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This chapter presents an overview of the historical argument of the book, charting the connections in people, tools, and practice between the campaigns of Howard Dean and Barack Obama. It provides an initial discussion of the origins of the Howard Dean campaign, the work of its former staffers in creating innovations in new media tools and practice, and their subsequent work in Democratic politics, including for the Obama campaign. In doing so, it provides a discussion of the concepts of innovation, infrastructure, and organization, and argues that they provide a new analytical framework for understanding new media campaigns. The chapter then discusses the import of the history here for evaluating networked politics in democratic terms before providing a brief discussion of the methods and chapter overview.

This chapter begins with Dean’s “Sleepless Summer Tour” and ends with Kerry’s defeat at the hands of George W. Bush. Dean’s eight-city tour drew tens of thousands to rallies, revealing the extent of the candidate’s national support and the power of staffers’ use of the Internet to mobilize supporters across the country. The success of Sleepless Summer provides a revealing contrast to what was happening on the ground in Iowa, which the campaign’s leadership began to realize was seriously flawed. Staffers on the ground in Iowa faced significant data issues and lacked basic tools for organizing volunteers and contacting voters, even as national campaign staffers faced extensive data and systems issues of their own. Ineffective television advertisements left the campaign broke, and Dean had little hope for a better outcome than third. Dean’s highly publicized “scream” that endlessly replayed on national television effectively ended his candidacy. The chapter concludes by following the work of a number of Dean’s staffers and consultants who joined the campaign of John Kerry to work on Internet operations.

The most common criticism of netroots advocacy associations is that they engage in “clicktivism,” mobilizing large online publics to engage in simple online actions, with little real-world effect. This chapter primarily discusses Democracy for America—a major netroots organization that uses the internet primarily to coordinate offline activities among its federated units. Based on eight months of participant observation with the Philadelphia chapter of Democracy for America, as well as interviews with leaders of the organization, this chapter reveals the often-overlooked benefits of the internet for encouraging face-to-face participation in local communities. It discusses the concept of “sedimentary organizations,” or internet-mediated groups that build their member list and reputation through a social movement- or election-related period of heightened citizen participation. It also discusses the increasing importance of the Mobile Web for such offline engagement, arguing that devices such as the iPhone and Android phones blur the distinction between “online” and “offline,” allowing for expanded location-based solutions to the challenges faced by neo-federated groups. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Organizing for America, the sedimentary organization produced by the Obama for America campaign. OFA provides a limited approximation of the neo-federated ideal type due to its relationship to the Democratic National Committee and to the president himself. The chapter helps us to locate OFA in the broader landscape of American political associations.

This chapter examines the practices of the 2004 presidential campaigns. This election cycle exhibits an important shift from the mass-media campaigning paradigm to the networked media campaigning paradigm. Howard Dean’s remarkable rise in the polls and financial success came after capitalizing on the affordances of digital communication technologies (DCTs) for two-step flow. The best illustration of this paradigm shift, though, is in the candidacy of Wesley Clark, which started as a netroots movement, and eventually became a front-runner campaign. The clash between the netroots and a new way of campaigning and the campaign professionals’ historic way of mass-mediated campaigning reveals the paradigm shift. In the meantime, George Bush continued to build a comprehensive data file of offline and online voter behavior for microtargeted messaging; and, John Kerry conducted analytic testing of website design and e-mail messaging features to maximize effects. Both practices were harbingers of future election cycles.

This chapter examines the practices of the 2004 presidential campaigns. This election cycle exhibits an important shift from the mass media campaigning paradigm to the networked media campaigning paradigm. Howard Dean’s remarkable rise in the polls and financial largesse came after capitalizing on the affordances of DCTs for two-step flow. The best illustration of this paradigm shift, though, is in the candidacy of Wesley Clark, which started as a “netroots” movement and eventually became a frontrunner campaign. The clash between the netroots and a new way of campaigning and the historically professional way of mass-mediated campaigning illustrates the paradigm shift. In the meantime, George Bush continued to build a comprehensive data file of offline and online voter behavior for microtargeted messaging. And John Kerry conducted analytic testing of website design and e-mail messaging features to maximize effects. Both practices were harbingers of future election cycles.

This chapter examines developments in digital campaigning in the United States during the period 1994–2012. It does so by reviewing the findings from the secondary literature, and conducting original analysis of web content and national survey data. These data sources build a picture of key changes in the supply and demand for digital campaigning in the United States and particularly whether they fit the four-phase model of development. The results show that the model fits, and that US parties and voters were considerably faster in engaging with web campaigning than was the case elsewhere. This enthusiasm appeared to be driven, to an extent, by the more conducive regulatory environment and also innovation among left-wing organizations and particularly the Democrats from the middle of the first decade of the 2000s. Their ability to sustain activist involvement in their online cause beyond 2008, however, is challenged by the author’s findings.

The behavioral choices made by various types of political organizations differ based on the communication goals and constraints placed upon various types of actors. This chapter offers case studies exploring these variations over time, examining the development of campaign communication strategies over time as well as the pace and pattern of communication innovation and imitation. The chapter starts by connecting the major innovations in campaign communication tactics from 1796 through the 1990s, spanning the Elite, Mass, and Broadcast political communication orders (PCOs). Next, it provides a more detailed examination of the history of online campaign innovations, with particular emphasis on the build-up to and aftermath of the 2008 Obama campaign. This chapter concludes by evaluating the extent to which the successful Obama model was replicated and how campaign communication has stabilized in the years since, including the unconventional 2016 election.