The 2008 U.S. presidential campaign drew the attention of the world. In the aftermath, the Obama campaign's use of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were widely credited with helping secure the historic victory of President Barack Obama.








Mr. Obama used the Internet to organize his supporters in a way that would have in the past required an army of volunteers and paid organizers on the ground. Mr. Obama’s campaign took advantage of YouTube for free advertising. And those videos were more effective than television ads because viewers chose to watch them or received them from a friend instead of having their television shows interrupted.

I then read from the New York times that:

“The campaign’s official stuff they created for YouTube was watched for 14.5 million hours,” Mr. Trippi said. “To buy 14.5 million hours on broadcast TV is $47 million.”

There has also been a sea change in fact-checking, with citizens using the Internet to find past speeches that prove a politician wrong and then using the Web to alert their fellow citizens.

The John McCain campaign, for example, originally said that Governor Sarah Palin opposed the so-called bridge to nowhere in Alaska, Ms. Huffington said. “Online there was an absolutely obsessive campaign to prove that wrong,” she said, and eventually the campaign stopped repeating it.

“In 2004, trust me, they would have gone on repeating it, because the echo chamber would not have been as facile,” Ms. Huffington said.

The Internet also let people repeatedly listen to the candidates’ own words in the face of attacks, Mr. Huffington said. As Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary words kept surfacing, people could re-watch Mr. Obama’s speech on race. To date, 6.7 million people have watched the 37-minute speech on YouTube.

So since the internet has been changing the way politics works in America, perhaps one day soon, Singapore would be in the same position. Political candidates will upload their campaign videos on youtube, set up facebook and twitter accounts, instead of a few "meet the MP" sessions where they shake some people's hands (preferably some old couple and then some little kids), and ask them (and thank them in advance) for voting for them.

Using the internet has been proven effective in aiding ones political campaign so I sincerely hope that the Singapore government might start to allow a little more freedom in this area to allow the various political views to be aired, shared and commented on.