Though many before Barack Obama used new technology in politics to communicate and track and measure response, our new president has made using the latest communication technologies and online communities standard protocol - not only for his political campaign, but going forward in determining public policy.
As Hayes and Malone said in their November 29th WSJ article, "The online community concept is already becoming a powerful tool for everything from creating customer loyalty, to assistance in product design, to a sounding board for company strategy."
Over the next several years, we will get an opportunity to see how this methodology works in answering Obama's statement, "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works."
In his January 22, 2009, WSJ article on whether economics, like politics, can be accurately "explained and charted," Daniel Henninger observed that Obama's "economic team consists of a new generation of so-called data-driven intellectuals who insist on reasonably hard empirical support for their policies."
Henninger also remarked that, "the cost of mistakes is getting a bit high," which is another reason that Obama is pushing his team to use every means to continue to gather information before finalizing policy. This includes staging and tracking blog discussion on his administration's theories, such as the recent "Who is Nouriel Roubini?" by Alice C. Chen posted in a January 7 BNET Briefing. Responses to the blog ranged from critical analysis of the posed economic policy debate, to recommendations for other theories and financial experts.
Using technology in this way effectively gauges and gathers public opinion, but using online communities and blogs also SHAPE public opinion. Obama's team will need to continually be interfacing with these online communities in all of the media channels to effectively continue the swaying of public opinion toward his policies, as he was able to do during the campaign.
In the January 23 Business Week "What Data Crunchers Did for Obama", Stephen Baker indicates that however public opinion is gathered, quantified, segmented, the policy promises that were made will also be tracked and measured. "Even if Barn Raisers exist as a tribe only in a database, they take broken promises very seriously. And they probably won't object if data-mining politicians figure that out. "
This week the DFW Interactive Marketing Association is holding a forum regarding the role of social networking, mobile marketing, video, and other emerging media in the recent Presidential election, and the discussion will continue...
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