Social media has completely changed the game for political campaigns today. According to Aaron Smiths article “Cell Phones, Social Media and Campaign 2014”, voters have been using their smartphones to keep up with the latest political news, Republicans and Democrats and similar rates. He also explains the Republicans seem to be the first to have a great desire to find out political news breaks. As this article was written in 2014, we can say that most individuals have now learned to their smart devices for all the latest breaks in politics, especially since the Trump election. In the article “The Role Played By Social Media In Political Participation And Electoral Campaign”, the author explains that social media has brought politicians and potential voter much closer together. Communication is instantaneous and politicians are able to get reactions, feedback, or even engage in debates (looking at you Trump). As the NYT article explains, Trump has learned to use Twitter to his advantage, and disadvantage at times. This social media app is being used as a tool to “promote, distant, settle and attack”. One positive is that costly campaigning and tradition methods of political agendas are immensely reduced, now that politicians have twitter. However, it should all be taken with a grain of salt in my opinion, as we have learned from “covefefe”. Too much power has been given to social media, and who knows, another one of Trump’s dumb tweets could even lead us into a nuclear war if he keeps this up.
Feb 11