New: How has the internet revolutionized political campaigns?

Published on
September 20, 2024

How has the internet revolutionized political campaigns? The answer is that it has changed how and when voters consume political information, thus enabling politicians to chase support among such voters 24/7 at a relatively low cost. 

The Internet has changed how political information is shared and understood by making practically unlimited amounts of political information available to voters. People no longer need to buy a newspaper or wait for the news to get their information. Online political discussions are continuous. 

Even those who aren’t looking for politics specifically are exposed to politics anyway. One 2014 study found that 78% of Facebook users “picked up news from Facebook when they were on the site for some other reason.”

news-consumption-facebook
Source: Pew Research Center

This has made the Internet the cornerstone of modern political campaigning. The internet has exponentially scaled political outreach by enabling campaigns to reach hundreds of millions of people, leverage personalized communication, and engage in cost-effective, real-time interaction with voters. 

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Screenshot of President Obama’s 2012 website. Source: JournalistResource.org

Why has social media affected political campaigns?

A 2015 study examining President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign found that social media was ‘setting the political agenda’ even then despite traditional media retaining significant power over political discourse.  

It has been 12 years since that campaign, and the number of people who get their political news from social media has increased exponentially. Nowadays, X.com has 108 million users in America, 59% of whom use it for political news. TikTok has 100 million US users, 36% of whom use it for politics. Facebook has over 200 million users in America, 26% of whom use it for politics.

political-users-platform-comparison
Source: Pew Research Center

Assuming many of these people overlap across platforms, this still means that over 50 million potential supporters are available to any politician who can open a social media account (for free!) and make regular posts. 

For context, that’s about the same number of people who tuned in to watch the 2020 Presidential election results on November 3, 2020. Unlike a one-time TV event, these voters are always available on social media platforms —the core reason social media has affected political campaigns. 

Specifically, here are the three big reasons: 

Bypass gatekeepers: Platforms like X.com (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube allow politicians to communicate directly with voters, bypassing traditional media gatekeepers. 

Costs: Unlike traditional media (TV ads, radio, print), social media is low-cost (or even free). For example, in 2020, Michael Bloomberg spent $200 million on TV advertising, and even his primary campaign went nowhere. The eventual winner, President Biden, had to shell out $800 million for TV advertising while spending just $79 million on Facebook – appealing to roughly similar-sized audiences.

Real-time reactions: Politicians can respond to events as they happen, address public concerns, and engage in conversations with their supporters or critics in real time, which fosters a more dynamic and responsive campaign.

How has the internet changed audience media preferences?

average-time-spent-per-day-with-digital-media-in-the-united-states-from-2011-to-2024
Average time spent per day (minutes) with digital media in the United States from 2011 to 2024. Source: Statista

Audiences spent an estimated 8 hours a day consuming digital content in 2023 (mostly on their phones), nearly doubling the time spent on screens in 2011. The internet is their primary source of all engagement. 50% of the audience also gets their news online rather than through traditional gatekeepers like TV stations or newspapers Audiences no longer wait for scheduled programming, which is experiencing steep declines annually. Instead of passively consuming content, users are now active participants—watching content creators and posting their own comments and reactions.

What’s more, a study in 2022 found that up to 84% of respondents were consuming media to later post about it on social media. Engagement is as important as the content itself.

However, this news and interests are followed more through individual creators, influencers, and micro-celebrities who produce content tailored to specific interests, leading to fragmented but highly personalized viewing habits. 

And finally and most drastically, the internet has fostered a preference for shorter, bite-sized content. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Twitter (now X) specialize in delivering content quickly and succinctly. This shift caters to shrinking attention spans, with audiences favoring quick, digestible snippets over longer forms of media.

The internet has scaled up outreach in diverse ways

Like the internet, TV opened a new revolution in political campaigning in 1952 (“Ike for President”). Phonebanking was another step in 1968. Like the internet, both allowed for unheard-of access to voter attention. But in the 50 years since, these avenues continue to be hampered by three issues:  

  • There is no accurate way of knowing who was consuming the message 
  • There is no accurate way of privately targeting a particular kind of voter. All messaging had to be part of more extensive speeches.     
  • Manual effort was needed to ensure that the data (as it was gathered) was being compiled into something useful. 

Read More: The Only Political Campaign Checklist You Need to Organize Your Efforts

The internet solved all three problems, sometimes using the same tool. And the internet came with a dramatic price drop. For example, a cloud-based call center requires little infrastructure beyond a computer, headphones, and a place to sit down for a few hours.  

Software like CallHub’s Call Centre, for example, has features like: 

  • Campaigns can upload millions of sorted contacts and choose how, when, and how fast they want those numbers dialed. 
  • Volunteers join campaigns from their homes using a mobile app, speak to people, assign contacts for a callback, or send them an instant SMS with more details – all while reading out an up-to-date dynamic script uploaded online by the team.
  • Have a single hub for feedback collected after every call, and allow tools to compile it into actionable steps. Then, instantly broadcast it to every campaign manager in the country. 

Other software like L2 allows campaigns to: 

  • Find the ideal voter using hundreds of data points gathered across their lifetime to build a strong supporter profile. 
  • Create turfs so volunteers can only knock on doors where the vote counts on election day. 
  • Craft their message to specific voters based on specific issues. 

Tools also let campaigns track and change ads to improve results or show different ads to different people on the same website. Through the internet, you can send MMS messages with pictures or videos, forward videos through messaging apps like WhatsApp, or create viral dances or reactions in places like TikTok.

If a voter exists, the internet helps campaigns find them and brings the campaign’s message to them in any form of media consumption they prefer.  

The internet has given way to data-driven messaging

During the 2016 US presidential election, Donald Trump’s campaign reportedly created over 5.9 million ad variations tailored to specific voters, targeting messages in battleground states down to individual neighborhoods.

By leveraging such in-depth data from social media, voter databases, online behaviors, and psychographics, campaigns today can optimize their messaging in real-time and deliver content that resonates deeply with specific voter groups.

Read more: The Best Election Campaign Messages that Appeal to Voters

Such data-driven messaging allows campaigns to segment voters based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and voting history. Political campaigns can use data to group voters by age, gender, ethnicity, income, political views, or issues of concern (e.g., healthcare, climate change, education). This helps craft specific messages that resonate with each group.

Platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram help this approach by offering sophisticated ad-targeting tools. These tools allow campaigns to focus on specific voter segments based on behavior, location, and preferences. 

However, this shift also raises important questions about privacy, ethics, and transparency in the political process.

Fundraising is more diverse through online donations.

Just a few months ago, within hours of President Biden pulling out of the 2024 elections, a Zoom call with organizers of the ‘#WinWithBlackWomen’ movement saw a staggering 90,000 participants and raised $1.3 million to support Kamala Harris on the spot. 

This is the new world of digital fundraising. 

A 2016 study already showed how political newcomers got a “substantial boost” in support by using social media channels, which cost next to nothing. Those considered ‘outsiders’ found social media a potent fundraising source as well – Bernie Sanders raised over $230 million from small online donations in the 2016 and 2020 US elections. 

Platforms like ActBlue (used by Democrats in the U.S.) make it easy for campaigns to solicit donations from everyday people. For example, during the 2020 U.S. election, ActBlue raised over $4 billion from small-dollar donations – primarily online. 

Read More: A Quick Guide to Kickstart Telephone Fundraising

Many people now donate as little as $5 to $20 to support a candidate or cause, making it possible for campaigns to raise millions of dollars from millions of supporters with modest contributions.

Indeed, in 2020, 18% of all donations to House Democrats came from small contributors, showing how substantial online donations have become. Kamala Harris claimed 66% of the $200 million she received in her first week of campaigning came from first-time donors, primarily online. The DNC claims it broke a record for online fundraising, raising $6.5 million in grassroots donations on July 21.

The internet has allowed almost anyone to donate at any time, letting campaigns reap rich rewards from appealing to the masses and instantly gaining funds through a quick text-to-donate or online donation link. Something not possible even 15 years ago. 

How has the internet reshaped political activism?

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A sample ‘volunteer now’ poster looking for online volunteers for the 2024 election campaign. Source: X.com

The internet has made political activism in America more accessible, fast-paced, and far-reaching. It has enabled the rise of grassroots movements, democratized information, and given marginalized voices a platform. 

Using the internet, a campaign can mobilize thousands of supporters from around the country, sign them up as agents, and then put them on calling campaigns to make tens of thousands of calls to potential voters every day from the comfort of their own homes.   

Read More: 20+ Political Campaign Tools You Need to Win Elections

As a study found, the motivation of those who volunteer online is similar to that of those who go on the ground. But the online work helps reinforce political activism among those who take it up—a net positive. 

By allowing horizontal information flows between users, social media facilitates coordination between people, thus potentially making it easier to organize collective actions, such as street protests. The ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests being the most famous recent example – largely driven through online activists and online planning of real-world protests. 

This new form of activism is highly effective at bringing attention to an issue and raising funds, keeping ideas alive long before they would have been snuffed out through traditional media. 

To conclude

In closing, let us leave with this thought: the internet and digital technologies are transforming society, business, and politics as people respond to new realities online and change their behavior accordingly. 

These effects are reshaping politics and are the result of the nature of the online environment itself, where the combination of technology, information, and instinctive mental processes can unconsciously reshape how people think.

Is this all for the good? Only time can tell. However, the process of engaging more people and giving them more ways to be directly involved in the causes they believe in is the first step towards a truly participatory democracy, and the internet has led the way towards that. 

Vinayak Hegde Linkedin
Vinayak Hegde is a content marketer who has been covering non-profits, changemakers, and advocacies for over six years. His experience includes all forms of digital content creation, including text, audio, and video.