By Matt Hill

Political campaigning has incorporated a new form of outreach to potential constituents – mobile technology. With the rise of mobile applications and global positioning systems (GPS’s), President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney will attempt to attract voters as well as encourage them to vote on election day through their location aware mobile devices.

In 2008, the Obama campaign excelled in utilizing technology in order to connect with young voters. For example, he announced his Vice Presidential nominee, Joe Biden, via text message to those who had signed up on his website to receive mobile alerts. Obama supporters were “in the know” before even the mainstream media had been informed. By doing this, the Obama campaign told its supporters how much it values the relationship and the importance of keeping in touch.

Leveraging the handheld devices of Americans is one of the holy grails of political campaigns. The ever hard to reach 18-29 demographic is more mobile than anyone else. Both the Obama and Romney campaigns realize this as they accelerate their bids for President in 2012. Although there are a number of restrictions on how campaigns can send text messages to mobile devices, in general, American voters can expect their cell phones to be targeted by political campaigns this year.

So how exactly will mobile devices and new technologies alter the political campaign landscape?

First, candidates will be able to send text messages outlining their positions on issues as well as encouraging their supporters to vote. However, campaign media specialists have yet to discover the best way to appeal to Americans using only a 160-word SMS (Short Message Service). During Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s run for the Democrat nomination in 2008, chief media strategists bluntly texted voters, “Hello, will you please vote for me?” This failed approach has evolved into much more subtle and emotionally laced pleas. During the 2012 Republican Primary, Newt Gingrich’s campaign used a combination of conservative themed-ads and attacks on President Obama in hopes of gaining popular support in Alabama.

Secondly, access to personal cellular devices gives campaigns yet another platform to ask for donations and sell merchandise. With their Smartphone, constituents and fundraisers can now easily pay or collect money, using devices like Square.  Downloading ringtones, such as this Presidential song, http://www.barackobama.com/ringtone remains a popular way for the public to show their support for their favorite brands or teams, which in this case are the campaigns themselves. 

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The tonnage of political advertising has been increasing ever since the advent of Super PACS. Of the 100s of millions of dollars being raised by the SuperPACs, the vast majority of it (upwards of 95%) is being spent on advertising. It’s the only way to spend money which can’t be used to directly fund campaign activities.

Along with the overall rise in traditional political ad spend (TV, radio, newsprint), 2008 and 2010 saw the utilization of social media for new and innovative campaign marketing strategies.  This started with banner and key word PPC advertising.  It has been migrating to more creative applications. The Obama 2008 campaign took out advertising in the virtual world of 3D gaming. Adweek predicts online political adspend in 2012 will be up nearly 41 percent compared to 2008.

The way politicians and battle for votes is evolving as more and more American’s spend a greater majority of their time online. Obviously Politicians are trying to leverage social media, but they are willing to enter ethical grey areas in order to manipulate users. Newt Gingrich was accused by Gawker of stuffing twitter accounts, and he probably isn’t the only one. Fake accounts can do more than just give the appearance of a strong online following, and that is where their real danger could lay, political spam.

Political advertising tends to trend negative because negative ads are proven effective time and again, but the Internet provides the attractive opportunity for untraceable and libelous attacks on any candidate. Political spam is a recent phenomenon that is infecting the 2012 Republican presidential primary and sits poised to inundate every inbox, facebook news feed and twitter hashtag on the Internet with political attacks this election.

A recent study conducted by Impermium found that potentially 85% of major news outlet readers have been exposed to political spam. The spam comes in the form of inflammatory user comments that are generated by fake accounts. The study posited that 60% of political spam comes from social profiles that show no signs of conventional activity. This is the ultimate form of political guerilla marketing, with total anonymity and zero accountability. The people behind the spam are the same people responsible for the Viagra and the “you just won a free iPad” ads. Impermium compared IP addresses and discovered that the both spam had similar origins. Finding out who actually paid for the ads is probably hard to prove, but it isn’t terribly difficult to deduce whom the interested parties might be.

The comment sections of articles on every online news provider are being filled with ideological propaganda. Every reader consumes the political spam unwittingly, they believe they are getting the opinions of other people just like them, and instead it’s spam bots working for political groups.  The spammed comments are also promoted by other fake accounts thus creating a false sense of popularity for the made up comments. The fake people posting fake stories are doing so at an alarming rate. Facebook, Blogs, and news sites are polluted with up to 200 fake posts an hour ranging in topic from taxes to the possibility that Mitt Romney has family on the moon.  The spam rates pick up around major electoral events like Super Tuesday. Impermium tracked over a three day span 500 negative comments about Mitt Romney alone.  For now these cyber political attacks have been focused on the republican primary, but there is little doubt they will be deployed in the general election as well.

Political strategy is getting more sophisticated every election, it is getting more manipulative and conniving, and the discourse is becoming even more vile. As voters it’s becoming harder to trust anything politicians do or say. Now we have to be on the look out for lies coming from zombie Internet users who could look just like you. The only positive with political spam accounts is that the next time you lose all faith in humanity over somebody’s outrageous comment, take solace in the fact that it very well could be fake.