U.S. President Barack Obama has been
touted as "the social media president" and the history books will
certainly mark the 2008 election as the first to be influenced by social media.
Do you think that social media will continue to play an important role in the
2012 election, or is the phenomenon over-hyped?
In
the year of 2008, president Obama was elected in a time where social media was
just getting started. I do believe that social media will have a big part in
not only Obama’s election but also future elections to come. In today’s society
I believe about 90% of Americas are associated with some sort of social media
site and most of them being the younger generation, which gets teenagers more
involved in politics and elections. With Presidents and or Prime ministers that
use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, or even created YouTube channels it gives them
a way to display there ideas and are able to communicate with communities and
for those communities to communicate back which helps to cut campaigning costs,
it also saves the time of the governor, senator or who ever the competitor
might be. Doing some research in 2008, Obama did a campaign “Yes We Can” and
posted videos upon the Internet, and from that he got positive and negative
feedback of thousands who watched which was one of the main reasons he was
elected. Today Obama has an official Facebook page with over 35 million likes
and a twitter account with 28,609,863 followers which again helps to cut
advertising cost by million just because of social media. Personally speaking
if I wanted to find out something about elections or what Obama’s campaign has
to offer there’s no need in searching the newspapers just search it on Facebook and
Twitter and everything you need to know is right in front of your eyes.
