Presidential Communication in the Internet Era

Presidential Communication in the Internet Era DIANA OWEN Georgetown University RICHARD DAVIS Brigham Young University

The new media environment and the rise of the Internet have had important implications for presidential communication. As the first chief executives of the new media era, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have established an online presence through the White House Web site, www.whitehouse.gov. As the site has evolved, these administrations have had to balance the communication potential of technological innovations against the requirements of politics and governing. Future presidential administrations will embrace new opportunities and confront additional challenges as they seek to integrate new media options of the Web 2.0 era and beyond into their communications strategies.

The advent of the Internet has given rise to a challenging new era in presidential communication. Digital technology has had profound implications for the ways in which the White House deals with citizens, elites, journalists, and global actors. The technological revolution in communication comes at a time when presidents have increased their public appearances as well as the scope of their policy initiatives (Kumar 2007). As presidents need to enlist the media to achieve their policy and governing goals (Cook 2005), the White House has incorporated Internet strategies into its increasingly complex communications plans. The Internet also has implications for the organizational arrangements and structure of communication across the executive branch. The accountability, task specialization, and jurisdiction of departments and agencies is being reconsidered as the information base of the bureaucracy becomes increasingly Internet-centric (Fountain 2002).

Richard Davis is a professor of political science at Brigham Young University and author or coauthor of several books on the Internet and politics including The Web of Politics, New Media and American Politics (with Diana Owen), Campaigning Online (with Bruce Bimber), and Politics Online. Diana Owen is an associate professor of political science and Director of American Studies at Georgetown University. She is the author of Media Messages in American Presidential Elections and coauthor (with Richard Davis) of New Media and American Politics. Presidential Studies Quarterly 38, no. 4 (December) © 2008 Center for the Study of the Presidency

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Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, as the first new media era chief executives, have been pioneers in the development of strategies for governing with digital communication. With no established blueprints, their efforts have combined deliberate planning with trial and error. While Clinton and Bush publicly avowed to use new communication technologies and touted their benefits upon taking office, both faced some difficulties when embracing new media for presidential communication. The expectation of transparency and interactivity associated with the Internet must be balanced against the need to protect national security and the desire to achieve political and policy goals. The speed with which news is disseminated in the new media era makes it more difficult for presidents to control the flow of information which can force rapid responses in lieu of careful deliberations. As more of their words and actions are archived online, presidential administrations are held to higher standards of accountability. They are subject to intense public and press scrutiny that can quickly devolve into gotcha journalism and negative publicity. The Clinton administration’s pathbreaking online efforts reflect the first generation of Internet technology and applications. The development of the White House Web site added a notable new dimension to presidential communication and information sharing. Still, the Clinton era applications were limited in terms of interactivity, interconnectivity, scope of content, and the exhibition of material via a range of audio and visual media. The evolution of the next generation of Internet applications, commonly known as Web 2.0, took place during Bush’s term in office. Web 2.0 encompasses applications that use the existing architecture of the Internet to create a culture of participation through the creative development of online communities, social networks, and content-sharing sites (O’Reilly 2005). Web 2.0 and the development of increasingly sophisticated public communication tools raise intriguing possibilities for presidential communication. This article will explore the ways in which presidential communication has evolved in response to new media. In particular, it will examine how the White House has used the Internet to reach out to the public, policy makers, and journalists in a communications environment characterized by continually shifting parameters. We address the question: How has presidential communication developed in the Internet age? Innovations in presidential communication in the new media era have stemmed largely from campaign media experiences. The White House Web site, which was developed in the aftermath of the 1992 campaign, has become the primary showcase for the presidency online. It provides us with an opportunity to explore the evolution of White House Internet communication over time. We also will examine the ways in which the executive branch has (and has not) adopted Internet innovations, such as Web 2.0 applications like video sharing and social networking sites, to presidential communication. Finally, we will speculate about what the future might hold for presidential administrations and their use of the Internet. In exploring these issues, we will touch upon the ways in which the White House is employing Internet-based communications to share information internally among government agencies and officials.

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The relationship of the White House to the new media environment is complex and in some ways contradictory. Presidential administrations seeking to generate positive publicity for their programs and policies see the potential in new media to get their message out on their own terms. Realistically, however, the White House has approached new media with some trepidation and reserve. Tactics that may be effective in other contexts, such as political campaigns, are not necessarily appropriate for governing and may even backfire. The president’s national constituency, the breath of executive branch leadership responsibilities, and the intensity of the spotlight shining on the office render the adaptation of Internet media strategies more difficult than for other government entities. In addition, managing information in a media environment that is dynamic and unstable is no easy task. The range and sophistication of new media options expanded substantially from January 1993 when Bill Clinton took office to when George W. Bush will leave the White House in January 2009, creating new opportunities as well as challenges. There were well under 100,000 Web sites in 1994 when the Clinton administration launched the White House site. The number of sites had grown to nearly 2.9 million in 2000 (O’Neill, Lavoie, and Bennett 2003). By the start of Bush’s second term in 2005, the number of indexable Web pages stood at 11.5 billion (Gulli and Signorini 2005). New media is a term that encompasses a wide range of communication options that fall along a rough continuum. At one end are communications platforms based on old technologies that have taken on new political roles, such as radio and television talk programs, tabloids, and television news magazines. In the middle of the spectrum are mixed or hybrid media that combine elements of traditional media with newer technologies. These include 24-hour cable news programs and the Internet sites of newspapers and magazines. On the far end of the spectrum are new media that have developed as a result of new technology that has been put to novel political uses (Davis and Owen 1999). Internet applications, such as social networking Web sites like Facebook and MySpace, blogs, videosharing sites including YouTube, and podcasts fall into this category. The sources and content of communication about the president have changed in the new media era. The amount of coverage devoted to the presidency by mainstream media, particularly newspapers and network television news, has declined significantly and become more negative in tone (Cohen 2008). Policy content has been supplanted to some extent by soft news focusing on human interest and scandal (Baum 2002). Media organizations have suffered significant cuts to their budgets, resulting in less actual news reporting and greater commentary by journalists. At the same time, presidents have become a frequent topic of new media discourse which has been integral to the dissemination of sensational infotainment-style stories and rumors (Kurtz 1998; Owen 2000). Bloggers, citizen journalists, and producers of online videos have joined professional reporters in creating content that stimulates interest and discussion about presidential administrations. While the quality and veracity of this content can be questionable, presidents increasingly find themselves responding to messages originating in new media. Presidents also find themselves dealing with mainstream media stories that appear online, such Associated Press articles that are widely disseminated via the news sections


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of Internet platforms. Text from the online versions of newspapers can be passed on virally by users and can mobilize opinion. For example, the most popularly e-mailed piece from The New York Times on June 23, 2008, was “Mr. Bush, Lead or Leave,” an op-ed by Thomas Friedman which decried President Bush’s energy policy, stating that it has led to public addiction to oil and hindered the development of feasible alternatives (Friedman 2008). The piece sparked serious public discussion on television talk shows, talk radio, and blogs. The speed at which news and opinion pieces are distributed, coupled with the expansive opportunities for discussion among elites and the mass public, has made it more difficult for presidents to manage their responses than in the pre-Internet era. Coinciding with these trends are shifts in audience media preferences. In the late 1980s and 1990s when new media were emergent communication forms, the public still relied primarily on traditional media for political information; new media remained supplementary or novelty sources (Davis and Owen 1999). For some audiences, new media have begun to replace traditional media as primary conveyers of political news. A significant portion of the population used Internet sources during the 2008 presidential election, with 24% of voters relying primarily on online media, up from 9% in 2000 and 13% in 2004. The percentage of people consulting a daily newspaper declined from 40% to 31% in four years, while reliance on television network news coverage dropped to 32% from 45%. The trends are even more stunning for young people, as 42% of 18-29-year-olds regularly consulted the Internet for election information during the 2008 presidential nominating period compared to 20% in 2004 (Pew Research Center 2008). The changing content and tone of presidential media coverage as well as shifting audience preferences in favor of new media make online communication an attractive option for presidential communication. The campaign context has become a staging ground for novel digital applications to political communication which have made their way to the White House. Internet technology has been employed by candidates since the 1992 presidential contest. The Clinton administration established a Web site after creating the first presidential campaign site. Emulating a successful campaign operation, the Bush White House created a rapid response unit which sent out e-mail messages conveying the administration’s offensive and defensive positions to interested parties, including White House staff, Republican Party officials, members of the White House press corps, and talk radio and television producers and hosts (Kumar 2007). Blogs came to prominence during the 2004 presidential contest. Since that time, White House staff members regularly monitor political blogs as part of their job, although no president has yet blogged himself. President Bush addressed a group of bloggers after a speech about the war in Iraq in the expectation that they would disseminate positive messages about this defense policy in the blogosphere. In his message, which was broadcast remotely on two large television screens, Bush stated, “America’s military bloggers are also an important voice for the cause of freedom. You understand that defeating terrorists requires us to defeat their ideology of hatred and death with a more powerful vision, a vision of human liberty” (Schwab 2007).

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New media strategies that work on the campaign trail do not necessarily translate readily to the governing context. President Bill Clinton hoped to capitalize on the successful experience he had with new media during his 1992 presidential election bid. Upon taking office, Clinton continued to court talk radio which he felt had treated him favorably during the campaign. He brought over 200 call-in hosts to the White House for a briefing on health care and invited talk shows to broadcast from the White House lawn. Both events were chaotic, with hosts “yelling and screaming at each other,” as reported by White House counselor David Gergen (Kolbert 1993). These overtures did little to appease talk show hosts who quickly turned critical of the administration, angering Clinton who sought ways to curb their freewheeling influence (Owen 1997). Clinton faced a more receptive audience when he brought weather forecasters to the White House in October of 1997 (Remarks to Weather Forecasters 1997).

White House Web Site The White House Web site (www.whitehouse.gov) has become emblematic of presidential engagement with Internet technology and is the primary mechanism through which the executive branch manifests its Internet presence. The site has become a “new sort of presidential perq” that is passed on along with the office (Salkowski 2001). In 15 years, whitehouse.gov has evolved from a basic tourist-oriented site hosting presidential family photos, White House history, and the text of selected speeches to a sophisticated portal for presidential publicity and outreach. The site’s evolution reflects technological innovations that engage more sophisticated digital tools as well as the communication strategies and political goals of the particular administration. History During the 1992 presidential election, the Clinton/Gore campaign broke new ground by creating a text-only Internet site, posting candidate biographies, the content of speeches, and the text of advertisements. The primitive site was seen only by the miniscule percentage of Americans who had Internet access at the time and received little attention from voters or journalists (Bimber and Davis 2003). However, the site provided the impetus for the first executive branch Internet presence when that same campaign Internet team brought to the White House their interest in using this new technology to communicate the president’s message to the public. The Clinton administration made the Internet a focal point of its administration. Under the tutelage of Vice President Al Gore, the administration actively promoted the development of an advanced National Information Infrastructure, defined as “a seamless web of communications networks, computers, databases, and consumer electronics that will put vast amounts of information at users’ fingertips” (Department of Commerce 1993). It envisioned an information revolution that would change the way citizens, businesses, governments, and nations would operate and engage. The White House Web site became the representative cornerstone of the administration’s advocacy for the


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transition of the executive branch, as well as the wider society, to the digital age. Upon launching the site, Vice President Al Gore proclaimed, “This service is an example of how we can provide government services and information to the public in a more timely manner, more efficiently and more cost effectively. It shows our continued commitment to being a leader in developing the National Information Infrastructure” (The Clinton White House Web Site 2001). In keeping with these goals, the White House Web site was to serve as a prototype for executive branch departments and agencies that were expected to make government information readily and equitably accessible to the public. President Clinton formalized this directive on July 16, 1996, when he issued Executive Order 13011: Federal Information Technology. In addition, the executive order called for changes in internal governmental communication. It mandated that executive agencies use information systems to establish an interagency support structure for sharing expertise and best practices and support interagency interoperability with the goal of minimizing unnecessary duplication of effort while capitalizing on successes (Executive Order 13011 1996). The first White House Internet site appeared on January 20, 1993, coinciding with the inauguration of President Bill Clinton. Like the campaign effort, the site was text based and supported on Gopher because the World Wide Web, with its userfriendly interface and multimedia capabilities, had not been established as the Internet’s public face. On October 21, 1994, the White House created the first “Web” site, launching the premier version of www.whitehouse.gov entitled, “Welcome to the White House.” Since that time, the White House Web site has undergone major transformations. David Lytel, co-developer and managing editor of the original White House Web site, described the Clinton administration’s goals: “Whitehouse.gov represents the three ways the White House wants to present itself to the world: the home of the president, the seat of government, and a living museum of American history” (Wiggins 2001). Additional goals were implied as the administration continued to develop its online presence over its eight-year term. The site became a comprehensive repository of documents and policy statements for the Clinton/Gore presidency and provided a log of presidential events and activities. Importantly, it became a portal for citizen access to government information and services. There were three major releases of the Web site in 1994, 1996, and 2000. Its appearance was changed dramatically and features were added, such as a section for the press, recent news, a virtual library of White House documents, and a section for children. The site became a repository for presidential history and biography, allowed visitors to take a virtual tour of the building and grounds, and offered photographs of Socks, the Clinton family’s cat, and Buddy, the president’s dog. While not officially used for campaign purposes during Clinton’s 1996 bid for reelection, the site prominently featured the administration’s accomplishments. The Clinton administration overhauled the site extensively late in 2000, not long before leaving office, adding a “Record of Progress” feature and more detailed biographies of Vice President Gore and his wife, Tipper (Wiggins 2001).

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The George W. Bush administration officially took over whitehouse.gov at noon on January 20, 2001, as the new president was sworn into office. While the site went offline for only five minutes, the transition of the Web site to the new administration was far from seamless. Bush’s Internet team had only a month to prepare the site due to the uncertain outcome of the 2000 election. There were numerous broken links and error messages. The placeholder, “Insert Something Meaningful Here,” appeared below the headline, “President George W. Bush is Inaugurated as President of the United States” (McCullagh 2001a). The site was small in size, light on content, had few audio or visual components, and contained outdated information (McCullagh 2001b). The problems with the site continued for several months, including attacks by hackers who defaced the homepage and rendered the site unreachable for hours at a time (McCullagh 2001c). White House spokesperson Tucker Eskew indicated that the Web site would maintain the history and traditions of the office and “reflect Bush’s serious, self-effacing approach to serving in the highest office in the land.” The implications were that the site would be less overtly a public relations tool in tone and style and more of a resource for citizens, lawmakers, and journalists. According to Eskew, “The site will be friendlier to look at and interact with and easier to search. It’ll be deeper in content, and there will be a new organization of the site with a more creative approach” (McCullagh 2001c). An improved version of the White House Web site appeared in late 2001 and new features were added periodically. For example, in April 2003, “Ask the White House,” a forum which allowed people to submit questions directly to public officials, was created, marking the addition of a major interactive component to the site. A major change in the strategic use of whitehouse.gov was sparked by an unlikely novelty feature—Barney Cam. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the White House limited visitors. To showcase the annual Christmas decorations, the Web site debuted Barney Cam, a film of President Bush’s pet Scottish terrier running around each festive room. Barney Cam was an instant success, quickly garnering an audience of 6 million viewers in a month for the Christmas video. Capitalizing on this popularity, Barney Cam became a regular feature on the site, with more polished scripts, a new costar in the first lady’s pet terrier, Miss Beazley, and cameos by politicians, journalists, and celebrities. White House Web developers hoped that the traffic drawn to the site by Barney Cam might drive visitors to other features, like speeches and policy position papers (Kumar 2007). David Almacy, the White House internet director, realized traditional media organizations, online news sources, and blogs were carrying the Barney Cam video and attracting far more viewers than whitehouse.gov. He saw the potential of the Web site as a source of stories, audio, and video for other media and made it a priority for the site to provide usable material that could be easily repurposed. President Bush’s weekly radio addresses, speeches, and videotaped activities were constantly updated on the Web site. Both the technical and content aspects of the site needed to be reworked to accommodate this goal (Almacy 2008). A major overhaul of the White House site was initiated in 2006 to improve its design and functionality. Unveiled on February 28, 2007, the redesign sought to highlight the president’s daily activities by placing a top story in the center of the homepage and featured items in the right column. More information about the president’s speeches,


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events, and policies was made available. Photos and videos were used to frame and enliven the textual content (Almacy 2007). Importantly, the redesign allowed the White House to use the site to respond in real time to news and policy developments. The site, including the homepage, also provided some personal glimpses of the Bush family, such as the wedding photo album of First Daughter Jenna Bush. Audience The White House site quickly acquired an audience. By the time the Bush administration took office in 2001, the site was attracting more than a million visitors a week. Whitehouse.gov has become one of the most visited political sites on the Web and ranks in the top 1,000 Web sites (942 as of May 2008; Quantcast 2008). The audience for the White House Web site initially did not consist of typical Americans. A 1994 study of the White House’s Internet site showed that 80% were men and most of those were well-educated professionals. One-fourth of the visitors were lobbyists or political practitioners (Hurwitz and Mallery 1994). By 1996, the audience had expanded somewhat, with more women using the site (Guernsey 1996). The content suggested that specialized audiences were served. Reporters could get instant access to an archive of White House press statements. Scholars could find documents such as transcripts of daily press briefings and texts of letters and speeches that historically were available months or years later (Lule 2001). Today, whitehouse.gov is accessed by over two million unique visitors per month. The vast majority of users—81%—are not repeat visitors, but register a single visit over the course of a month. Of the 19% of users who regularly come to the site, few visit more than once a day. The site continues to attract a more educated and affluent audience. Reversing early trends, females are slightly more likely than males to access the site. Visitors to the site tend to be political junkies who watch C-SPAN, PBS, and the History Channel and read www.gop.com and www.democrats.org. There is evidence that whitehouse.gov is accessed extensively as a learning tool, as there is above average use of the site by adolescents aged 12-17. African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics use the site more than the Internet average for these groups (Quantcast 2008). Publicity has become essential to governing. Presidents must engage the press and the public to enact their policy agendas (Cook 2005). Thus, one of the main functions of the White House Web site is to publicize the decisions and views of the current administration. The site performs as a one-stop resource for accessing the latest news about presidential activities and initiatives, press releases, and policy positions that serves journalists, interest group members, elected officials, agency personnel, and citizens. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations used the White House site to tout the virtues of their own policies. Before leaving office in 2000, the Clinton administration posted a highly complimentary retrospective of the Clinton years. The Bush administration has used the site as a forum for defending itself from its critics. During the 2004 presidential campaign, the Bush Web site featured a section called “Setting the Record

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Straight.” The section was used to answer the criticisms of the Kerry campaign as well as others. Once in office for a second term, the feature became part of the White House Web site. It was an opportunity to present responses to criticisms of the president’s policies in Iraq, children’s health insurance, the president’s economic policy, and many other issues. Interactivity One of the early expectations, indeed a defining characteristic, of the Internet was as an interactive tool. In the realm of politics, common citizens could correspond with their public servants, including the president. The Clinton administration encouraged that thinking by calling its first Web site “An Interactive Citizens’ Handbook.” The title suggested that the Web site was designed to facilitate two-way communication between the president and the public or at least allow average citizens to easily acquire information about the president. (That title later was used more narrowly as the heading of a section of the site providing information about the federal government.) The site featured greetings from the president and vice president, information about the executive branch and the first family, tours of the White House, Old Executive Office Building, and the First Ladies’ Garden. The Clinton administration touted the interactivity of the site by encouraging site visitors to send an e-mail to the president. Despite news stories reporting that President Clinton did not use e-mail, people responded with thousands of e-mails addressed to the president. The Internet staff in the Clinton administration was inundated, and printed e-mail messages piled up on the floor. By 2003, the White House was receiving approximately 15,000 e-mails a day to which the only response was an acknowledgment that the message was received. The Bush administration placed a disclaimer on the site stating that the White House could not respond to all the e-mails it received. Following the protocol established by his predecessor, President Bush did not use e-mail himself. President Bush started his administration by saying that the White House would innovate using the Internet. “[W]e’ll be looking for more imaginative ways to continue people’s interest in accessing the White House” (“Remarks on Launching the New White House Web Site and an Exchange with Reporters” 2001). But the Bush administration abandoned the Clinton administration’s illusion of online interactivity with the president via e-mail. E-mailing the president became a more complicated process and involved filling out a form that included the sender’s full name, address, and organizational affiliation. Initially, users were asked to say whether their message supported or differed from presidential policy. Jimmy Orr, the administration’s Internet news director, said the system provided “an additional means for individuals to inquire about policy issues at the White House and get a personalized response in 24 to 48 hours” (Markoff 2003). Others viewed the new approach as purposely designed to limit e-mails. The Bush administration did institute other forms of interactivity including asking a question of a political leader and joining a live chat session with a government official. The “Ask the White House” forum has hosted over 400 live discussions with administration officials, who can receive more than 500 questions for a single session, all of which


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are archived and easily accessible. Both online question-and-answer forums and live chats provided a filtering option that limited interaction to those the White House chose to answer or include in the discussion. Online Civics Lessons Whitehouse.gov is a resource for civics and history that is frequently assigned by teachers and consulted by students as well as the general public. The president’s daily news, history, and tours sections are among the most highly trafficked areas of the White House Web site (Almacy 2007). The Clinton administration began the civics lesson component of the White House Web site. Their site featured historical information on the building as well as virtual tours. In addition, the Clinton White House included a Web section titled “White House for Kids” that helped children understand more about the White House and the president which included a popular feature on presidential pets throughout history. The Bush administration revamped the “White House Kids” section in 2007, expanding sections, like history and traditions, adding interactive content, including quizzes and games, and expanding videos and photos. A “sports” feature detailed the president’s affinity for baseball and promotes his fitness initiatives. The “patriotism” pages clearly reflected the Bush administration’s post-9/11 policies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Visitors were provided with opportunities to support American troops and their families by sending e-mail notes to soldiers and making contributions to care packages. A “Freedom Timeline” associated the “The American Response to Terrorism” with “intelligence, diplomacy, and humanitarian relief.” The “Response to Terrorism” was equated with “markers of freedom,” including the Underground Railroad, France’s gift of the Statue of Liberty, the March of Dimes to fight polio, and the Berlin Airlift candy bomber. Young people also can download “My American Journal,” a template that encourages them to write down things about themselves, their families, friends, and country. The pages are labeled with themes, such as “Proud to be an American” and include slogans from President Bush like, “Our loyalty to American democracy and freedom is born of pride, appreciation, and understanding of our country. We are loyal to America, our fellow citizens, and these ideals” (www.whitehouse.gov). Presidential Legacy Another objective of the Web site is to shape the long-term legacy of the incumbent president. The Clinton administration Web site has been archived by the National Archives at www.clinton.nara.gov. It is the first of the White House Web sites to be preserved for history. Tens of millions of e-mail messages from the Clinton administration have been transferred to the archives as well (Olsen 1999). But the White House’s own control of the Web site, and its desire to use it for burnishing the president’s legacy, means that it can control what future historians will see of the current administration. The conflict became apparent in 2003 when the White House altered archived material in order to protect presidential integrity. An archived

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speech by President Bush in early 2003 that was headlined “President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended” was changed later that year in the midst of the Iraq insurgency to insert the word “major” before the word “combat” (Milbank 2003). Despite what a president may do to alter his remarks, accurate transcripts are maintained by the Federal News Service. Government Services Portal The White House Web site serves as a portal to other areas of the federal government. From whitehouse.gov users can connect to various offices, departments, and agencies of the federal government. The site also links to USA.gov—a portal to the federal government. It allows users to search the federal government Internet offerings by topic and the nature of the specific audience. The White House site also provides separate links to the various cabinet departments. It links to state services such as driver license renewal or contact information for state legislators. Government Web sites are subject to scrutiny and risk accusations of promoting a political agenda. In 2005, Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) convened a panel of experts to evaluate the content of 4Parents.gov, a Web site sponsored by the Bush administration to help parents and teens make “smart choices about their health and future” (Connolly 2005). While the site contained useful information about topics, including nutrition and eating disorders, it advocated abstinence-only education and criticized gay sexual orientation and single-parent households. Waxman alleged that “[a] federally-funded website should present the facts as they are, not as you might wish them to be” and accused the Bush administration of distorting scientific information to promote a conservative agenda. The panel generally concurred; the White House Web site no longer linked to 4Parents.gov, although the site remained active (Connolly 2005).

White House Web Site 2.0 While it is difficult to pinpoint the genesis of Web 2.0, signs of the advanced development of the Internet’s power to host and share multimedia content as well as to enhance connectivity were visibly evident in 2004. Web 2.0 applications include social networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace, online video sharing sites such as YouTube, video blogs (vlogs), online video conferences, podcasts, and electronic chat rooms. These applications have led to the development of social media, user-generated content that is passed on through networks of friends and associates which spread and gather information, influence opinion, and create organizations. Citizens have expanded opportunities to connect with political leaders and media organizations as well as with one another. Social media messages can be more influential than those disseminated by the institutionalized press because audience members are more likely to believe messages they receive through their personal networks (Graf 2008). The Bush administration’s official foray into the world of Web 2.0 is marked most notably by the 2007 redesign of the White House Web site, although certain audio and


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visual features were added to the site earlier. For example, podcasts of the president’s radio addresses were made available in English and Spanish in September 2005 via a direct link to Apple iTunes. These podcasts served as a model for other government agencies to follow suit, including NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Peace Corps, the National Park Service, and the U.S. military (Almacy 2007). Bush’s tech-savvy Internet team sought to make the updated Web site jibe with the new ways that people were getting information. This meant not only pulling people to whitehouse.gov with gimmicks, like Barney Cam, but also pushing content out to users in a way that would encourage them to go to the site. Upgrades were made to streamline the code and make loading and navigating the site more user friendly. Existing features, such as the news feed, president’s speeches and events, and policy position papers, were made more visually appealing and more readily available for download. RSS news feed subscriptions, weekly e-mail updates, audio podcasts, and on-demand video were highlighted on the site (Almacy 2007). George W. Bush was the first president to use Twitter, a prototypical Web 2.0 application. Twitter is a free social networking/micro-blogging service that allows users to send frequent, quick “tweets”—short updates of 140 words or less—that “answer one simple question: What are you doing?” (www.twitter.com). Messages are delivered instantly to users who sign up for the service via the Twitter Web site or a third-party application, such as Facebook. The White House Twitter page, http://twitter.com/ TheWhiteHouse, was established soon after the redesign of the White House Web site was launched in 2007 as part of the effort to push information from the site into the public domain. The president’s tweets are all White House News RSS feeds that originate on whitehouse.gov and are sent to anyone who subscribes to the service (All 2008). The Twitter page gives a running account of the president’s daily activities and public communications, including his travels, addresses, speeches, letters, and nominations. Each tweet includes a date and time stamped headline with a link to the full text of the communication. The Bush White House did not use Twitter to share more personalized messages or blog entries.

The Future of Presidential Media Upon taking office, presidents must consider how and to what extent they will incorporate new media into their communication and governing strategies. Presidents Clinton and Bush managed to bring the White House into the Internet age while remaining comfortably on the safe side of the cutting edge. As early adopters of first- and second-generation Internet applications for the White House context, their efforts generally were greeted with enthusiasm by users as well as the technorati. However, the stakes will be higher for future presidents who must contend with the expectations of constituencies who are acquainted with the range of communication and social media options that are available, especially when these options have been widely utilized during a presidential campaign.

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During the 2008 presidential campaign, candidates used novel online and digital social media prolifically to court voters through appeals that appeared personalized and open. The candidates, their supporters, and their detractors established pages on social networking sites. They shared their hobbies and interests with thousands of fans on Facebook who wrote on their walls. Voters got to know candidates through campaign videos appearing on digital platforms ranging from official candidate and political party Web sites, professional news and citizen journalist sites, and YouTube. Blogs gained in prominence and sophistication as they not only conveyed text, but audio and video information as well. Can a president who has applied these tactics during a successful campaign retreat into a communications cocoon after taking office? Or will it be necessary to make social media, in particular, a visible component of White House communications? There are some lessons to be learned from the experience of previous presidential administrations regarding the White House Web site. As the president is sworn in to office, whitehouse.gov should be up and running, having been redesigned to reflect the personal style and policy preferences of the incoming leadership. There should be no technical glitches that can signal technological incompetence in the digital age. While the site should be the hallmark of the administration and feature new material, it should carry over and build upon established nonpartisan elements that have proved popular with the public, including history and tour information. To maintain some continuity with the campaign, the site should include outreach to core constituencies. For example, young people are an important and technologically savvy constituent group. While the “Kids” section of the White House site reaches out to children and tweens, there is nothing for older adolescents and young adults. A section of the site for young people could be an incubator for social media applications that might be more widely integrated into whitehouse.gov after a trial period. A young staff member might post a regular blog about her experiences working at the White House and allow commentary. Users might be invited to share their views, concerns, and eyewitness accounts via a videosharing platform. While such features would require continuous monitoring, they would likely provide valuable information and insights into the public pulse. Journalist and new media critic Mark Glaser suggests that presidents might engage participatory media in order to become more responsive to constituent needs. He suggests that the president write a regular blog or Twitter feed (unlike the current RSS feed-only format) that would update the public on official and personal affairs and allow for comments and responses (Glaser 2008). Given the pressing requirements of the presidency, it will be difficult for a president to maintain a blog, and the task would likely be delegated to a ghostwriter. Blogs have been created by the executive branch agencies in an effort to service particular constituencies. The White House has not created a White House blogger, but that could change in 2009. Senator Barack Obama agreed to appoint a White House blogger should he be elected president (“Democratic Candidates See the Light” 2007). Building upon the existing “Ask the White House” forum, the president could host live online chats and video question-and-answer sessions. This could be an online service


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answering questions from the public in real time or via text chat. Glaser advocates a top 10 questions format so that frequently asked questions could be answered regularly. In addition, the president’s schedule should be made available daily online. Another suggestion is that major policy initiatives could be put into wikis before they are brought before Congress. A wiki would allow people to comment and annotate proposals while they are in the early stages of development. The wiki would need to be carefully moderated to be effective and to keep out saboteurs (Glaser 2008). The cyberarchive of relevant materials from prior administrations that are useful to providing a record and a context for current governing issues should be maintained and expanded on whitehouse.gov. The administration might consult with historians about how the site can best be used for long-term storage of materials that can be readily accessed by journalists, scholars, and citizens. While such an archive might not be hosted directly on the site, but instead might be located at the National Archives and Records Administration, which publishes The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents online at www.access.gpo.gov/nara/nara003.html. There are useful, quality, nonpartisan online resources on the presidency to which whitehouse.gov might link. An archive of the public papers of the president, including all presidential remarks as well as the press secretary’s daily briefing for the last two administrations, is available at www. americanpresidency.org, a site developed as part of the American Presidency Project by Gerhard Peters and John Wooley at the University of California at Santa Barbara. The Web site of the White House Historical Association, www.whitehousehistory.org, is another informative resource.

Conclusion The White House Web site, like Web sites of individual members of Congress, will never be primarily a tool for civics or a dispassionate analysis of the presidency. Even though the president has more extensive access to the news media than any other single individual in American political life, the White House will not willingly relinquish a forum for expressing its own views, particularly without a journalistic filter. Thus, the next administration will wrestle with a number of issues about its usage of a medium that is still in its infancy as a tool for political communication. Some questions include: *Should the administration establish some guidelines on its own actions such as avoiding changing Web material once it is placed online or removing it because it potentially embarrasses the administration? *Is a site paid for by taxpayer dollars really suitable as a debating forum between an administration and its critics? *Should interactivity be treated as clearly illusionary? Should individuals be encouraged to write e-mails to a White House that lacks the staff, or the interest, in handling them in any way other than a rote manner?

The biggest challenge for future presidential administrations will transcend particular tools and deal with the basic approach to new media. The administration must

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determine how to utilize communication tools that are still in their relative infancy and can be molded significantly. Simultaneously, the White House must manage their message while meeting public expectations about transparency and responsiveness that new media can facilitate.

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