The Daily Orange

Media Credit: YouTube

When it comes time to vote for the president of the United States, young Americans are typically no-shows. P. Diddy gave it an admirable try, but his "Vote or Die" campaign in 2004 couldn't even get Paris Hilton to the polls.

As the 2008 presidential campaign gets underway, the contenders are employing a new strategy in their efforts to engage college students in the political process. In this election, candidates are conducting aggressive campaigns via the Internet, hoping it may be the missing link between politics and young America.



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Given the close margins of the last two presidential elections, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and other social networking Web sites have become experimental outlets for candidates to reach the younger generation. These voters have the numbers to sway federal elections if they opt to get off the couch on Election Day.

With high-profile candidates competing for a spot on their party's ticket, candidates from both sides of the political arena are exploring new methods of communication to reach young voters early on in the campaign.



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"The millennial generation is estimated to be as large as the baby boom generation," said Dave Pollack, co-chair of the New York State Democratic Committee. "This means that the 'millenials' are going to be the people that dictate American culture, American economics and American politics for the balance of the next century and beyond. It is critical that the Democratic Party get to the 'millennials' early through means other than 30-second advertisements on TV and home phone calls."



While the majority of voters from the 18 to 24 age group use online social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, Pew Research polls show this group is less likely than older generations to read a newspaper or watch the nightly news.

In a competition where every vote matters, the highly charged race for the presidency in '08 has forced candidates to utilize alternative technologies in order to get their message out to America's younger voters.

"One of the things the Internet can do is to create a buzz," said Grant Reeher, associate professor of political science at Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. "One of the reasons for this is that people look at what's out there and talk to each other about it. There's a different set of conversations that young people might have with each other if they're talking about something that they saw on YouTube instead of, 'did you see that thing on Katie Couric the other night?'"



To organize and channel various Web casts provided by presidential candidates, YouTube has launched "You Choose '08," an online directory that allows viewers to easily navigate individual campaign channels. These channels provide YouTubers with videos of official campaign announcements and appearance clips of candidates. Presidential candidates with YouTube channels include Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Mitt Romney, Dennis Kucinich and John McCain.



"The Internet is being used as a networking and organizing tool by campaigns and by interest groups that does really lead to political action and doing things," Reeher said. "Everybody who is serious about running for office at a national level is looking at those things pretty seriously."

The downside of this media exposure, however, is that every public appearance, despite how it portrays the candidates, can wind up on the Internet for millions of viewers to scrutinize and comment on.

One video, titled "Hillary Goes Nuts," features a raspy-voiced Clinton appearing to rant almost unintelligibly about the nature of private versus public school systems during a press conference.



Whether or not it is accurate, bloggers went wild responding to this video with comments such as "Who needs kaopectate when I can just watch Mrs. Bill Clinton on YouTube when I need to vomit?"

For better or worse, these sites have successfully transitioned into the world of modern technology and cyberspace where the videos are unedited, the bloggers are brutal and everyone's a critic. But by sending their campaign messages right onto young people's laptops, politicians may have realized that to gain the support of "millenials," they need new tools reach their eyes and ears.



"In the recent past, this group has become more relevant," Reeher said regarding the 18 to 25 age group. "There's also an emphasis on candidates being more innovative and creative generally, in terms of reaching the public. In the areas where the newest, freshest and most innovative techniques and processes are found, particularly using the Internet, are areas where there are young people already there. It is much more heavily a young person's domain."

Just in case it takes more than colorful Web sites to gain the support of a generation that is politically tone deaf, politicians include personal information on their Internet homepages in hopes of appearing to be real people instead of scripted robots. If it weren't for his Facebook homepage, young Americans might never have known that Barack Obama is a die-hard fan of Miles Davis and Bob Dylan, or that his favorite movies include The Godfather Parts I and II.



"There's a big emphasis now on making yourself more of a complete person to people and not as one-dimensional," Reeher said. "I think some of the information that you can provide through the Internet is something people are taking advantage of. In a strange way, even though it's not face-to-face, it can be more of a personal and revealing environment."

Trying to make the candidate more "human," Hillary Clinton's page on MySpace provides Internet users with the usual info, her complete campaign platform, personal history, video clips and an entire store of Hillary 2008 paraphernalia. It also mentions that she is a married Scorpio who is looking for "friends and networking."



Hillary racked up an impressive 32,229 "friends" among her fellow MySpace.com members, one of which wrote this inspirational message to the potential first female president of the United States: "Hillary is awesomeness baby. She's so money, and she doesn't even know it."

While some Internet sites provide an open forum for candidates' supporters and opponents to put in their own two cents, some skeptics remain doubtful that this newfound multi-media campaign strategy will actually be able to get young Americans to the polls on Election Day.

"Generating activism from young people, or any other group of people through the Internet, is fraught with a lot of potential dangers, the biggest danger being that you can't actually get it done," said Danny Hayes, an assistant professor in the political science department. "I think there is potential for this to help the campaigns and to generate enthusiasm from young people for their campaigns. But I think the Internet is quite limited in its ability to do that, in some ways, because there isn't the same face-to-face connection."



The 2004 presidential election had the highest voter turnout from the 18 to 25 demographic in decades, with a 42.3 percent turnout, up from 36.5 percent in 2000, according to Pew Research. This shows that as candidates continue to use new media to reach young voters, they can reach a large pool of potential supporters.

But Hays said the methods candidates use to reach young people are not as important as the messages. If young people are interested in the candidates, they will vote, he said.



"If the candidates engage issues that young people care about, they are more likely to vote," Hayes said. "And those things matter more than any simple technology or the ease with which they can communicate with a candidate."

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