Obama 101 - How Obama Won The Internet

Would you rather fight one hundred duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck? 

In 1931, another Democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized early on in his first term that the newest form of public communication was the radio for his presidential policy to be verbally propagated to the people en masse, ‘fireside chats’ were the first media development that facilitated intimate and direct communication between the president and the citizens of the United States. FDR had thirty fireside chats from 1931 to 1944.

In 1952, the next burgeoning phenomenon was television and was interjected into the Eisenhower - Stevenson Presidential campaigns. It brought the candidates up close and personal by visually speaking inside the living rooms all around the nation.

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In 2008 and 2012, the Obama campaigns immediately appreciated the huge, untapped potential of the computer Internet which had revolutionized personal and individual communication through mobile hand-held devices that instantly communicated or informed people everywhere. It was actually virtual on-line, two-way, visual and verbal communications between the candidates and the electorate.

Do you Twitter any Messages?The following should be a "gianormous" wake-up call to the Republican party.  They not only have to get up to speed by the 2016 Presidential elections on social networking and messaging but nominate candidates that can navigate it too. Otherwise, in this Internet connected generation the future campaigns for state and federal offices will be lost by "Tweets"!

Panic 2012: The Sublime and Terrifying Inside Story of Obama's Final Campaign, a behind-the-scenes look at the president's historic Reddit political campaign strategy.

"This is President Barack Obama."

On August 29, 2012, Obama was about to take part in a phenomenon called AMA, “Ask Me Anything”, a popular interview series on Reddit, a site with 50 million visitors a month. I This Screen was displayed in the Reddit Buzzfeed article - it still certainly questions Obama's proprieties for decency of associates.assume that Reddit refers to the term "read it". Redditors, as the site’s 2 million in-crowd-y regular users are known, did not take too kindly to frauds or dodges or interviewees who didn’t take the Reddit Internet site seriously. AMA subjects ran the gamut from celebrities (Woody Harrelson, Seth MacFarlane, PSY) to regular professionals (a male stripper) to basically anything (a woman who was date raped). Community members were also encouraged to submit requests for people they wanted to question. 

"This was a day of political-campaign and Internet firsts, the sitting president subjecting himself to a real free-for-all question-and-answer session with a hardOn Reddit after a campaign speech stop.core community of pot-smoking freedom junkies who hated drones and loved porn and had a keen interest in politics and the future. It was chaotically democratic, and something of a gamble. Reddit had its baggage, issues, controversies, etc.; it wouldn’t generally pass a campaign or White House vetting. There’s some fucked up shit there, creep shots, racist rants, borderline teen porn, for example—and other good shit, too, for the most part, but the kind of material that could become fodder for critics looking to attack Obama." - Buzzfeed reference article.

Obama typed this:

“Speaking of balance, though, I need to get going so I’m back in DC in time for dinner. But I want to thank everybody at reddit for participating—this is an example of how technology and the internet can empower the sorts of conversations that strengthen our democracy over the long run. AND REMEMBER TO VOTE IN NOVEMBER—if you need to know how to register, go to Gottaregister.com... By the way, if you want to know what I think about this whole reddit experience — NOT BAD!”

NOTE: Obama made the call himself to use "all caps"  in "NOT BAD"- the Internet messaging grammar equivalent to SHOUTING OUT loudly in an email message to accentuate a point. Obama definitely showed an expertise in understanding the Internet social media protocols on how to send out powerful messages.

"Back in Chicago, staffers looked through the numbers. Within 24 hours, 5.2 million people had read the Reddit interview. It was the most-trafficked post in Reddit’s history. Just before signing off, Obama mentioned GottaRegister.com, the campaign’s official voter registration site, and 30,000 people registered to vote from that link. “And he didn’t even hyperlink the fucking thing, so they, like, actually copy-and-pasted it, and opened up a new tab, and put it in,” said a senior official. On Election Day, 82,670 Redditors would connect again with the campaign, giving “upvotes” to a message posted by Obama in the afternoon, with tens of thousands more likely seeing the post. A massive hit—and strategically successful." - Buzzfeed reference article.