Here we go again.

Ever since Howard Dean's unlikely web-fueled run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, the role of social media in politics has been endlessly debated and analyzed.

In the mainstream press, campaign coverage now routinely monitors Twitter feeds and Facebook chatter, the assumption being that all of that matters and that anyone, candidate or reporter, who ignores what's happening in social media does so at their peril.

As the story goes, Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 because of his massive army of online volunteers and contributors, and that experience changed everything.

Do 'friends' vote? Is social media a message maker or message taker? Artist Sep Kamvar looks at an image of Barack Obama, one of hundreds being pulled from a recently published online blog. (Danny Moloshok/Reuters)

And now, in the wake of the 2010 midterm elections, we have a similar narrative unfolding, only this time, it is the Republicans who apparently rode the web to victory.

"As the 2010 midterm elections confirmed," declared an article in the Globe and Mail, "social media is the way to court voters."

It turns out that Republican members of Congress have more Twitter followers and tweet more often than Democratic members, Republican videos attract more viewers on YouTube, and Republicans consistently beat Democrats in Facebook polls.

No wonder they kicked Democratic butt on November 2! But was social media the reason?

'Nothing will ever be the same'

"The internet is the most democratizing innovation we've ever seen," Howard Dean's campaign manager Joe Trippi declared after the 2004 campaign. "Nothing will ever be the same."

Yet, six years after Dean's remarkable but short-lived campaign, what is striking about politics today is not how much has changed, but how little.

There's no doubt that Facebook and Twitter have led to greater political engagement, particularly among younger voters who are more comfortable in the online world. But social media has not been the game changer that many of its early evangelists had hoped it would be.

The federal election of October 2008 was supposed to be Canada's first social media election, and there was much activity on Facebook and Twitter that was breathlessly reported by the mainstream media.

But perhaps the most enduring image of the online campaign was the Conservative's notaleader.ca site that invited users to mock Liberal leader Stephane Dion.

It resulted in a memorable ad that featured a bird defecating on Dion's shoulder. Not exactly a "democratizing innovation." Voter turnout, in fact, plunged to an all-time low.

Old school

In the British election in May 2010, voter turnout among 18 to 24 year olds increased by seven per cent over the election of 2005.

And a report prepared by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in the U.K. concluded that it would be wrong to dismiss the impact of the web on the outcome. The report called the 2010 campaign a "significant milestone in the onward march of the internet … which complemented and enriched more traditional forms of media."

Still, it was clear that the big event in the British election was the country's first-ever nationally televised leaders' debate.

Colombian presidential candidate Antanas Mockus talks with reporters while answering questions from supporters on Facebook in the May 2009 presidential elections. An attention seeker who wears superhero suits on occasion, he came close in the early rounds to knocking off the establishment favourite. (Reuters)

And while online activity can increase participation and engagement, it is pretty clear that campaigns are still won the old-fashioned way — with lots of money, relentlessly consistent messaging, TV ads (often negative), and an effective "ground game" to get out the vote.

In fact, it is easier to argue that once Obama won his party's nomination, his victory over Republican John McCain was more about old politics than new.

"The real drivers were old school," admitted campaign manager David Plouffe. Emails (13 million of them), traditional websites and boots on the ground were more important than Facebook or Twitter, Plouffe told an advertising conference after the election.

A similar conclusion was reached by the authors of a study of Obama For America, the massive social network that many observers have cited as one of the keys to his success. The report found the opposite.

"Many of the new approaches tried by the [web] campaign created buzz and visibility but offered no measurable results in terms of return on investment for OFA," the authors said.

"The five million friends on various social networks, for example, were useful for branding and visibility, but they offered little real-world results in terms of funds raised or volunteers recruited."

Messaging matters

Peter Daou, who ran Hillary Clinton's online campaign in 2008, believes he knows why traditional tools are more effective than social media tools.

"All political endeavours, "he argues, "are primarily about messaging."

Obama won in 2008 because his message of hope and change resonated with American voters. The Republicans' "mad as hell" message captured the mood in the recent midterms.

"Devoid of a compelling message to spur their use," Daou wrote, "the most advanced web tools will lie fallow."

How that message is transmitted is also important, and what has become clear since Obama's victory in 2008, is that old media — radio talk shows, TV ads, cable news — is a more effective message machine than new media.

It also seems that the old web 1.0 (emails and websites) achieves better results than web 2.0 (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc), maybe because social media is, by definition, about a conversation.

It is the antithesis of the one-way messaging that political campaigns rely on.

The age of empowerment?

Early proponents of online politicking have suggested that social media has propelled us into the age of empowerment.

Citizens now have the power to call the shots. Politicians today have to stop talking at us and start listening to us.

The problem with that analysis, though, is that political campaigns are much better at talking than listening.

Message discipline and one-way communications remain the keys to success, and even Twitter and Facebook can be effective one-way message machines in the hands of a skilled political machine.

What's more, even when social media brings out more young voters, there's no guarantee they can be counted on the next time around.

In 2008, young voters (those under 30) in the U.S. cast 18 per cent of all ballots in House races and voted overwhelmingly for Democrats. In 2010, that number slipped to 10 per cent.

Part of the reason for the decline in the Democratic vote was undoubtedly the absence of a compelling message to induce young people to go to the polls.

But in a recent article in The New Yorker, Malcom Gladwell offers another possibility.

"The platforms of social media are built around weak ties," Gladwell writes. It is too easy to friend someone on Facebook, or follow them on Twitter. Nothing is demanded, no sacrifices are made. "But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism."

If Gladwell is right, the promise of social media to transform politics and usher in an age of true empowerment may never be realized.

We will continue to get blinded by the light of Facebook and Twitter. The media will delight in counting friends, reading tweets, and treating online polls as if they have some statistical validity. But what appears to be significant change may only be a chimera, political business as usual covered in a high-tech gloss.