True to his campaign image of progress and change, Barack Obama went about his campaigning with the aid of something no former Presidential candidate had used to such effect: social media. In 2008, a large part of Obama's campaign involved reaching out to people via the internet, relying on social media to spread the word and bring in funding. Obama's social media website, www.my.barackobama.com, reached out to millions of his supporters, updating them instantly on what to do to aid the Obama campaign and contently bringing new people into the fold. Obama was also a constant presence on Twitter and Youtube, netting millions of followers and views.
Internet campaigning had been tried before, but never with the breadth and involvement of the Obama campaign. Obama's internet team understood the what the magic bullet of social media - they were the first political internet team to grasp what the essence of the power of social media was: the power of word-of-mouth. The critical attribute of social media is in its ability to facilitate "viral" phenomena, that is, the spread of something from one person to another, and then that person to several more people, again and again until the message has reached millions.
In this way, Obama had "footsoldiers", as the article called them, doing the work for him. Obama's internet followers would spread things like requests for funding automatically to others, who would continue to spread it to others still. You can say that the Obama campaign invented internet crowdfunding, which would later come into fruition on websites like Kickstarter. Obama could make up what he lacked in multi-million dollar donations from big-wigs and corporations with the tremendous amount of sub-200 dollar donations he got via the internet.
The success of Obama's internet exploits will undoubtedly have a tremendous effect on all future presidential campaigns. Social media is now recognized by politics are a powerful force in engaging and communicating with potential voters. As twitter and Facebook begin to consume our cultural consciousness, it only follows that politicians would need to adapt themselves to be where the action is to be successful. Adapt or die, presidential hopefuls.
http://cs12.cs.qc.cuny.edu/~waxman/8fn_002.pdf
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