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y in politics became evident in the 2008 United States national polls, where then Illinois Sen. Barack Obama made history by becoming America's first African-American president. Obama was able to use social media extensively for his campaigns, first for the Democratic Party nomination against then New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and later in the general election against Republican nominee Sen. John McCain. Specifically, he put-up an account in 15 online communities such as Facebook, MySpace and Eons (an SNS for senior citizens). According to a slideshow titled 'Barack Obama's Internet Strategy' (2005), the Obama campaign had around 5 million online supporters, 3.2 million in Facebook alone. Most of his supporters in Facebook were members of the group 'Barack Obama for President in 2008' and 'One Million Strong for Barack.' Facebook has been described as 'a staple of college life...and a key tool for a new generation of politically-engaged students' (Seipel, 2008).

Obama's team also had an SNS-like section, MyBarackObama.com, in his campaign website. Through the said online community, it was estimated that '2 million profiles were created, 200,000 events were planned, 400,000 blog posts were created and more than 35,000 volunteer groups were created' (ReadWriteWeb, 2008). Looking at the election results for 2008, it is obvious that Obama's 'get-out-the-youth-vote' effort worked. A BBC news item reported that Obama won the votes of those between 18-30 by a margin of 66 per cent -31 per cent over McCain, a margin 'much higher than in any previous election' (Scheiferres, 2008) Obama also won resoundingly over first-time voters, 68 per cent-30 per cent. The young voters' record turn-out, it is said, may have been the key to Obama's win (Dahl, 2008).

Aside from using SNSs and his campaign site to reach out to voters, Obama's campaign was also able to tap those for fundraising (Sullivan, 2008). Hailed by American pundit Andrew Sullivan as 'the least elitist and most democratic fundraising in the history of U.S politics', Obama was able to raise as much as $55 million (for February 2008) and $31 million (for April 2008) through online social networking. Most of Obama's 1.5 million individual donors contributed $200 or less to his bid. Americans are allowed to give as high as $2,300 to certain candidates, thereby assuring that Obama still 'has a long list of names to ask for more money' (Sullivan, 2008). Because of SNSs like Facebook, it has become a lot easier for campaign operatives to gather grassroots support (mostly from the youth) and mobilize them for election activities.

七、菲律宾的传统竞选——G. Traditional Campaigning in the Philippines
Existing communication technologies has also shaped the way Philippine political campaigns were conducted. Running against then president Elpidio Quirino, Ramon Magsaysay in 1953 used the radio jingle 'Mambo Magsaysay.' At that time, the radio served as the public'smain information source while the television, introdued by Quirino's brother Antonio to the country in the same year, was in its infancy (Enriquez, 2006). Magsaysay also 'travelled by plane, train, car, horse and even carabao to have close contacts with the common taos' (Tigno, 2005). In the 1960s and 1970s, most candidates spend their time and resources on campaign rallies since only wealthy households can afford television sets (Gloria, 2004). In her book Spin and Sell, journal