Flickring here, twittering there

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: On july 30, John McCain’s campaign released an anti-Barack Obama advertisement on the McCain YouTube channel. The ad compared Obama’s celebrity to that of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. It had been viewed 2 million times, TV and newspapers had taken it up, a bikini-clad Paris had launched a spirited riposte and it was still the most viewed clip on the McCain channel. In reply, Obama’s campaign launched ‘Low Road Express’, a website that mocked McCain’s reputation for straight talk. Late last month, the Republican National Committee launched ‘Obama Audacity Watch’, to track less-than-glowing stories and clips about him.

Last year, seven of the 16 major presidential contenders kicked off their campaigns online. Andrew Rasiej, a former Howard Dean adviser and founder of Personal Democracy Forum, a website and annual conference that explores the relationship between politics and technology, thinks the internet will change not only campaigns, but also democracy itself. He points to Utah’s Politicopia, an open wiki (a collaborative website where content is added or modified) through which citizens can influence the legislature.

Politicians began to take the internet seriously during Dean’s 2004 presidential run. Visitors to his website could donate money, read and comment on the campaign blog and find other supporters. Although Dean’s campaign later went down screaming, his run showed the power of self-generating social networks. Without the campaign’s knowledge, his supporters began to talk and raise funds through Meetup and Deanspace.

This changed the way campaigns are organised. Using social-networking tools, Ron Paul’s supporters generated a ‘money bomb’—$6 million in one day, shattering the previous record. Huck’s Army, an online network of Mike Huckabee’s supporters, rallied 12,000 campaign volunteers. Both networks meant that Paul and Huckabee stayed in the race a lot longer than they might otherwise have done.