New Era for Political Campaigns

Can digital media transform the way political campaigns are run? Possibly. At least that is what we saw with this year’s United States presidential elections.

The candidates moved away from the traditional method of promoting and marketing themselves through television, radio and newspapers and focused more on promoting themselves via new forms of media. John McCain and Barack Obama used digital media in the form of blogs, You-tube commercials and social networking websites such as Facebook to reach out to the people of America. This is because they know that younger voters from this generation are tech-savvy and use the Internet as a major tool to obtain their information, therefore, they felt that the best way to get through to them is to try to be tech-savvy themselves. (Lieberman, 2008)

Barack Obama went one step further and introduced the Obama I-phone application to promote his campaign and reach a maximum number of voters as possible.

This application uses the user’s phone as a form of a contact book to mark all the contacts that the user has in states such as Virginia, Colorado and North Carolina and in turn, this information is used by the campaigners. (Stern, 2008)

According to Jason Grigsby, one of the project leaders of Obama’s political campaign, mobile technology could really help in promoting the campaign. Also, the campaign provides frequent updates regarding the campaign, spreads pictures and videos to encourage more voters. (Sheils, 2008)

Options available under Obama' 08 I-phone
(Source: Podxasting News)

The use of new media by Obama’s campaign had a great influence in the results of the election and could have possibly revolutionised the way future campaigns will be run. (Lewin, 2008)


Obama '08 IPhone Application

References

Lewin, J 2008, How Barack Obama Beat John McCain With New Media, Podcasting News, viewed 13 November 2008, http://www.podcastingnews.com/2008/11/05/how-barack-obama-beat-john-mccain-with-new-media/5/

Lieberman, S 2008, Youth and the Web: The Political Campaign Game-Changer, TechNewsWorld, viewed 13 November 2008, http://www.technewsworld.com/story/64643.html?wlc=1226555031

Shiels, M 2008, Obama uses iPhone to win support, BBC News, viewed 13 November 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7649753.stm

Stern, C 2008, Obama Counts on Text Messages to Drive Turnout of Youth, Blacks, Bloomberg.com, viewed 13 November 2008, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=av91P3tyvybU

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