As I sit here on campus scouring through the websites, blogs, and news articles on our two Presidential candidates, I cannot help but notice the presence of something, and the clear lack of a presence of another. Sitting adjacent to the campus’s central park, I have already seen, in the hour or so I have been here reading, several Obama campaign shirts, clothing apparel, stickers, pins, etc. One would expect to see a similar footprint of merchandising and support for the Obama camps rival, John McCain, Republican Presidential candidate. This got me thinking beyond the confines of the University of California, Irvine campus to the rest of the country, and to the rest of the world. This growing presence certainly has not developed merely through campaign speeches and public debates. There has been a much bigger, much richer tool that both candidates have utilized. That tool is the Internet. An ever expanding and enriching medium, the Internet has provided both candidates with donations and campaign funding unseen before. But how is this accomplished? Does one candidate utilize the power of the Internet better than the other? The Internet is probably one of the most powerful tools available today, and to utilize it through websites and blogs can be advantageous. Both candidates have established websites, built by trained professionals undoubtedly, with various functionalities – some more beneficial than others.
First and foremost in importance is ease of use and layout. While the Internet has drastically improved our lives and shaped the world we live in today, it has brought along with it many distractions. The key to a successful website is simplicity. You look at something as elemental as Apple versus Microsoft, both rivals, and both giants. The Apple website is simple and elegant. It is clear, concise, and yet still very informative, containing some of the most useful and easy to navigate support forums of any manufacturer. Unlike the Microsoft website, which is filled with information scattered across many mainframes and server blades, presentation is the key to creating a rich Web 2.0 experience. Defined as a term that describes the changing trends in the use of the World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, secure information sharing, spark collaboration and increase functionality of the web1, both candidates have taken aim at creating an enriching and involved website that accomplishes this Web 2.0 experience.
Barack Obama begins his online journey with a welcome splash screen (right) that offers only the word Change, the campaign slogan of the Obama camp. Centered around a joyous family picture, the Obama welcome screen directs you to sign up for information and support or to continue to the main site, which also is built around a similarly impressive design. Often described in literary terms as the hook in an article or story, a clincher that grabs the attention of the reader, or in this case, the viewer, Obama’s Welcome Screen is a successful hook. Minimalistic in design, Obama has a simple welcome page that does not deter the easily distracted reader.
The same cannot be said, unfortunately, for the McCain website. Greeted with a “smear” video against Barack Obama, visitors are easily distracted from the options of donating or entering the site for more information. A casual undecided voter may come across this website and pass over it, mistaking it for a supporter page with smear videos and busy graphics. From a potential undecided voter’s perspective, the type of person that these websites are designed to influence, one is left questioning what McCain stands for. Sure the site says Country First in the upper right hand corner, above four busy graphical buttons and a smear video. But it is immediately lost in the abyss once the video begins playing. The video is a distractionary element to the website, an element that brings attention to Obama rather than John McCain and what he brings to the table. We only learn through this mini-introductory video what McCain is faulting Obama for, not what McCain supports, nor what his plans of action are. Obviously that is a near impossible amount of information to get across in a welcome page, but Obama successfully attracts visitors through one word and one picture.
Obama’s clear vision and design on his welcome page deliver a rich Web 2.0 introductory site.
Point – Obama.
This simplistic design and layout is carried through to the main site for Obama2, a clear advantage over the seemingly lackluster effort put into the McCain website3. Offering guided collections of information, the Obama website has been carefully crafted and laid out to deliver information in a stress less environment. Tabs at the top of both candidates websites breakdown the Presidential ticket of Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin into issues, media, learning, action, blogs, etc. Obama’s main page identifies popular articles, and prominently displays them in the center of the page for immediate attention. More importantly, the site singles out you – the viewer, and the voter, offering ways to get involved through direct links to volunteering campaigns, donation funds, and voter registration. Modules along the side of the page offer links for Hilary Clinton supporters in an attempt to unite the party and fight for one common cause – Change. Elements such as a calendar of events, maps, merchandise, and a little pane entitled “Obama Everywhere” offer a sense of hope, security, and togetherness with the candidate.
“Obama Everywhere” (left) is a feature of the Obama website that is truly unique and quite effective. It is a small pane on the side of the website that offers direct links to organizations, newsgroups, blogs, social interaction sites.
Popular sites such as Facebook and Flickr have custom Barack Obama pages made to cater to the respective audiences of those particular sites. The power of the Internet has brought official primary websites for each candidate. But the Internet has gone further with Barack Obama. It has evolved to social spheres, among the likes of YouTube, a user driven video site that offers campaign videos, interviews, among other things uploaded by other users. Facebook, a popular social networking website amongst young adults and teenagers, many of whom will be given the opportunity to vote for the first time ever come November 4th, even has a dedicated page created by the Barack Obama team.
The ability to reach a user base of over 100 million users, through a third-party website is astronomically useful. Getting users to a webpage you have created can often be a daunting task. But getting users to a page you created in a web environment that they visit and interact with on a daily basis can be a gold mine of opportunity. Take a look at the numbers. As of this writing, Barack Obama has 2,157,557 supporters on the social networking website Facebook. John McCain on the other hand, has 579,231 supporters. Obama has used the Internet to his advantage, leveraging the powers of instant communication, instant access to information, and excelled. The numbers show a four-fold advantage in support. Other factors can obviously influence these numbers, such as the demographics of the user bases of such social networking websites. But the raw data offers a clear advantage to Barack Obama, a result of his ability to successfully harness the power of the Internet to gain support and recognition.
With over 2,000 videos readily available on YouTube and more on BarackTV, an embedded video player throughout the site that offers related videos to each page, Barack Obama has positioned himself in a technological world to reach as many people as possible, in as many ways as possible. The closest McCain gets to matching the social networking of Obama is on his website, through a slightly buried link to a page entitled McCainSpace. A YouTube of sorts, user submitted videos and testimonials are catalogued in McCainSpace for playback and viewing. Finding this page is a task in and of itself however. It is apparent through John McCain’s website that organization has played only a small part in the creation of his site. Web 2.0 elements such as the McCainSpace could have been hugely successful if it had been prioritized and given front-page real estate on the McCain website. Visitors are greeted instead by a vast array of elements scattered throughout the website. Highlighted are links to “TV videos”, Obama Smear cleverly disguised as “Obama Facts”, “Volunteering”, and “Why McCain.” Obama ads a nice touch to his feature piece of the site by placing right smack dab in the center a calculator that will calculate “Your Obama Tax Cut,” a very effective emotional appeal to his visitors.
Obama’s website goes on to, like McCain’s site, break down the issues facing our country today, issues that separate the two candidates in terms of resolution and planned course of action. Obama lays out each issue in its own page, breaking it down into three parts – the Problem, Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s Plan, and their past actions regarding the issue. A clear roadmap, Obama’s website has a clear advantage over the McCain website which is structured in large bodies of text, an informative, yet easily distractible element
Point – Obama.
Both candidates strongly encourage participation through their websites. Be it through blogs, which I will discuss next, through volunteer campaigns, or simply through an email signup to provide up to the minute information delivered straight to your inbox. Both candidates deliver daily emails providing updates, progress, news briefs, etc. McCain, for a guy who admittedly doesn’t know how to use a computer, surprisingly uses this method of communication quite effectively. Offering not only donation requests and volunteer opportunities like the emails from the Obama team, McCain delivers information and news announcements regarding his policies and the campaign itself, whereas Obama emails received so far have only been donation and volunteer requests. This is one area where the Obama team could and should improve their technical involvement.
Point – McCain for this one.
The last element I am going to discuss is the use of blogs. Blogs today have enabled anybody with a computer, an Internet connection, and a clear train of thought (though not always the case) to become a self-employed journalist. Though many blogs can degrade the quality of and hide the true journalistic efforts in fields such as politics, they can also serve as an effective method of creating social interaction with a candidate. Both candidates have dedicated a portion of their website to creating a blog. Entitled the Obama Road Blog, Barrack Obama and his team have used this blog to deliver up to the minute news and information regarding the campaign, opponents, information, etc. and allow users to comment, sparking enormous threads in response to each single posting. Similarly, the McCain team has a blog much like the Obama site. What makes this blog stand out is there is the option to submit to the web team your own blog. Whether or not this is advantageous or not is not immediately noticeable due to the lack of credible and reliable sources. User submitted blogs can be informative and effective. But their importance is more than likely outweighed by the sheer unreliability, lack of credibility, and grave use of emotional appeal often present in individuals’ blogs.
Both sites offer similar blog functionalities, offering interactions with the posting through comment and discussion threads as well as the ability to link to various news and social networking sites. This element is a draw for both candidates.
The Internet is a powerful and potentially dangerous tool. If used properly, it can attract potential voters and spark an interest in its viewers. However, the Internet is a massive conglomerate of information. An overload of information – that is too much information written out in one place, cannot only distract a viewer, it can discourage and detract viewers. Both candidates have taken steps in a previously untouched area of campaigning, and have seen the immediate success the Internet can deliver. This is not a campaigning tool that will go unused in the future. The power of the Internet is only set to increase in the future, and the ways in which both Barack Obama and John McCain have utilized the Internet in a Web 2.0 experience will set the foundation for future candidates and future campaigns.
1 Excerpt from Wikimedia
2 Below is a screenshot from the Barack Obama main website depicting a simple, thoughtfully laid out design that invites users to learn more.
3 Below is a screenshot from the John McCain main website.
Web 2.0 Photo Credit: Wiki User: Nrlight
All screenshots are from the respective candidates websites which can be found at the following links:
Popularity: 2%
