July 31st, 2008 by Nils Maier
Quite interesting and revealing statistics concerning the scopes of the U.S. election strategies 2.0 have been published. According to Pew/internet, approx. 46% of the over 18-year-olds actively use the internet for their political decision-making. As per survey conducted by the government of the United States of America, this adds up to over 50 million U.S. citizens. Here, two activities are especially prominent: 35% of the Americans have watched election speeches via YouTube and 10% are actively participating in social networks in order to form their political commitment.
However, it is a misapprehension to believe that the emphasis placed on online election campaigns was initiated by Barack Obama and his team. Election campaigns in 2004 already showed a clear tendency in political decision-making towards a manifestation of online channels. In autumn 2004, approx. 34% of all Americans were already gathering political information via online communication channels. After all, Facebook was still in the fledgling stages at that time and YouTube was not yet online. These types of media eventually seem to have supported this development.
The major American parties appear to have understood the social development concerning the media usage of their target group and voters. According to Pew/internet over 80% of the Americans are already online. Therefore, a possible conclusion would be that Americans include more and more offers, such as YouTube, MySpace and Flickr, into their personal media mix as a new means of communication and source of information. For this the U.S. election planners must be prepared. So far, they have put it into practice quite successfully. Furthermore, the social media activities of individual candidates obtain an immense international scope. This, surely, is also a reason for the current “Obama Hype” in Germany.
