Robert Colvile
When Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama launched their bids for the most powerful position in the world, they did so not amid cheering crowds or with balloons pouring from the ceiling, but in a manner inconceivable a few years ago: they released videos on their websites.
In the year since then, there have been balloons and crowds aplenty - so many that you could be forgiven for dismissing that exercise in online self-publicity as a flash in the pan. Far from it.
Online videos, blog posts and emails have continued to flood from the campaigns - and cash has flooded back. Buckets of it.
Last month, for example, Mr Obama raised an astonishing $32 million (about £18 million). Of this, all but $4 million was donated online, by hundreds of thousands of small donors (90 per cent gave $100 or less).
In Britain, meanwhile, our impoverished parties and politicians push the rules to the limit - and beyond - to raise sums that look pitiful by comparison.
What's going on in America has a lot to do with their particular system, with its constant electioneering and greater tendency towards philanthropy. But it also has a lot to do with the internet.
Here, many politicians don't quite get the web, either maintaining a polite distance (particularly when they read the vituperative comments appended to blogs and news articles) or ignoring it completely.
At a recent think-tank seminar in which the participants were lamenting the atomisation and disengagement that pervade British society, there was gentle bafflement when I, and the other under-30s in the room, pointed out that our Facebook accounts were a great way of keeping up our links with others.
The result of that conversation was Politics, Policy and the Internet, a study published today by the Centre for Policy Studies.
The aim was to explain just how the web is going to change the way politics is carried out and policy made. And the first thing to note is that, yes, there are problems with the internet, even beyond the tales of paedophiles, copyright violators and suicide cults relayed by an excitable press.
Political conspiracy theories - such as those accusing Mr Obama of being a Muslim - flourish. So does extremism - the British National Party website receives more hits than the major political parties put together.
The internet is also surprisingly exclusive. It can be a wonderland for the young, the affluent and the time-rich, but even now, only 67 per cent of us have internet access. Half of those earning up to £10,400 have never been online; nor have 71 per cent of those aged 65 and over.
Yet this is changing fast - indeed, one of the most crucial reasons why politicians need to embrace the internet is basic demography. Of those currently at university, 97 per cent are regular internet users - the "digital natives" who move between online and offline communication with barely a shrug, organising real-life parties on Facebook or swapping instant messages in lieu of a phone call.
So far, the established political elites have failed to prepare for this new world. The BNP's site scores so highly not because it is brilliantly slick - in fact, it is distinctly amateurish - but because none of the political parties has seized the opportunities the web offers.
Their sites are relatively static, repositories of press releases and propaganda rather than entities that engage with and create communities around their visitors.
One exception was the Conservatives' introduction of WebCameron.org.uk, but even then its traffic figures faded fast. Indeed, although the gap in the market has been filled by the bloggers and activists, the online political scene in Britain is strikingly underdeveloped in comparison with that in America, or even in France......Article conts (-)
When Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama launched their bids for the most powerful position in the world, they did so not amid cheering crowds or with balloons pouring from the ceiling, but in a manner inconceivable a few years ago: they released videos on their websites.
In the year since then, there have been balloons and crowds aplenty - so many that you could be forgiven for dismissing that exercise in online self-publicity as a flash in the pan. Far from it.
Online videos, blog posts and emails have continued to flood from the campaigns - and cash has flooded back. Buckets of it.
Last month, for example, Mr Obama raised an astonishing $32 million (about £18 million). Of this, all but $4 million was donated online, by hundreds of thousands of small donors (90 per cent gave $100 or less).
In Britain, meanwhile, our impoverished parties and politicians push the rules to the limit - and beyond - to raise sums that look pitiful by comparison.
What's going on in America has a lot to do with their particular system, with its constant electioneering and greater tendency towards philanthropy. But it also has a lot to do with the internet.
Here, many politicians don't quite get the web, either maintaining a polite distance (particularly when they read the vituperative comments appended to blogs and news articles) or ignoring it completely.
At a recent think-tank seminar in which the participants were lamenting the atomisation and disengagement that pervade British society, there was gentle bafflement when I, and the other under-30s in the room, pointed out that our Facebook accounts were a great way of keeping up our links with others.
The result of that conversation was Politics, Policy and the Internet, a study published today by the Centre for Policy Studies.
The aim was to explain just how the web is going to change the way politics is carried out and policy made. And the first thing to note is that, yes, there are problems with the internet, even beyond the tales of paedophiles, copyright violators and suicide cults relayed by an excitable press.
Political conspiracy theories - such as those accusing Mr Obama of being a Muslim - flourish. So does extremism - the British National Party website receives more hits than the major political parties put together.
The internet is also surprisingly exclusive. It can be a wonderland for the young, the affluent and the time-rich, but even now, only 67 per cent of us have internet access. Half of those earning up to £10,400 have never been online; nor have 71 per cent of those aged 65 and over.
Yet this is changing fast - indeed, one of the most crucial reasons why politicians need to embrace the internet is basic demography. Of those currently at university, 97 per cent are regular internet users - the "digital natives" who move between online and offline communication with barely a shrug, organising real-life parties on Facebook or swapping instant messages in lieu of a phone call.
So far, the established political elites have failed to prepare for this new world. The BNP's site scores so highly not because it is brilliantly slick - in fact, it is distinctly amateurish - but because none of the political parties has seized the opportunities the web offers.
Their sites are relatively static, repositories of press releases and propaganda rather than entities that engage with and create communities around their visitors.
One exception was the Conservatives' introduction of WebCameron.org.uk, but even then its traffic figures faded fast. Indeed, although the gap in the market has been filled by the bloggers and activists, the online political scene in Britain is strikingly underdeveloped in comparison with that in America, or even in France......Article conts (-)
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