In a discussion about the recent French presidential election at the Personal Democracy Forum unConference this past Saturday, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry presented an interesting thesis: not only did Ségolène Royal's 'net-centric strategy fail to win a majority at the polls, but her campaign's emphasis on citizen participation may have actually backfired entirely by undermining her perception as a leader and by leaving her dependent on a fatally unrepresentative group of voters.

In Mike Turk and Zack Exley's session at PDF 2007, a topic that came up frequently was the creation of perception with social media tools. The discussion explored methods for humanizing the candidate; dropping in on the comments of a blog post seemed a common and popular strategy. The outcome of this type of action is simple - it creates the perception that candidates are actively engaging with digital supporters. Of course, the problem is that this strategy isn't scalable or realistic; if we don't have enough time to read all of the blogs in our newsreader every day, one can only imagine how little time candidates have.

The connections fostered by social media are unique and context-specific. A blog comment is not the same as a Twitter or text message or Facebook share; all of these tools have their own rules and expectations. Perhaps this is why Barack Obama's first Twitter seemed so strange - his avatar seemed to not understand the complexities or expectations of the medium. Of course, once you understand the rules of the medium, it's not hard to create authentic persona for the candidates (though I'm still not sure about Obama's Twitters).

As Joe Trippi has been making the rounds lately, one thing he's been talking about is the rise of a culture of authenticity in politics as we move from a broadcast television era to an Internet-dominated era. I heard him make the point at last week's Connecting with Young Voters event (ably summarized by Kate Phillips in The Caucus), and he said something similar this week to The Guardian (thanks, Josh).

Take a look at Media Matters today for a glimpse of the potential problems with mixing citizen-generated content and our current political culture — how segments of the mainstream media react when they're presented with something other than the usual scripted campaign events and talking points. I'm talking about Obamagirl, of course (bless her heart), whose winsome smile and winning figure were all over cable news the past few days.

Was her crush on the candidate a plus for him? A minus? Who knows for sure, but some commentators were happy to fit the moment into a running media theme about Obama — that he's too young and too pretty to be President of the United States. Obama lacks substance, apparently, despite the dry policy speeches he's happy to give, and the Obamagirl video fits into the world-view of that part of the political commentariat that doesn't want to take him seriously.

This morning I attended the Adfero Group's Winning in a Web World forum at the US Chamber of Commerce. The topic of this forum was "How Associations Engage Online in a Presidential Election." The half-day forum started out with a panel on User Generated Campaigns, featuring among others one of our newest TechPresident colleagues, Patrick Ruffini. Patrick was joined by David Almacy, who used to serve as the Internet and eCommunications Director for the White House and is now a digital media strategy consultant. The second panel featured e-advocacy strategists from AARP, Children's Defense Fund, and Strong Schools for America to talk about how they were leveraging the campaigns to raise awareness of their issues.

Facebook has given us an unprecedented look inside the demographic breakdowns of its user base. For the first time, there's a model for quantifying who the early adopters on the Web are, and how they vote.

Read this post for the full data.

There just aren't that many of them.

But there are plenty more interested in the Bible, Country music, Sportscenter, watching 24, and playing Halo 3 on their Xbox.

Meanwhile, liberals watch the Daily Show, love Radiohead (by a 6-to-1 margin over conservatives), and (speaking as a Republican) let's just say I like who Stephen Colbert takes votes from.

This is all part of my deep dive into Facebook demographic data provided at by the Flyers Pro advertising engine. I've just updated the spreadsheet. The data looks like this...

So I realized, I'm over 30, don't use Facebook or Twitter much, and I'm a Hillary supporter. I wasn't quite ready for Clinton's "Town Hall" on the Hallmark channel (I'll save that one for the over 60 crowd) but I feel as if the coolest applications of new technology this campaign cycle are aimed at the young and uber-wired, whereas 2004's innovations painted a wider stroke: blogs, online ads, MoveOn.org and email. I'm so glad these tools are driving out the youth vote, but I'm wondering what the new social media has to offer that is essential to the rest of the electorate?

When it comes to social media, I'm a digital native. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter - these services are deeply integrated into my daily life and, to a certain extent, the lives of my friends and family. The fact that I am a native makes me well-suited to explain the technology and its uses and benefit; the cost, of course, is losing the non-native perspective.

Yesterday's NYT turned its gaze to the patterns of political connection young people are establishing in social media. In an article entitled Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On, Brian Stelter describes a techno-political paradigm-shift: young people now turn to the social filter to find political information, as opposed to the traditional "professional" filters of the MSM. Nothing surprising or groundbreaking here, as we're saying the same things about "digital natives" that we've been saying about bloggers for ages.