The sound of the radio, the picture of the television, and the vast information that is not found in any other specific location. Obama has used the internet to collect donations, and those who use the internet tend to donate more heavily and since it is so easy and instant more donations could be collected. 80 of those who donated received campaign emails, according to Darr (2006).
The internet also gives voters the benefit of going online and finding more about the candidate. Voters are now expecting candidates to have sophisticated websites. By the end of the election both candidates had very sophisticated websites but McCain was never able to gather as many followers as Obama did.
“McCain Vs. Obama: A Story of Numbers
When McCain and Obama emerged from their national conventions and the final push
toward the Nov. 4 election began after Labor Day 2008, both candidates had honed
their skills on carefully crafted Web sites.
But Obama had more money and numbers of people connected to his Internet
networks.
The Pew Research Centers Project for Excellence in Journalism wrote the definitive
pre-election study of the campaigns Web presence: McCain vs. Obama on the Web
(Uncredited, 2008).
This study examined nine key characteristics of a successful Web effort and made close
comparisons.
According to the report, those aspects were:
1) Site customization Ways a user could tailor the page for personal preference
2) Demographic group pages
3) User comments on campaign blogs
4) Citizen-initiated blogs In addition to the official campaign blog, several
candidates provided a tool for users to establish their own blogs.
5) Information delivery options Tools to deliver information directly to users: RSS
feeds, Podcasts, e-mail updates, mobile updates, and search capability
6) Grassroots activity Fundraising, organizing community events and voter
registration information
7) Social Networking The presence of social networks and the number of social
networks that a candidate displayed on his/her Web site (on the home page or
elsewhere). These were embedded links that led the user to the candidates
profiles on respective external social networking sites.
8) Newsroom The section on the site that lists articles not authored by the
campaign. These are predominantly articles about the candidate that appear in
the mainstream media (including editorials) and appear as either links to an
external site or the article as a whole with the source.
9) Translation An option to translate content into a second language.
The Pew report (2008) found that Obamas Web site at the early stages of the
presidential race in 2007 was superior to McCains.”
taken from http://web.cs.swarthmore.edu/~turnbull/cs91/f09/paper/barron08.pdf
