The 2008 presidential election race has produced its share of internet firsts. Three of the Democratic candidates—John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama—essentially declared their candidacies online. Obama has broken fundraising records, mostly through online contributions. Citizen questions for key party debates were solicited and delivered via videos posted on YouTube—including one from a snowman. Politics has its own channel on YouTube, and individual candidates also have their own channels. Libertarian Republican Ron Paul established a special presence online that sustained him through the early caucus and primary season.  

The presidential candidates are now recruiting supporters through profiles on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and their supporters themselves are creating candidate communities on those sites. Indeed, Obama has integrated social networking online and offline as a core element of his outreach and mobilization.

In addition, a series of major news stories have been broken or given powerful urgency through online activity, including:

• Obama’s comments at a San Francisco fundraiser, when he said small-town voters have become “bitter” over job losses and that they “cling to guns or religion or antipathy,”” were first recorded as an MP3 and then published by a blogger Mayhill Fowler.¹ The event became a central narrative of the campaign heading into the Pennsylvania primary.
• Stories about the sermons by Obama’s preacher Jeremiah Wright were stirring as early as February 2007,² and then grew to blockbuster proportions when a story and tapes of him saying, “God damn America,” were posted by ABC News on March 13, 2008.³ The story grew in power as Obama reacted to it; the sermons/reactions consumed the blogosphere and were viewed millions of times on YouTube. The ensuing furor led Obama to repudiate Wright and eventually to part ways with his church. As of June 10, Obama’s speech on racial issues in the wake of the controversy, which was posted by several people, had been viewed more than 6.5 million times on YouTube.
• Sermons by preacher John Hagee, a backer of Republican John McCain, came to prominence when liberal blogger Bruce Wilson posted an audio tape of Hagee arguing that Hitler was a “divine agent sent by God to chase Europe’s Jews towards Palestine.”⁴ That prompted McCain to break with Hagee.
• Clinton was challenged when she claimed that when she was First Lady she came under sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia in 1996, and that turned out not to be the case. The potency of the story grew when CBS tapes of the trip were posted on YouTube.
• The relationship between bloggers and candidates became more noteworthy. Unprecedented numbers of bloggers are being credentialed to cover the party conventions. Edwards first hired bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan to promote his candidacy, but then let left the race when their previous controversial comments were unearthed and challenged by conservative bloggers.⁵ McEwan referred to conservative Christians as “Christofascists,” and Marcotte said the Catholic Church’s prohibition on the use of birth control forced women to be “more tithing Catholics.” 

Moreover, the punch-counterpunch rhythms of the campaign are now usually played out online in emails and videos rather than in faxed press releases and 30-second ads.

Added up, all this means that the bloggers, the growing activity on social networking sites, and the number of viewers of politically relevant YouTube videos have become a key part of at least some campaign events this election cycle. In addition, the technology-assisted developments are unfolding at the same time that younger, tech-embracing voters are playing a particularly prominent role at the ballot box, especially in the Democratic race. From the very first contests, voters between ages 18 and 30 have voted in greater numbers throughout the nation than in previous races.⁶ And there is mounting evidence that they are blending their interest in Democratic matters with their enthusiasm for using the internet and cell phones.⁷ In this season, just the 12th year of presidential politics online, there is no disputing the fact that the internet has moved from the periphery to the center of national politics.