New Media Machine of Political Campaigns

Starting The New Media Machine Early

... New Roles, New Tools, New Tasks

By Dr. Joan Van Tassel

The operational staff is the humming engine of the campaign. As political efforts incorporate new media, they will make key changes, including adding an Online Coordinator, as well as expanding the role of the Volunteer Coordinator. Although the new channels for communication do not change the structure of campaigns a great deal, the same cannot be said for processes. Additional processes are added on top of traditional activities and processes, entailing a significantly greater burden of work to the campaign. For example, the increased volume of data and messages will be enormous. On the plus side, handled properly, so will the flow of contributions.

A good example of the addition of an Online Coordinator was the spontaneous attachment of Lowell Feld to the Jim Webb (D-VA) Senatorial campaign of 2006. As described in his 2008 Praeger book, “Netroots Rising,” Feld had founded the Virginia Democratic-oriented blog site in 2005, www.raisingkaine.com to organize opposition to the Republican victory in 2004 and to help elect Tim Kaine as Virginia governor. By 2006, Feld was the glue holding together a phalanx of activists to draft Jim Webb to run against the state’s sitting senator, George “Felix” Allen. After the primary, Feld used the pioneering volunteer-oriented site to allow Webb supporters to meet, organize, and coordinate.

In his last message before shutting down the blog site, Feld offers hard-won knowledge to would-be blog builders:

You need to have something to say. If not, why bother blogging?
You need to be able to express yourself coherently at the minimum, eloquently if possible.
You need to work at this, keep at it day in and day out, get out and cover events, do original reporting, dig for information.
You’ve got to be willing to fight for what you believe in and to take on powerful people when they’re wrong, even when they are in your own party.

Feld writes:

“Can blogs make a difference? Perhaps not blogs per se, standing on their own. However, combined with the efforts of talented grassroots activists, they absolutely can make a difference. I’m thinking first and foremost of the Webb campaign, in which a 10,000-strong “ragtag army” arose and helped defeat the seemingly invincible George Allen. Could that “ragtag army” have arisen without blogs like this one? Possibly, but it’s hard to see how we would have persuaded Webb to run without the “draft,” and how that “draft” - which began right here on this blog - could have succeeded if it hadn’t moved at the lightning speeds permitted by this amazing invention known as the internet(s). :) Don’t believe me? I have just three words for you: President Barack Obama.”

The Volunteer Coordinator (VC) is a familiar job but in Politics 4.0 efforts it takes on new significance and duties. In these campaigns, the highest-level volunteers become part of the operational staff, executing many of the responsibilities and activities that, in most campaigns, are performed by paid staff. The VC champions volunteer training, sets recruitment policies and rules, supervises volunteers, and establishes a good working environment for them.

The slogan that guided the Obama volunteer effort was: Respect. Empower. Include. It was a powerful philosophy that motivated and inspired volunteers. Respect for volunteers meant assigning them meaningful, rewarding tasks, not just the drudge work. Empower meant encouraging “bottom up” innovation as well as “top down” control. Include was tied to a theme of the Power of Five, which asked each volunteer to recruit five other volunteers.

Obama volunteers organized events and ran them, with online assists such as invitation utilities and lists of the email addresses and phone numbers of local supporters. “We are the change we are waiting for” is a variation of the empowerment theme. The extent to which this philosophy took hold is illustrated by an anecdote from a local blog on November 4, 2008:

“We showed up at 6:15 this morning to our polling location in Westport. There were about 150 people in line. The line didn’t move for 15 minutes before a girl in a lime green shirt with the Obama logo in white that said “voting rights advocate” told us that the election representatives inside had the wrong books. She told us that as long as we had our voter ID#s we would be able to vote. As soon as she said that, people were sharing their phones and Blackberries to either call the election board or get on their website to get their numbers. As we quickly got more organized, the line started moving.“

Obama’s campaign made a low-key but persistent effort to convert volunteer donors of money into volunteer donors of time – and vice versa. They welcomed people who gave small amounts of either – contributions of $5.00 or half an hour were received warmly. For example, a post on www.mybarackobama.com (the campaign social network site) asked for volunteers on election day:

“If you have even thirty minutes to spare in the next three hours, we can use your help. Simply select the state you want to call from the map below, and we’ll provide you with an easy to use script and a targeted list of voters to call. The largest voter contact operation ever attempted is underway right now. This is your chance to be part of it.”

There is only one way to handle all the new tasks – volunteers. The Volunteer and Online Coordinators will be on the front lines for most of this activity. Volunteers’ work will be crucial – without it, it is probably not even possible to run a strong new media campaign. They will handle most of the recruitment and training of new volunteers. They will sign up for campaign accounts and design pages on social networks, blog and microblog sites like Twitter, video sites such as YouTube and Google Video, and activate text (if they don’t already have it) on their mobile phones.

Early in the campaign, the staff should set objectives and timelines for recruitment and training. Typically campaigns set specific objectives for staff activities. Now they need to set them for volunteers too. The first wave volunteers will report, not on registrations or postings, but on recruitment calls, meetings, and training sessions. (The Obama campaign spent valuable time and money on this work at the height of the campaign, in July and August of ’08. Down-ballot campaigns will need to do it too.)

As volunteers swing into the campaign, the objectives for their activities should include both goals and deadlines: How many voters does the campaign want to register in the next week? Month? Quarter? Where do they want to avoid registration efforts? How many residences must be canvassed in the next week, month, quarter? How many posts to blog sites should there be in a week?

The Care and Feeding of Volunteers

Volunteer training is essential. They need to know what they can’t say – their limits. They need to know the activities for which they need approval. They must learn the campaign software for data input and the structures available for them to report. Once the first volunteers are trained, they will take over the training of other volunteers.

Volunteers will contribute more than time and money. They use their own computers, mobile phones, and homes as satellite offices. Much of the coordination will occur via email and text, so a large number of volunteers may be working very hard, even though they are not physically present in the campaign headquarters. The campaign staff will need to stand by and encourage self-organizing if volunteers are to be able to manage all the coordination and communication activities required by the new media campaign.

As part of the recruitment process, any campaign should ask about any special skills and pay particular attention to computer-savvy volunteers. In the Obama campaign, a group of volunteers developed the iPhone application that, overnight, became the most popular download on the iPhone site. Led by Project Director Raven Zachary, the team developed software that scanned the iPhone contact list and listed all the contacts in battleground states. Armed with the list, owners called their contacts and asked them to register, volunteer, and vote – the invaluable word-of-mouth, person-to-person communication that is the most effective form of persuasion.

A final note on volunteers: They need regular infusions of water, pizza and salad, and Chinese food. Some of them will also appreciate cookies and Twinkies.

IT Support:

The IT staff members will need to design secure online interfaces for volunteers to upload data. IT also makes sure that levels of permission are established and electronically enforced – they have to work smoothly and politely. One greatly enlarged task will be designing interfaces and integration paths. They will need to make sure that the output from software is compatible with the other applications and the database and data warehouse. IT will also be buying a lot more software, for staff and volunteers alike.

Messaging Considerations:

The staff members responsible for messaging will need to send out daily talking points to the volunteers who are writing online. Despite their worries, they need to allow for spontaneity and the personalization of volunteer messages. They should only respond to seriously problematic messages; if its minor, let it go. However, the Online Coordinator must put sharp eyes on all online messaging to encourage successful efforts and to change or remove inappropriate messages.

There is one exception to all the volunteer activity in the messaging arena. Unless there are identified specific situations that make it a good idea, volunteers should not design or maintain the campaign website. This public-facing site needs to be under the control of the strategic messaging staff and no one else. Volunteers will also need help with the piping that makes the website, social networks, blogs, texting, and wiki funnel data to the campaign database.

Finally, a wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone with access to contribute or modify content. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The staff needs their own wiki-based software for fast communication between all members of the strategic team. Those messages need to be routed to staff mobile phones and Blackberries so everybody gets everything from the staff wiki.

Joan Van Tassel, Ph.D., Communication Theory & Research.
An educator, author, and multimedia journalist.
Currently, an Associate Professor of Communication
and Chair of the Communication Arts Department
at National University. Joan teaches courses in media
story-telling, strategic communication, communication
technologies, content production, and journalism.
Joan can be reached at Click here to contact this Author