Grounded In Reality

In the fall of 2003, a group of mostly-young Democrats became a part of American political history and legends of web folklore. They proved for the first time that web-based, user-driven media could create a political campaign. Through one of the first social networking websites, meetup.com, they rallied support for a little known governor from Vermont named Howard Dean.

They became known as the Deaniacs, and through the early stages of the 2004 US Presidential election, they proved that the web is not only a legitimate part of running a political campaign – they made it a necessity. They brought grassroots organizing, fundraising and blogging to the process. They used the web for engaging two way communication and creating online communities, and, in turn, made their candidate a contender.

And so when the countdown to the Danish national elections, which will be held November 13, began last month, my colleague Kristian Levring Madsen and I went on the lookout for the new “Danish” Deaniacs. We’ve spent time searching every corner of the .dk domain during this election for some sign of the next big thing in political communication on the web. The fact that political TV ads are prohibited here in Denmark, and that this is the first election since social networking exploded, and that this election is placed as a kind of opening act for the US Elections next year – all really fuelled our hopes.

There was some good, some bad and some ugly, but nothing groundbreaking. The “good” examples from this election didn’t do much to take advantage of the social web per-se, but took the form of semi-entertaining advertisements in which candidates used humoristic word play, cute animals and catchy collages to convey their messages.

The sitting prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, used his site to demonstrate his virility through a series of filmed “jogging trips” with celebrities and normal folks alike. The result was a lot of (uninteresting) panting and sweating that left us wanting for motion sickness pills and a Steadicam. His challenger, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, launched a TV channel, “Helle TV”, which was just a little less interesting than an infomercial, and she offered RSS, Podcasts and links to her various web profiles – all of which is pretty much now standard fare.

In short: while we wait for the ballots to be counted, Kristian and I will also have to wait for the next big thing. It will probably come when we aren’t looking for it - from a collective of idealists or from a candidate who has so little chance of winning that she has nothing to lose.

Howard Dean lost big in the Iowa primaries in 2004 – in part because of his infamous “yeeeahh” speech. Afterwards, many commentators chalked his early surge in popularity up to gimmicks, and wrote about his supporters as youthful idealists. But the Deaniacs’ legend and influence lives on. It can be seen both in the current American and Danish campaigns and also in recent campaigns run in France and Poland.

Now we will turn our eye across the Atlantic and be keeping an eye on sites like Political base, watching the Iowa primaries in January and waiting and wondering where in the world the next Deaniacs will pop up and when we can all stand up and shout,

“Yeeeaah!”

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Brian Woodward
Senior Consultant
GCI Mannov