Barack Obama’s election campaign was described as the best ever led campaign for presidential candidacy, even by people who voted for Clinton or McCain.
A big part of that has to do with the new role that social media has taken in our way of spreading the word, and how Obama’s PR team made use of that knowledge. He had a Facebook and MySpace page, used Twitter and managed to spread his thoughts, ideas and plans for his presidency through his own blog.
The use of social networking for political use is not a new concept, but has been revamped and exploited since the success of now President Obama’s campaign, and campaign leaders feel that social media gives political parties a freedom to reach audiences in a way they never could before.
It seems we hear more about ‘Democrats’ incorporating social media tools in their agenda than ‘Republicans.’ Peter Leyden, the director of the think-tank called New Politics Institute, has his own theory that he shared during an interview about politics & social media;
“The party that is out of power usually adopts the new tools to get into power quicker.”
Click here to see the rest of the interview.
We can not measure in numbers how many people were influenced by social media to vote, but we can know from the vast amount of information coming from all angles, that people know more about who is running for Leader of the Free World than ever before.
By those standards, there is no longer any excuse for making ill-informed choices in the voting booth.
Check Out;
Interviews with various US state representatives on how they use social media.
The Online Journalism Review’s interview with TechPresident.com founder, Andrew Rasiej.
http://www.epolitics.com/, online advocacy tools & tactics blog.
