Today, a new wave of technology is breaking across the political spectrum. With no incumbent candidate dominating the campaign for the first time since 1928, the 2008 presidential election is shaping up as one of the most open-ended elections in U.S. history. As a result, the candidates have turned to so-called “new media,” such as video-sharing web sites, blogs, e-mails, ring tones and text messages, to help promote their campaigns. 

“Now it’s as mainstream as any other media,” said Michael Sheehan, the chief executive officer of Boston’s Hill Holiday communications agency.

The Internet, more so than any other new medium, is playing a vital role in political campaigns, and, according to experts, candidates are not limiting themselves to web sites with a political agenda.

Instead, they are tapping into sites typically geared toward teenagers and college students, like Facebook and YouTube, in hopes of creating political forums there too. “Younger voters are not getting campaign information through the 7 o’clock news or The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal,” said Robert A. Sherman, a member of Barack Obama’s National Finance and New England Steering committees. “They’re getting it from the Internet.” Obama, an Illinois senator, is an up-and-coming Democratic candidate for president.

Comparing the current situation to 1968, when younger voters helped bring down President Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam War, Sherman said they are the “most receptive to change.” He thinks they would be more receptive to a candidate who communicates with them in a familiar forum.

Candidates can spell out their campaign platforms, provide biographical information, update viewers on campaign appearances and even post photos on their Facebook profiles. They can also recruit “supporters.”  As of August 11, Obama was leading seven other major candidates on Facebook – including Democrat John Edwards and Republican John McCain – with 127,593 supporters. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a senator from New York and the former First Lady, was a distant second with 34,949 supporters.

Facebook pages also have “walls,” public posting boards where anyone can leave a message on someone else’s page for the whole community to see. Those postings range from supportive, as in “Go McCain, I wish they still made men like you!” to irreverent, as in “Since when did Satan get a Facebook profile?” on Clinton’s wall.

“You live by the Internet and you die by the Internet,” said Bret Begun, the national affairs editor for Newsweek Magazine, citing Howard Dean’s run for the White House in 2004 as an example.

Dean, a former governor of Vermont and early front-runner in the 2004 presidential election, outpaced his opponents in Internet fund-raising and mobilized thousands of campaign volunteers through Meetup.com, originally created as a site for forming social groups. But his outburst during a concession speech after the Iowa Caucus – which later became known as the “Dean Scream” – was widely disseminated online and on television, and voters saw him as a “madman and a lunatic,” Begun said.

This readily available coverage could potentially make candidates less spontaneous during public appearances, said Professor Lee Huebner, director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University in Washington D.C. “Any tiny slip is instantly available to all on YouTube,” he wrote in an e-mail.

But video sharing sites such as YouTube.com are now being used mostly to promote candidates rather than to bring about their demise. Sixteen candidates are currently on the “You Choose ‘08” channel on YouTube.com, a program allowing them to display video messages and commercials. These range from Romney discussing Islamic jihad to Clinton’s “Sopranos” spoof in which she parodied the last episode of the hit HBO television series.

Users can even submit their own videos for official campaign use. Clinton’s campaign asked YouTubers who think “most political ads stink” to submit their own 30-second clip to her site. The winning ad was played during the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate on July 23.

The interactive debate, which allowed viewers to directly send in their questions to candidates through YouTube.com, attempted to minimize candidates’ “dipping and dodging” of questions, according to host Anderson Cooper. It was a “watershed moment” in the history of the Internet and politics, Begun added. “The Web is going to be used to make campaigns into less of a broadcast and more of a conversation,” he said.

Users can also submit their own unofficial campaign ads in support of their favorite candidates. A "viral" music video (video content that has become popular through Internet sharing) posted by a user calling herself the “Obama Girl” has quickly gained notoriety. In the video, the “Obama Girl” struts around, sings “I got a crush on Obama” and admires pictures and video clips of the senator. Although the video was not posted by Obama’s official campaign, it may be a beneficial addition, said Jared Leopold, a senior account executive for the political consulting firm Tigercomm. “Because it’s a little risqué, the ‘Obama Girl’ video may engage people who wouldn’t normally pay attention to the election,” he said.

Typically, apathetic voters tend to be between the ages of 18-25, according to   Begun. But with campaigns invading the Internet, political information is easier to access, and more high school and college students are beginning to educate themselves.

Lara Hamsher, of Duluth, Minnesota, subscribes to e-mail updates from both the Obama and Edwards campaigns. Hamsher, 17, said she feels better informed as a result. But most importantly, she feels like a member of the campaign. “They do a good job of bringing you into their team with these e-mails,” she added. “And you want to feel like you’re a part of it.”

Political campaigns are also going cellular. Voters can almost single-handedly turn their cell phones into fan bases for their favorite nominee. By simply texting “Go” to 62262, cell phone users can receive periodic updates from the Obama campaign, as well as notices on local appearances. Users can also download Obama wallpaper and ring tones that include sound bytes from the senator’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. The Clinton and Edwards campaigns have also begun using cellular technology.

But Sheehan said these text messages are pointless because those subscribing to them are mostly die-hard supporters: “It’s kind of like preaching to the converted,” he said.

While that may be true of the top three Democratic candidates, most of the Republican candidates have yet to explore cell phone campaigning. Madden, however, said the Romney campaign will launch their cell phone campaign “very soon,” but declined to say when.

Still, many people disagree with this style of campaigning, echoing the sentiments of former Governor Adlai Stevenson, who compared the first political television ads in 1952 to ads for “breakfast cereal.”  

Kelly Regan, of Overland Park, Kansas, said that while she is a frequent text messenger, she views candidates’ use of such campaign techniques as “gimmicky.” “It’s definitely ingenious that they’re tapping into our market,” Regan, 17, said. “But I think it’s kind of cheesy that they choose to reach us through things like text messaging and Facebook.”

But according to Huebner, every time candidates employ new communications technology, there is a tendency to initially view them as mere novelties. He cited the first campaign voice recordings in the 1908 presidential election as an example.

“This was viewed as a curiosity and a gimmick at the time,” Huebner said.  “But within a very short time all these techniques were seen as normal.”

At a time when technological advances are making the mass dissemination of information easier, political strategists said a payoff for candidates will be interconnectedness with new and more voters. And though it may seem like the final frontier in campaign innovations, it’s a perpetual cycle, Begun said: “Every election, you’re going to see a new thing, for the rest of your life.”