As the sun sets behind Wescoe Hall Adam Wood scribbles his politics onto concrete benches with a sliver of white chalk. Political messages compete for space with drink specials on the gray, open-air forum that is Wescoe Beach. Endorsements of Barack Obama are overwritten with criticisms from Ron Paul supporters. Two for one deals and other advertisements, in turn, overwrite those criticisms.
Wood started a group, Students for Ron Paul, on campus in order to support Representative Ron Paul, a long serving Republican from Texas, as a presidential candidate. He organizes and recruits in the real world, but his group started on the Internet and most of the work still goes on online. Tools like Facebook and MySpace have allowed individuals with an interest to find others who share that interest. For Wood and his group, that interest is politics.
“I’ve always been a political junkie,” said Wood.
Once Wood had decided that Ron Paul was the candidate he liked best, he wanted to help any way he could. When Wood went to register with the university the form was online and they asked for a website.
“I didn’t really have a choice,” said Wood.
So with the little experience he had gained from working a few weekends for the Ralph Nader campaign in 2004, Wood created a Facebook group and sent out invitations. That same group now has 212 members at KU as of December 4.
Wood is now a little cavalier about the benefits of working online.
“In today’s environment it’s an advantage,” said Wood. “But the thing you have know about the Internet is: a.) it’s a series of tubes and b.) it’s only five spammers.”
Wood is not unique. All the major candidates have Facebook groups. They all have MySpace pages. They all have websites and podcasts. The Internet is abuzz with attempts by candidates to make a name for themselves.
“Everybody’s trying everything,” said David Perlmutter, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Kansas and author of the forthcoming book Blogwars: The New Political Battleground. “You could make a case that Ron Paul wouldn’t be on anybody’s lips if not for Internet activism.”
How to use the Internet in a political campaign remains far from an exact science. Perlmutter sees the era of strictly “message” candidate as waning since in an Internet age, there is no telling what can happen on the web. Candidate’s profiles on Facebook and MySpace can be particularly dangerous.
Open commenting on these sites allows any supporter or detractor to comment on the page at their leisure. A user with a picture of a naked woman as his profile picture posted his admiration for Barack Obama one of Obama’s pages. The image appeared in the comments for all to see and the campaign could do nothing about it.
Less embarrassing support comes from the Internet as well. Wood found out about each candidate and picked Ron Paul based heavily on research he did online. Supporters like Wood bring up other issues relating to a candidates message.
Wood has minimal contact with the Ron Paul campaign, yet he runs Paul’s largest support group in Lawrence. Perlmutter sees Wood as an excellent example of what the future of political support could be, namely: unsolicited and unpaid.
Wood commented on an ad he saw searching for supporters to work for the Obama campaign in Kansas.
“They say ‘work’ like it’s a job. You should support the candidate you think is right and not get paid for it,” said Wood.
Supporters like Wood have no shortage of enthusiasm, however, candidates cannot leverage the same oversight on them as they could hired professionals. Even if they are not posting their support with naked pictures, Internet supporters can cost candidates by popularizing an image that runs counter the candidate’s intentions.
“Now it’s a bunch of unguided missiles,” said Perlmutter.
Some candidates are taking steps to counter this unpredictability. Barack Obama’s campaign started his own version of Facebook at my.barackobama.com. Hillary Clinton has a similar system on her website. A user registers for the site much like MySpace. Registered users can then find other Obama supporters in their area and around the country. The site also enables Obama’s campaign to have a list of interested individuals in an area so that they can mobilize support more easily. The University of Kansas chapter of Students for Barack Obama recently used the site as well as traditional print advertisement to spread the word about a “meet up.” On top of allowing the campaign to help organize events, the website allows the Obama campaign full editorial control of the site’s content.
The eventual effect of websites such as Facebook and my.barackobama.com is difficult to understand. Hillary Clinton has done less than other candidates with the Internet, but still holds a lead over the other Democratic challengers in Iowa, the state with the first primary, according to a Pew Research poll published December 3.
“The woman who has worked the hardest, has the most connections, has the most money is still in the lead,” said Perlmutter.
In the same Pew Research poll Ron Paul had 4 percent of the vote in Iowa. He polled slightly higher in New Hampshire with 9 percent. However, those numbers do not bode will for his campaign winning come November. But winning is not necessarily the point for many of his supporters. Wood sees himself as part of something larger than just a campaign for president.
“We want to win and we think we have a serious chance of winning. I am not truly gonna be happy unless he wins,” said Wood. “But it’s not an election, it’s a movement.”
After November Wood has no intention of stopping his activities, but instead he hopes to steer his groups energy to local elections and bring about change from the bottom up.