During
this presidential campaign candidates have utilized social media to communicate
with their voters. Obama’ss campaign is actively using Twitter for promotion. Both
Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have participated in Google+ “Hangouts”, a video-chatting
feature, to communicate with professional interviewers as well as every-day
American citizens, who two decades ago would have been unable to access the
president directly. This is yet another example that proves that old forms of
media are dying out and making space for these technologically advanced forms
of communication.
Presidential
campaigns have been pushed to use such forms of new media to transcend traditional
forms and to appeal to younger audiences. The parties plan to integrate such technologies
deeply into their campaigns. These tools will allow voters to see new points of
view, provide them with more information and inevitably shape their political
discussions.
Social
media will continue to be a growing part of politics. The Republican National
Convention announced last week that they would live-stream their entire
four-day convention through Google. This way viewers will be able to access
complete coverage of the event and fill in the gaps traditional television and
cable news shows must omit to make way for other stories.
Full
story at: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/campaigns-partner-with-social-media-companies/?ref=twitter#
The political use of social media in campaigns has become an area that a number of Internet scholars now write about. You are right that both a desire to appeal to appeal to younger voters and a wish for a wider bandwidth method of communicating more generally make this appealing to candidates. The question might be: how does this relate to digital journalism? Do you think that candidates are trying to do an end-run around journalists as intermediaries?
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