The general election in the UK is upon us and the impact of the social networking has been dramatic. Facebook campaigns and interest groups have been set up supporting each of the candidates; YouTube videos promoting or pillorying the party leaders have been appearing daily and Twitter has gone into overdrive whenever one of the parties or their candidates has put a foot wrong. When Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, was picked up on a microphone he forgot to turn off calling one of his supporters – ‘a bigoted woman’, it was ‘tweeted’ thousands of times within minutes.
In 2008, Barack Obama’s successful bid for the US Presidency was aided by a savvy online strategy that used these new media to revolutionise campaigning and finance. In February 2008, John McCain raised $11 million for his U.S. Presidential bid. During that month Barack Obama attended exactly no campaign fundraisers. Instead, he leveraged online social networks to raise $55 million in those 29 days. He allowed supporters to set up their own campaign page at mybarackobama.com and persuaded followers to give “micro-payments” over the internet.
