The New Media

This election has been awash in new technologies, and I can't imagine how we ever conducted an election before blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, online donations, before email, before websites, Jeez, how did anyone ever get INFORMATION? Clearly Obama has been the master of this new world. And McCain? Well, he's still getting the hang of the Selectric typewriter.

The Washington Post highlighted the role of bloggers and social networking, who get the word out through emails, online posts and socnets like Facebook to ever-widening circles. (ahem.) "With the Internet making it easier than ever for voters to fund a candidate, act as their own publishers and search for information (and misinformation), the Washington political establishment -- candidates, strategists and journalists -- has been forced to loosen its grip on setting the narrative of the campaign. For voters such as Myers and Stoynoff, this is a sign of how the electoral process has been democratized and individualized. It's neither McCain's nor Obama's campaign. It's their campaign."

Obama's campaign has an amazing number of videos up on YouTube too, 1805 of them as of 2 pm, with over 18 million views on the channel. They must have people on the thing 24/7 editing video. My favorite for today is Matthew Broderick's "Ferris Bueller" riff-- "Election Day is tomorrow...Take the day off, but do it the right way...I promise you, it will be a day off you're not going to forget..." Keep watching to the end.

Obama's texting program is another one of those areas that has really captured the younger generation."Even officials at groups such as Rock the Vote and PIRGs have been surprised by the breadth and scope of Obama's texting program. In August, Obama introduced Obama Mobile, a site where users can access the latest Obama news and download videos on their cell phones -- a first for a presidential candidate. Two months later, in another electoral first, the campaign rolled out a free iPhone application that supporters can to organize their address book by state and make it easier for them to make calls. Within the first week, the free application was the eighth most downloaded on iTunes. As of Sunday night, it ranked No. 50, ahead of AOL Instant Messaging and behind iBaseball. Supporters receive texts specific to their state. Voters living in states that allow early voting received this text on Friday at 5:41 p.m. EST: "Vote for Barack NOW. Early vote locations are open until 7 pm today. Find your location at VoteForChange.com or call 877-235-6226." Supporters in Virginia got this text at 11:04 a.m. Saturday: "Help make history. Volunteer on Election Day to help Barack win VA! We still need to fill many 2 hour shifts. REPLY with V2 your NAME ZIP (ex: V2 John 22030)." Identical, but state-specific, versions of the text were sent in Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Colorado."

But even beyond the campaign's official programs, there are viral texts making the rounds just like viral emails. One of the most popular is quoted from Jay-Z's freestyling at a concert in New York (forward to 1:53 into the video):"Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Barack could run. Barack is running so our children can fly."