E-Politics in the United States

E-Politics in the United States is
The relatively recent developments in modern technology have drastically changed the face of political campaigns within the United States. Prior to the commercialization of the internet, politics were much more closed-door than they are today. The internet allows for transparency and accessibility to the politics of the United States, which leads to more educated voters come voting day.
In the elections today, every candidate has a website outlining their policies and what they hope to accomplish if elected. Not only are there websites dedicated to specific candidates, but there are websites dedicated to specific parties, so those voters who are undecided are able to read up on all the different parties and decide for themselves who to support.
Blogs as well as online discussion boards also lend to the education of citizens and the transparency of the government. Most political matters can be found on these blogs and discussion boards. Some even have the matters that are not shown on the candidates’ websites.
Examples of E-Government
2004 Presidential Political Campaign
This was the campaign that began the transition from previous campaigning to “e-politics” or electronic politics. During the campaign, blogs became the most frequent avenue for citizens to express their feelings about the campaign and about different issues that were addressed. Howard Dean, one of the democratic candidates during the primaries, was one of the forerunners in E-politics. He was one of the first to set up a website for his campaign fundraising, as well as setting up a blog for supporters to comment on his campaign. After George W. Bush(R) and John Kerry (D) were chosen as the official candidates of their respective parties, they followed suit and created their own websites.
2008 Obama Presidential Campaign
As technology progressed even further and social media (such as Facebook and YouTube) became an integral part of people’s internet use, candidates such as Barack Obama (D) knew they could utilize it to their advantage by using it to reach a broad audience. Obama used social media not only as a way to fundraise and blog, but to connect supporters directly to campaigns. He was successful in creating what has been called a “hybrid campaign” by using those tools on the internet, such as social media, that had been previously unused.
The Pew Internet and Human Life Project found that, in a survey based on the 2008 Election, 74% of internet users went online in the 2008 presidential election to get involved in the process, as well as 1/5 of internet users in the United States blogged about the campaign, answered questions or commented, 45% watched videos online, and 1/3 forwarded political content to others.
2012 Obama Presidential Campaign
While this campaign is a fairly recent development, as the campaign really has yet to start, Obama got a jump start on his announcement. On April 4th, 2011, Obama sent out an email to announce his campaign and attached a video to the email, titled, “Are You In?” which featured footage of interviews of grass roots supporters. The campaign website, www.barackobama.com/get-involved features the latest updates on the campaign, election news, local events, ways to volunteer and different videos. He also has created a Twitter account, another form of social media, to stay connected to his supporters, with 300 million followers to date.

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