Community organizing and peer-to-peer communications have worked out well so far in Barack Obama's presidential campaign. So well, in fact, that one group of conservative activists is co-opting one of the Obama campaign's online communications strategies to use it against him.
Willie Horton campaign ad maker Floyd Brown and a couple of other conservative activists are creating a YouTube and viral e-mail campaign against Barack Obama.
Image: Exposeobama.com
This new effort is a viral e-mail campaign that aims to frame Obama as a disastrous-for-the-country left-of-left liberal. It is on view at a website called ExposeObama.com.
A group of long-time Republican operatives run the effort, the most high-profile of whom is Floyd Brown, a communications and organizational consultant who created the infamous "Willie Horton" television advertisement that sank Democrat Michael Dukakis' 1988 presidential campaign.
The effort is noteworthy because studies have shown that peer-to-peer communication of political ideas and opinions is more influential than TV ads in swaying voters' perceptions of candidates.
"ExposeObama.com is trying to create doubt, and trying to create momentum behind that doubt to hit at gut level," says Jeffrey Feldman, a cultural anthropologist and author of a couple of books on political rhetoric. "People won't necessarily think Barack Obama is a terrorist, but they will come to the conclusion: 'I just don't know about this Barack Obama guy.'"
"I think that these ideas will be imprinted in the publics mind and [if Obama's elected] will cause problems to the Obama administration and to the Democratic party," he adds.
Obama's campaign created a counter-viral campaign this January when it attempted to fight back against the anonymous smear e-mails that have been circulating widely during this campaign cycle. The smear e-mails question Obama's religious and political leanings. To counter those, the Obama campaign created a web page with the facts about Obama's background, and it allowed users to upload their e-mail address books to send those facts around.
(For his part, Feldman has started his own awareness campaign on the liberal blog the DailyKos, where he argues the broadcast media is being influenced by Republicans' efforts to frame political issues.)
But instead of mere text, ExposeObama.com's website promises to create vivid multimedia content, including cartoons, animations, stories, jokes, illustrations and movies, "all for the purpose of exposing Obama," the site reads.
The effort sounds similar to an effort called Stop Her Now launched last year by a group of conservatives opposed to Hillary Clinton. That effort has since been changed to oppose Obama, and it's called "Stop Him Now."
The group behind ExposeObama.com hopes that its readership will spread those caricatures virally through their e-mail address books.
In a welcome e-mail to individuals who sign up to participate in its plan, ExposeObama.com's executive director Bruce Hawkins writes:
We have also created a network, where thousands, even tens of thousands of people, can become Publishers, receive our messages and in turn pass them on to their own lists. The objective is to cause our messages to go “viral” and to reach millions of people who otherwise may not see or traditional television ad spots. This is a radically new and innovative approach to political marketing. . . and it has the added benefit of not being limited by McCain Feingold!
McCain-Feingold refers to a campaign-finance-reform law that attempts to limit the influence of money in political campaigns. The implication of the message is that this underground peer-to-peer advertising campaign falls outside of the boundaries of the law, and so won't have to abide by the rules that prohibit political action committees from certain kinds of activities.
The site's backers don't appear to have created much original content of its own yet, apart from a Willie Hortonesque YouTube video that it's hoping to air on television. The video criticizes Obama for his position on a crime bill during his tenure as an Illinois state legislator. The nonpartisan political watchdog group Factcheck.org has debunked the video as "Reprehensible Misrepresentation."
The site's "About Us" section also provides a sense of what's to come.
"We are a committed group of conservatives concerned that Barack Hussein Obama would be the worst possible President for America at this time, or any time," write the site's authors. "Obama is a liberal, only slightly more stylish than Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, but equally dedicated to the same causes. He will not bring unity or harmony rather he will bring back the confusion, depression and humiliation of the dismal Carter era."
The group is the creation of the National Campaign Fund, a political action committee set up to help the Republican's presumptive presidential nominee John McCain bid for the White House.