Network Marketing In The U.s. Electoral Politics

The year 2008 is absolutely a historical milestone in the U.S.election. Barack Obama, the candidate of Democratic Party won the election and became the 41st president of U.S.A.. The victory of Obama is due to numerous factors, but the most outstanding factor is his internet marketing strategy. Obama successed to mobilize the young voters by using the Hi-Tech platform and other similar appropriate approaches as well. In details, he contacted these young voters by using those platforms such as blog, social network and internet media,etc.,having changed this young generation without political passion into an active group in the presidential election in 2008. In consideration of it, the essay will focus on the issue that how the internet changes the traditional styles of US presidential election, especially from perspective of these three facets-blog, social network and internet media.The introduction section will review those related research materials in details, and identify the main question this thesis would address to.The question is that how the internet sales influence US presidential campaign. Meanwhile, the research methods and framework that could be a research base of furthering analysis in this paper is also briefly introduced in introduction.In the first chapter, it will examine traditional model of campaign and the challenges it encounters, from perspective of the rising of information technology. Then based on the first chapter, the second one explores the tendency of the model of virtual campaign while being attacked by information technology. The implication of web technology 1.0 and 2.0 for the transformation of virtual campaign will be analyzed in the third and the forth chapters respectively.In the last section, this paper will conclude that the biggest and deepest influence on US's presidential campaign is that approaches of public participation in political affairs are changed from traditional one-way information transformation to multi-level communication through internet by which the public can express their opinions and ideas openly, from only paying more attention to financial groups to paying public contribution that can also accumulate large budget for campaign. The internet obviously opens one door for public political participation. Thus with its fast growth and development, the internet will play more and more important roles in foreseeable future in political campaign in US and even in other countries.