Jenifer Jones from Podtech.net interviews Peter Leyden from San Francisco based New Politics Institute on the role of social media in politics and how it will impact the 2008 US Presidential elections.
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Some great take-aways for the European campaigners:
- Political blogosphere is growing rapidly: Out of the total of 75 million blogs 72,000 are political blogs.
- Normally the party out of power adopts the new techniques faster to get back in power. This means Democrats are more active than Republicans in social media campaigning in US Presidential election. Does this apply in your country?
- It is no more only the younger voters that go online to search information. It is now all demographics across the board that use Internet to mine their candidate’s thoughts.
- Internet is becoming more and more relevant in politics: in 2006 US elections 2/3 (60 milion) of the voters searched information on their candidate or party from the Internet. I believe no candidate can anymore dismiss the role an online presence will play in elections, whether in US or in Europe. Now it’s only matter of doing the online campaigning right and getting all the potential benefit from it.
- As Peter Leyden says: "We are inventing new politics". There is an explosion of new tools to use in campaigning. He predicts that in 5 years time the way you do politics in the early 21st century has find its new form, but now we are still living very interesting times as everything changes. If you are planning to run, you better watch closely for the next 18 months as the US Presidential elections will spear head the innovation in social media campaigning. In this setting politics innovates and private sector will follow.
