Canadian new media strategist Rahaf Harfoush was a star speaker at Geneva Lift Conference that closed this weekend. "Yes we did" is her firsthand account of how the web carried Obama to the Whitehouse. She explains the growing importance of online social media as a powerful political tool that few governments embrace and that many dread.
Digital communication is transforming the face of politics, Canadian new media strategist Rahaf Harfoush told a rapt 1,000-strong audience at Lift Conference in Geneva.
"Obama was a long shot," explains Harfoush, who joined his new media team during the presidential campaign. "He didn’t have the finances or the experience."
In her 2008 book Yes We Did: An Insider’s Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand, Rahaf Harfoush describes how the online communities that supported Obama "made sure that he was funded, that people knew who he was and what he was about."
"Obama has changed the idea of government FOR the people to government by the people," analyses Harfoush.
The social network on my.barckobama.com was so strong, she says, "that people felt that they knew Obama. They become friends who would do anything to help him win."
When Sarah Palin, McCain’s co-lister on the Republican ticket, expressed scepticism on the relevance of online communities, she unwittingly galvanized Obama’s camp into action.
"People were so upset that they decided that they would ‘show her’ by inviting those who believed that online communities could make a difference to send in 5 and 10 dollar donations."
In less than a month, the amount raised by Obama’s online community exceeded 150 million dollars, Harfoush says, of which two-thirds came through the web.
Overall Obama’s campaign raised 750 million dollars against 360 million for McCain, according to Harfoush.
But Obama’s interest in networking continued beyond his election, comments Harfoush: "He discovered that his online communities needed to be kept on board and he decided to increase the focus on transparency."
The Sunlight Foundation had been created in Washington in 2006" to make (US) government transparent and accountable" by "aggregating existing information and digitalizing existing information".
Obama decided to go one step further by setting up www.data.gov, an "open government initiative" meant to promote "participatory democracy" by allowing the public to access and leverage datasets (metadata) generated and held by the federal government.
Rahaf Harfoush uses the Obama campaign as one of many examples where digital interaction is creating new forms of activism, transforming relationships to authority and power, and in some cases generating new laws,
How she became interested in what she refers to as "the wild west of the web" is due to succession of "fortuitous incidents," she told Swisster. "But I also have an instinct about identifying things that are interesting."
Syrian-born Harfoush moved to Canada with her family in 1989 when she was five years old. "I’m engrained with the feeling that I am lucky," she says of the opportunities that she was offered by her new country.
By studying business, with a minor in philosophy, she realized that she could "argue just about everything," she says buoyantly.
But it was her work as research coordinator for Don Tapscott’s Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything and later as contributor to Grown Up Digita: how the net generation is changing your world that led her into politics and into the Obama campaign.
"I pestered the leader of Obama’s web outreach campaign, the 24 year-old cofounder of Facebook, Chris Hughes to take me on," she reveals. The experience turned her into a "new media maverick".
Rahaf Farhoush now works on the media team at the World Economic Forum in Geneva as Associate director of digital Interaction,
During the Lift conference, she gave additional examples on how the web is influencing power dynamics.
When the Iranian government did everything it could to shut down communication with the outside world in June 2009 to prevent information on the anti-government demonstrations from seeping out, "Social media took over and shone a spotlight straight from the street," says Harfoush.
"It was making sure that the story of the demonstrations got out."
The video of the death of a young woman under police bullets in Teheran spread virally on YouTube, creating an icon and provoking universal indignation.
"We need to connect to real stories. Data can be manipulated," says Rahaf Harfoush "but emotions can’t".
"We’re going to see a huge increase in the number and scale of these interventions," she claims "and many governments still don’t know how to cope."
"In fact, there is no better way to understand what is going on than to look at the laws that are being passed, many of which attempt to repress social media," Harfoush observes.
She highlights the cases of censorship of Google in China, or Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s attempt to ban Twitter, a "tool of terror" because Venezuelans have been using it to protest against threats to journalism and freedom of expression.
Rahaf Harfoush’s forceful speech, which included a number of other revealing illustrations of the political digital revolution, can be accessed on Livestream links and will soon be available in its entirety on the Lift Conference website, as will all the talks by the speakers.
Asked whether her outspokenness wasn’t a bit risky, she answered "You have to stir the pot."
Source - Swisster
