Election 2008 - Obama's Website Judged The Most Social Media Friendly By Journalism.org

The project for excellence in journalism at Journalism.org has developed a project for the review of the candidates in election 2008. Called, "Election 2008 - Candidate web sites, propaganda or news?" The study reviews each of the candidate’s websites for a number of factors.

I was most interested in how candidates are conducting dialogue with voters and stakeholders. Apparently, "Candidate Web sites have fully embraced politics as a two-way conversation with voters. Twelve sites also offer the opportunity for visitors to turn that dialogue into grassroots action (organizing their own events, fundraisers, etc). Add dialogue and action together and Democrats have the most interactive sites, led by Barack Obama, followed by Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Bill Richardson."

The study gauged the ability of each candidate's website to allow participation and engage voters. It appears that Barack Obama's website wins out among the candidates. Factors that contributed to this standing include open comments, citizen blogs, and interaction with social networking sites like MySpace.