As evidenced by the heap of articles Garrett recommended for us to read regarding how the Obama administration can, should, or needs to take advantage of the Internet as a key component of their upcoming administration, there’s a lot of consideration going into how our first “Internet President” is going to go on-line.
While it remains unclear exactly how the Internet will be used (it’s unlikely Obama will completely open the information floodgates in true Web 2.0 fashion, as evidenced by the recent slimming of his agenda on change.gov), it does appear that Obama plans to use the Web as a way to reach out to voters. For example, he’s already released his first YouTube address, devoted to the economic crisis:
And he’s said he plans to supplement the traditional weekly Presidential address with a YouTube companion.
While this is all well and good, the far more interesting (and far more unknown) piece to this puzzle is not how the Obama administration will contact the American public with the Internet, but how the opposite will work: In what ways will the administration encourage voters to contact them?
Obviously, the Internet can be a bit of a Wild West-type of place where the combination of an easily disseminated message and relatively complete anonymity means the inmates can sometimes burn the asylum to the ground. Take the RNC’s recent efforts to weigh ideas from the public on how to rebuild the party brand:
That being said, when it comes to giving the American people a voice in the upcoming administration, the Obama camp is going to have to determine what type of a balance they want to strike between making it easy and attractive to weigh in on various government goings-ons, and making it so easy that Internet shenanigans may ensue, defeating the entire purpose.
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