By Angela Wu, Special Writer
PRINCETON —Joe Rospars, who directed President Barack Obama’s 2008 Internet campaign, told a Princeton audience last week that the online effort has given the Democratic Party a leg up on the Web.
Speaking at Princeton Universit on Wednesday, Mr. Rospars, former new media director for the Obama campaign, said that its use of the Web to mobilize grassroots support helped build an authentic relationship between the campaign and its supporters and gave people the tools to take action in their own communities.
”New media on the campaign was an organizational innovation,” he said. “We had goals that were the same goals as campaigns for decades.”
His talk focused on using new media as a way to achieve those goals —raising money and reaching voters — by giving supporters resources, motivation and a way to communicate, and encouraging participation in the campaign.
”It’s actually challenging and something that we were incredibly committed to — to bring the true notion of participation to every aspect of the campaign,” Mr. Rospars said, adding that the campaign did not shy away from addressing negative attacks on Mr. Obama’s religious beliefs and patriotism. “We wanted to involve people in every step of the way.”
A study released Wednesday from the Pew Internet & American Life Project reported that three-quarters of Internet users, or 55 percent of the U.S. adult population, used the Internet to participate politically during the 2008 presidential campaign. Much of that participation was reflected in the Obama campaign, which had contact with 13 million supporters, roughly a sixth of Obama voters and raised over $500 million in online donations.
Mr. Rospars oversaw all online aspects of the Obama campaign, from fundraising to grassroots organizing. He said the new media aspect of the campaign was a way not only to communicate with voters through the Internet or text messages, but also to activate more conventional outreach.
”People were connecting with the traditional aspect of the organization — phone banks that happened in union halls or basements of big organizations. We were trying to balance and feed the online into the offline at every opportunity,” Mr. Rospars said.
He said that 200,000 “offline events,” more traditional campaign outreach actions like canvassing neighborhoods to phone banking, were organized and promoted using the events feature of the campaign Web site, my.barackobama.com.
”The technology we used was actually pretty simple — not a lot of significant, super complicated innovation happening,” Mr. Rospars said. “It was really about applying simple tools to lower the barrier to entry into the traditional campaign operation.”
Mr. Rospars emphasized the important role played by people who had “never done anything in politics before” in organizing their communities.
”By lowering the barrier to entry and giving our supporters the same tools that we gave our staff they were able to become organizers,” Mr. Rospars said. “That unlocked a lot of man-hours to make things happen, and as we saw, especially in the primary, every little bit counts.”
With the campaign over, Mr. Rospars said that the Democratic Party was now in a much stronger position than the GOP to activate supporters in future elections.
With the help of technology from left-leaning companies that were crucial to the campaign — Blue State Digital, which Mr. Rospars co-founded, and which managed the campaign’s online presence, and Voter Activation Network —Democrats now have a head start in getting voters informed and registered, he said.
The presidential campaign uncovered “a lot of potential talent in a lot of places,” Mr. Rospars said. “The party is the successor to the campaign.”

