Analysis of Hilary Clinton's use of the Internet
From digmovements
[edit] Hilary Clinton and the World Wide Web
Clinton started her campaign the traditional way, focusing primarily on large cash donations from deep-pocketed suits. But as the Obama/Clinton race continues on, significantly longer than expected, her funds began to dwindle. Since Clinton was not regularly receiving as many donations as Obama, she began to spend more than she was getting in, and in February, Clinton had to put five million dollars into her campaign from her own pocket. This served as a wake-up call and Hilary began to get e-friendly and in the month of February only %20-30 of her donations was from big name donors. [1] Clinton started her campaign in the traditional top-down structure, which focuses on large donations as the primary source of campaign funding and puts recieving small donations as a lower priority, but as the election progressed, she realized that she needed to embrace the online fundraising by attracting a large amount of donors for smaller amounts, essentially the exact opposite of the top-down structure. So, Clinton started to work on building a grassroots following through the Internet by targeting the more affluent youth, by posting online videos and distributing information about her campaign and events through e-mail. Despite her more recent pushes to get in on the online campaigning, Clinton hasn’t been nearly as successful as Obama in organizing volunteering and fundraising groups. The top-down structure of campaigns utilized by Clinton seems to be going extinct as candidates are shifting toward a bottom-up approach with the Internet [2]
- ↑ Javers, Eamon. "Clinton Revs the Money Machine." Business Week Online 6 Mar. 2008. <http://www.businessweek.com/>.
- ↑ Brownstein, Ronald. "The First 21st-Century Campaign." National Journal 40 (2008): 13. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO. Daniel J. Evans Library, Olympia, WA.
