The daily grind
Throughout the campaign, both sites have displayed impressive dexterity in terms of adding new content and matching each other's moves. The sites have often displayed similarly themed content on the same days, showing that the online campaigns have kept an eye on each other. And while neither has more than static plans for what will happen to the sites after the election has concluded, both teams say the sites will operate in some form.
The Bush site claims a team of 20 workers while the Kerry team numbers 30 staffers, but the two have become equally adept at using the Web to quickly adapt their campaigns' online messages. The fact that both sites feature animated cartoons parodying their rivals' positions and personalities also shows the campaigners have followed mainstream political trends, like the success of JibJab's political Flash cartoons.
Perhaps the most technology-centric efforts produced by either of the sites were the news feeds they created to serve as companions to the televised debates. Whereas in years past campaigners rushed to the fax machines during debates to send detailed candidate position statements and rebuttals to pools of journalists, the two sites offered direct feeds to voters in 2004. The Bush team created an online tool that pushed such information in real time to Web sites and blogs, that signed up for the news, while the Kerry campaign offered a similar service that provided email responses to interested parties.
According to John Tedesco, an associate professor of communications at Virginia Tech and the author of "Changing the Channel: Use of the Internet for communicating about politics", the debate feeds are evidence of how online campaigns are circumventing traditional sources of campaign information, such as television or print news, a trend he expects to grow in future elections.
"In past elections, the candidates appealed to people to go to the Web sites, as did the media, but by and large people are now already aware of the sites' existence, and they're visiting them on their own," Tedesco says. "That is the biggest difference from years past -- wider access and the shift in the number of people using [the candidate sites] as a primary source of information."
Tedesco says that in the future candidates will try to drive voters to their sites as a substitute for other forms of news media, which he sees the public increasingly labelling as biased. By encouraging people to get their news straight from their candidates, he contends, the Web will become an even more powerful campaign tool.
"In the past, we were relying more on investigative reporters doing independent fact-checks on candidates' claims, and even now we're relying more on the campaigns to provide that info," Tedesco says. "What that does, and will do even more in the future, is draw the campaigns even closer to the supporters. That's the power of the Web in today's politics."
