Media’s effect on politics has made it so that no political campaign will never be seen without one. This is free publicity and it can reach a wider audience than one usually would without it. The beauty behind it is that you let the people spread a message you sent out, then you let them, the people who are followers of what you represent become the messenger of your plans. This all began with Howard Dean and his democratic race for president. In February 2003, Howard Dean has groups who are spreading the awareness of his candidacy through a website called “Meetup.com”. This allowed for many people to be informed of what Howard Dean’s mission is and putting their feet to the ground to push their candidate. In the article Crossing the Campaign Divide: Dean Changes the Election Game it states “Over 10,000 people attended Dean Meetups in early May. By the end of the summer, the number of attendees passed 100,000, and by early 2004, it had swelled to over 170,000.”, that’s an amazing achievement to gain 17 times the initial group size over one summer. This is a positive for those who are trying to bring awareness to their campaigns throughout the country, and if people really believe in you then they’ll support you no matter how small you are.
Barack Obama has even used this method to further his presidential run in 2007. He began the slogan “Yes, We Can” which would mean that we can do whatever we put our minds to as long as we can work together and then help one another. This peaceful campaign spread the ideas of people being in the position to try another president who wasn’t white and allow for a melting pot of nationalities to come together for this rare occasion. He showed that he had the interest of those who aren’t really heard, acknowledged and to be a fairer society to everyone who lived outside of big business. This style of campaigning won him two presidential elections in a row by landslide victories. Social media contributed heavily to his run but with good, there’s always a bad and social media has shown that in the past few years.
Social media definitely has a negative side to this, and that’s people will utilize their platforms to be immoral, spread a false narrative and lie repeatedly; the same way Donald Trump did and does. Donald Trump used social media in a way where being politically correct doesn’t matter and spreading lies to push an agenda that only satisfies his and the other elite. “His online dominance is striking: Over the past two months, on Twitter alone, he has been mentioned in 6.3 million conversations, eight times as many as Republican rivals like Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson — not to mention more than three times as many as Hillary Rodham Clinton and nearly four times as many as Bernie Sanders.” – “Pithy, Mean and Powerful: How Donald Trump Mastered Twitter for 2016”. This is a prime example of how powerful negativity can be by upsetting those who don’t agree with you and then riling those who believe in what you’re preaching enough to become radical. Social media can be your greatest asset or your worst nightmare, this all depends on the message you’re carrying and how you deliver it to the masses.
1 comments
Great writeup! Interesting to see the political progression of the use of social media and how candidates and elected officials have used and abused it.