The Politics of Social Media

Politicians using social media? at first glance someone could wonder at the purpose of such an undertaking




their have been many earlier attempts at utilizing social media for political election purposes -- 
a few brief examples are


John Edwards --  While this man was official the first ever person to announce his candidacy for US presidency via an on-line video, I think the fact that was was not successfully elected took away from the innovative step which he undertook --


Also while this was considered to be one of the first "person to person" addresses as Edwards was addressing his audience directly and not through a mainstream media source, I think that the fuck that it was released on his personal website and not through a 3rd party medium of YouTube or another similar video sharing site, really could have damage the credibility and authenticity of the address.


Mind you I think any video created for exclusive on-line purposes is a risky decision as the internet is a fickle minded machine and can be manipulated accordingly


i.e many videos go through forum based websites such as 4chan.org and Reddit.com now while these audience may not the intended target all it takes is a few persuasive individuals to find or suggest a flaw or problem with their video format and it could potentially be blacklist by a wide segment of an internet community(Note: on the flip side it could have potentionally positive effects)


These points aside 


 Im going to breifly examine to what i consider the start of mainstream poltical social media.

In 2007 Barrack Obama launched his presidential campaign - of which the general purpose is too gather support from potential voters, but his campaign team did one thing different they explore the use's of social networking sites as a basis to create buzz about the campaign and were even able to utilize Facebook to assist with donations towards the champaign. 
The now preisdient Obama was able to advance his campaign by reaching voters whom would otherwise would of been unaware of his political message"


An article on http://knowledge.insead.edu/contents/HowObamausedsocialnetworkingtowin090709.cfm (Scott Goodstein, 2010) qoutes;

"Since joining the Obama campaign in February 2007, Goodstein, who is the External Online Director for Obama For America, has helped attract nearly two million supporters on MySpace, about 6.5 million supporters on Facebook, and 1.7 million supporters on Twitter."


If these numbers are correct this is just over 10million supporters over social media networks considering the population of america this is somewhere between 3-4% of the total population




since the 2007- Barrack Obama campaign politicians utilizing social media sites such as Facebook had become and increasing trend.


It is almost essentially for an politician to have a Facebook page and a twitter page and any other form of social media page as these enables them to reach a younger audience and influence audiences who may not be of voting ages but will be in the near future