Sunday, March 21, 2010 Y
Internet and Politics
Frankly speaking this is a very tough entry to write. I do not care much about politics and I do not really follow up on any political campaign. The only thing that I would only look at are usually just the results of the election. So for this week's blog discussion, I shall try my best to write about the topic. So why is internet becoming so important when it comes to political campaigning? We must understand that we are now living in a modern age filled with technology. Young adults are living in a wired world with high technology gadgets at their disposal. Young people are staring at their screens more than ever and we have to take note of these changes in order to grab their attention. The old method of campaigning may be good but there is a better way of doing so now.
When we hear about the use of the internet for political campaigning, the first name that comes to mind is Barack Obama. It was noted that Barack Obama has won a landslides victory through the use of social networks, e-mail advocacy, text messaging and online videos. First we shall look at his myspace and twitter page.
From the above chart, we can see that Barack Obama has much more friends and followers compared to John Mccain. So what does all of this mean? The number of friends and followers are an indication of a person's popularity. Let this people be your brand advocate, let them be the one who will bring in more support for your campaign.
Barack Obama has also received a large bulk of his campaign funding from small donations in figures like than $200 each through the internet. The internet has made it easy for people to make a donation and many small donations can really add up to a huge amount. It was found that Barack Obama has received more than 6.5 million online donations adding up to a total of more than $500 million. From here we can see how the power of the internet can be harnessed to obtain donations.
Obama has also made use of email campaigners to help him promote his cause. So what exactly do these email campaigners do?
"Email campaigners are responsible for planning, writing, and executing grassroots campaigns to advance the President's agenda for change. Campaigns will primarily be driven through email and web tools and use fundraising, citizen advocacy, and local organizing to achieve our goals."
In a fast changing world whereby everything is being connected to the internet. It makes sense to use what ever tools we have at our disposal. Barack Obama has 13 million people on his mailing list and these people have received more than 7,000 variation of more than 1 billion emails. Emails are a good way to keep his supporters up to date on issues he is campaigning about also are a quick and efficient way of doing the job.
Lastly, I shall talk about videos and how Barack Obama has made use of them. He has almost 2,000 official youtube videos and these are watched more than 80 million times. One thing good about such videos, it always a person to watch them at his or her own leisure. There are also more than 442,000 user generated videos to further spread the popularity of Barack Obama. One popular video is the Emmy Winning video "Yes We Can". This video is a collage style music video inspired by a speech delivered by Barack Obama following the 2008 New Hampshire primary.
This is a very powerful video and it shows us all that not only official videos from the campaigner itself but what others can do to either help your cause.
So far we have all seen the power of the internet and how it can helps to give one a huge advantage in political campaigning, especially in the case of Barack Obama. But what limitations or negative aspects can the internet bring?
Well, when it comes to user generated videos, it is no doubt that spoofs will make their way onto the internet. And what impression do these videos leave on the voters? Entertaining no doubt, but what do you think?
Internet is a very powerful tool and have very great effect indeed. As quoted from the Spiderman movie, "With great power, comes great responsibility." The internet can promote one's cause, but it can also be used smear one's campaign. We have no control over the million of users of the internet and each of them have their own opinion on a subject. Thus people so many people together on a social network page may not be such a good idea as well.
And lastly, we must not forget that the use of internet in political campaigning is mainly target at the younger generation. And the older generation still prefer the traditional way of doing things and also they are not quite adaptive to all these new technology have to offer. Therefore, the internet is there for us to use, but how will we use it, is the main question...
left his footprints
8:11 AM
2 Comments
