the Pew Research center show that as the internet becomes an increasingly important outlet for political media, young voters are getting more of their political information there than anywhere else. This year, 42% of 18-29 year olds surveyed responded that they regularly learn something about the campaign from the internet. This is compared to just 26% of 30-49 year olds, and 15% of respondents aged 50 or higher. These percentages have grown rapidly in the last eight years. In 2000, 9% of respondents of all ages said they regularly learned something about the campaign on the internet. In 2004, this number grew to 13% and then doubled to 24% in 2008. The online media outlets mentioned the most by respondents over the whole age spectrum were CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo News. But, among 18-24 year olds, 37% regularly learned something about the campaign from social networking sites, while almost no one over the age of 30 used these sites at all.

This poses an interesting question about the generation gap. If young people get their information from the internet, and older generations tend towards television, will the two groups end up with different information about the same events? Professor Owen was not concerned about this. She replied in an email that much of the news online, at sites like CNN.com, comes directly from TV news. Since these are the most frequented news websites, all generations will most likely end up with the same information. However, she added that online "junkies" will probably spend time on blogs and other sites that might give them more inside information than what is shown on TV. In addition, Owen thought that while some of the information on the internet is faulty, this will mostly likely not lead to a misinformed group of young voters. Thus, for the most part, the internet is an extension of the mainstream media that has existed for a long time.

Reaching out to Young Voters

Various organizations are using the internet to get young people registered to vote and politically involved. Rock the Vote, a non-profit, non-partisan organization which was previously associated with MTV and BET, aims to inspire young Americans out of political apathy. Shavonne Harding, Deputy Director of Communications for Rock the Vote, replied in an email that the organization "harnesses cutting-edge trends and pop culture to make political participation cool."

Rock the Vote uses many different kinds of media but the internet is one of their most valuable tools for registering voters. This year their goal is to register two million young people between 18 and 29 years of age. So far, Harding said that more voter registration forms have been downloaded from their website than in 2004, when 1.2 million people registered online.

Closer to home, student run political organizations at Georgetown are using the internet to reach out to the student body. At the end of last year, the Georgetown College Democrats started up Facebook groups for each of the residence halls.

Anna Schubert, a dorm captain in the Southwest Quad for the Dems, set up the group for her dorm.

"The College Dems are so so big and it's easy for people to get lost," she said. The Facebook groups "will give people a better feel for the organization and a way for people to get involved more."

The Internet and the Future

Historically, voter participation depends heavily on the political and social circumstances of a particular election. However, if voters, especially those 18 to 25, have a powerful tool to make their voices heard, candidates may well listen. The more voters perceive that they can make a real difference, the more people will want to be voters.

While the internet has not yet produced an explosion of completely new political involvement, it no doubt has the potential to if people step up. Right now, the percentage of Americans involved in politics is sadly low, but there is a real chance that the internet could change that.

Cheimets is News Editor and a Physics sophomore.


Sidebar: Votehelp.com: How to find your candidate match

The number of candidates running for the Democratic and Republican tickets has been a bit overwhelming, so some have turned to votehelp.com to help decide whom to support. The website presents a series of statements, with which you agree or disagree by choosing from a dropdown menu. After filling out the survey, you press finish and Votehelp calculates how well each candidate matches up with your preferences. You are presented with a list of candidates in order of how well they match. Voilà, Votehelp will eliminate your confusion.

Or will it?

Austin Uhler (COL '10) was somewhat successful at deciding on a candidate. He had originally decided to support Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican candidate, and Votehelp reaffirmed his decision, with Democrats filling the rest of his top choices.

But not all were as successful as he. "My parents did not for a second consider the candidate who best represented their view because there was not a chance that the candidate could win," said Uhler.

We, as voters do not necessarily vote with our hearts, but with our heads. Regardless of the fact that one candidate may really support the issues we hold dear, we are willing to settle for someone else who is not as compatible but has a chance to win. Is democracy really just about choosing the lesser of two evils in a general election? If it is, votehelp.com can at least help you with that, but I honestly wonder what might happen if we all voted for our top choice on votehelp.com. Who knows, maybe Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul would have a chance? Then again, maybe pigs can learn how to grow wings.

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