Blog Posting #3: Social media & the 2012 election

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?

  

Obama's participation in social media

Social media is a growing phenomenon, increasing in popularity at an extraordinary speed. Unlike in any other Presidential election, the Obama campaign harnessed a range of social media tools to help connect with the voters and encourage support. On his website they posted videos, photos, and speeches. After the election the Obama team continued to use social media, within 24 hours of the successful vote, Obama's transition team rolled out the http://change.gov/website which was designed to continue the conversation that began during the campaign. The site gave people an opportunity to share their thoughts on important issues and respond to policy ideas. This made people feel they were being heard and that Obama was listening, it is extremely important to people that their opinion matters and will be listened to. Social media breaks down communication barriers and lets all people interact and communicate with one another which was important in the 2008 election as Obama used social media to better communicate with and better reach the voters. Also because technology is always advancing and social media is growing, using it in his campaign showed the voters that he adapts to the changing technology and will harness and use it to his advantage to communicate with the voters. A recent study from branding agency Digitas found that 88% of U.S. adults on social media are registered voters, and that over half will use social media to learn about the presidential election. This is a huge development and will most likely to increase due to students coming of voting age and growing up in the ‘social media world’ and growing use of technology in everyday life. In spite of its massive and unprecedented growth, political strategists are still in the early stages of figuring out what social media can and can't do. The trend is clear, however: digital will be an ever more important factor as each new election cycle rolls around. Social media offers an opportunity for government to speak directly to their constituents and has helped to spark the new Government 2.0 model which focuses on transparency, collaboration, innovation, and participation. Social media will continue to play an important role in the 2012 election and it will continue to grow and develop for future elections as well.

   ~Chantel~

Blog Post #2: Quality of news and information

Social media has allowed everyday citizens to become authors, editors, and publishers of news and information. Do you believe that social media has increased the quality of news and information or decreased it?

       I think that with social media allowing everyday citizens to become authors, editors, and publishers of news and information that it has decreased the quality of news information. With social media it allows you to get news instantly but it is most likely not from a reliable resource with proof and it makes it a lot harder for people to distinguish what is fact from fiction. Social media has made it a lot harder to get the truth online especially with twitter; people will "Retweet" what someone else said and it can go on and on starting rumors and spreading them to the general population. I think social media has increased the quantity not quality of news and information. You also have to be careful when researching to use good sources and provide evidence; especially with sites where anyone with an account can edit pages and give you false information about any topic you are looking at for example Wikipedia. I also think that legitimate news and information sources do use social media to improve the quality and quickness of news and information reaching people. Such as CBC News using Twitter to inform people, they have a different Twitter for each region and they also have a CBC top news stories and news alerts Twitter. Social media makes a lot of things easier for people but at the same time people have to do a lot more work looking for legitimate information and news sources which is funny considering one of the reasons people use social media is to get news faster and easier. I believe that social media has permanently decreased the quality of news and information that we receive because it enables anyone to author, edit, and publish information whether it is the truth or a random made up story to garner attention.

    ~Chantel~