As election nears, Web's grass roots still growing

(continued from previous page)

been our most powerful tool in empowering and energizing people. The site is getting people activated and providing them with the tools we feel will best help re-elect the president and vice president."

DeFeo points to the Bush site's success at recruiting supporters for door-to-door neighborhood walking tours, during which campaigners hand out literature and ask for votes. He said several thousand walks incorporating tens of thousands of volunteers were organized online during the first two weeks after the effort was launched. The Bush site also serves as a contact point for supporters willing to host campaign rallies in their homes, and it offers users the ability to garner contact information on 20 undecided voters in their region, whom they are encouraged to recruit.

The approach is very similar in the Kerry camp. Ross said volunteers have increasingly looked to the campaign's Web site for information on how to get involved on both the local and national levels.

"The Internet has been extremely successful at connecting with the public," Ross said. "In addition to recruiting volunteers, the site is also putting volunteers to work and giving them campaign-sanctioned activities to participate in. It's an absolutely vital tool, in that the site gives people the ability to organize in their own local communities and get other people involved."

The Kerry site mirrors the Bush site in many ways, offering the ability for volunteers to organize meetings, recruit fellow voters and host events. Both sites prominently feature tools to help get unregistered Americans signed up to vote in this year's election.

In one sense, however, interactivity on the two sites is very different. Both the Bush and Kerry sites offer blogs, with timely bits of information and news related to the presidential race. But the Kerry site allows registered users to post to its blog, while the Bush blog serves largely as another channel for distributing campaign-approved information.

To Ross, the difference in blogging philosophies is representative of the candidates' respective politics.

"Rather than just sending out the message, our blog is an interactive source for building a community, for facilitating discussions and giving feedback, or for volunteers to communicate with each other and (the) campaign," Ross said. "That's a pretty big difference in terms of how we approach it."

The money game
In all likelihood, Dean's greatest impact on the election process wasn't his piloting of online grassroots interaction through sites such as Meetup.com. Rather, the most compelling element of his campaign in the eyes of many political minds was his breakout success at generating online campaign contributions.

Dean's ability to encourage large numbers of supporters to donate small amounts of money electronically was one of his greatest assets, and arguably what kept him in the race throughout the democratic primaries, said Grant Reeher, associate professor of political science at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Reeher said presidential candidates still have room to improve their online fund-raising efforts but admitted that the 2004 campaign has finally showed that the Web is a powerful finance tool.

"The way the campaigns are looking at the Internet is still dominated by the approach that the Web is a tool to leverage things out of the public, and the most dramatic example is the way the Internet has been used this time around to generate funds," Reeher said. "Howard

Factually incaccurate story

Nice, another piece of c|net liberal bias that I now must publicly flog. The author of this article asserts that the Bush site is "Anti-Kerry" while Kerry is "more positive".

That is complete rubbish. A cursory analysis of the sites reveals that Bush is focusing quite directly on his own record. Here are Bush's current "LATEST HEADLINES" which dominate the site



? Bush: Clear Vision, Taking Action Key to Leadership
? What They're Saying: OH Newspapers Endorsing Bush
? Pres. Touts Nat'l Security Record of Reform & Results
? The Economy Line: State Unemployment Rates Fall
? Mrs. Bush: Pres. Said He'd Reduce Taxes, He Did
? Letter by Olympians and Professional Athletes for Bush

What do you have to say for yourself, Mr. Negative? I'm sure the c|net censors will sweep in to delete my post, but I am keeping it backed up in a TXT file to repost as necessary.

[Stan Kee]

c-net...1 pt.

C-Net is right. Bush's home page focuses more on Kerry than Kerry's homepage focuses on Bush. But this is a small issue to get worked up about. Who cares.
If one candidate has issues that he wishes to point out about the other candidate he should whether it's positive or negative.

Factually incaccurate story

Nice, another piece of c|net liberal bias that I now must publicly flog. The author of this article asserts that the Bush site is "Anti-Kerry" while Kerry is "more positive".

That is complete rubbish. A cursory analysis of the sites reveals that Bush is focusing quite directly on his own record. Here are Bush's current "LATEST HEADLINES" which dominate the site



? Bush: Clear Vision, Taking Action Key to Leadership
? What They're Saying: OH Newspapers Endorsing Bush
? Pres. Touts Nat'l Security Record of Reform & Results
? The Economy Line: State Unemployment Rates Fall
? Mrs. Bush: Pres. Said He'd Reduce Taxes, He Did
? Letter by Olympians and Professional Athletes for Bush

What do you have to say for yourself, Mr. Negative? I'm sure the c|net censors will sweep in to delete my post, but I am keeping it backed up in a TXT file to repost as necessary.

[Stan Kee]

c-net...1 pt.

C-Net is right. Bush's home page focuses more on Kerry than Kerry's homepage focuses on Bush. But this is a small issue to get worked up about. Who cares.
If one candidate has issues that he wishes to point out about the other candidate he should whether it's positive or negative.

[Razzl]

Neither party really gets it yet

The strategists for the 2 parties and the candidates have not understood yet the importance of figuring out how their information fits into the information landscape of the people they are trying to reach. From my end-user perspective the campaign began in Spring of 2003 when from out of the blue I received an email from an organization I had never heard of before, Moveon.org, offering a way to challenge Bushes' drive to war. I immediately went to their web site to make donations, but after that sat back and let their emails come to me. Their web site was nowhere near as important as their brilliant email campaign.
A long time later emails began to arrive from the Dean campaign, then from the Kerry campaign, then from the Democratic National Committee. The DNC emails were especially lame at first, written in all the condescending jargon those people think in. The Kerry and DNC emails have gotten much savvier over time, but it's still a mystery why they think they both have to send redundant messages to the same address--can't they coordinate? I know they can't coordinate with Moveon.org by law, but the people at Moveon.org have been smart enough to run their own campaign. The Kerry and DNC web sites don't mean anything when I get the email, so the email is what matters most. It's like getting a newspaper geared to your interests when it's done well (Moveon.org) and like spam when it's done badly (DNC). I'm also tolerating email from ACTNOW.org, but I'm not sure why these guys don't just join Moveon.org to put on a unified face.
The worst part of the campaigns has been the automated telephone calling. I've been getting harassed with ugly negative phone messages from candidates, committees, and labor unions--if I've donated money why do you think I'm so shaky you have to call me? Can't you concentrate on the unaffiliated voters in the Union? And hasn't anyone in DNC figured out that HAVING THE CANDIDATE SPEAK THE RECORDED MESSAGE would be the most outstanding way to reach people?
The parties have a long way to go to figure out how to use the internet well--you can't just sit back and wait for people to find your web site. Whatever the outcome of the election Moveon.org has already swept the Clinton moderates out of control of the Democratic Party. For the foreseeable future their web-savvy methods and tactics will ensure that the DNC must dance to their tune if they hope to raise money and supporters.

[Razzl]

Neither party really gets it yet

The strategists for the 2 parties and the candidates have not understood yet the importance of figuring out how their information fits into the information landscape of the people they are trying to reach. From my end-user perspective the campaign began in Spring of 2003 when from out of the blue I received an email from an organization I had never heard of before, Moveon.org, offering a way to challenge Bushes' drive to war. I immediately went to their web site to make donations, but after that sat back and let their emails come to me. Their web site was nowhere near as important as their brilliant email campaign.
A long time later emails began to arrive from the Dean campaign, then from the Kerry campaign, then from the Democratic National Committee. The DNC emails were especially lame at first, written in all the condescending jargon those people think in. The Kerry and DNC emails have gotten much savvier over time, but it's still a mystery why they think they both have to send redundant messages to the same address--can't they coordinate? I know they can't coordinate with Moveon.org by law, but the people at Moveon.org have been smart enough to run their own campaign. The Kerry and DNC web sites don't mean anything when I get the email, so the email is what matters most. It's like getting a newspaper geared to your interests when it's done well (Moveon.org) and like spam when it's done badly (DNC). I'm also tolerating email from ACTNOW.org, but I'm not sure why these guys don't just join Moveon.org to put on a unified face.
The worst part of the campaigns has been the automated telephone calling. I've been getting harassed with ugly negative phone messages from candidates, committees, and labor unions--if I've donated money why do you think I'm so shaky you have to call me? Can't you concentrate on the unaffiliated voters in the Union? And hasn't anyone in DNC figured out that HAVING THE CANDIDATE SPEAK THE RECORDED MESSAGE would be the most outstanding way to reach people?
The parties have a long way to go to figure out how to use the internet well--you can't just sit back and wait for people to find your web site. Whatever the outcome of the election Moveon.org has already swept the Clinton moderates out of control of the Democratic Party. For the foreseeable future their web-savvy methods and tactics will ensure that the DNC must dance to their tune if they hope to raise money and supporters.