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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Possible End to Music Piracy?

A lot of us are guilty of downloading music content online illegally for obvious reasons of course; the songs are free of charge and are available in the cyber world before the albums are even launched in the real world.

According to a study conducted by the United States National Bureau of Economic Research by, the increase in the number of people resorting to the Internet to download songs is causing a huge drop in record sales.(BBC,2004)

In an effort to curb music piracy, the record companies; Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI and Warner Music have teamed up with Nokia under its Comes With Music brand to launch a phone that will enable music lovers to download music either on their mobile phone or to their desktop. (Sabbagh, 2008)

'Comes with Music' phone
(Source: TechRadar UK)

In this way, download of music will not be illegal as consumers are actually paying for the music by subscribing to the phone and in turn, record companies are getting their profits back.

In a press release by Nokia, Tero Ojanpero, executive vice-president and head of Nokia entertainment and communities business, confirmed that through the Comes With Music brand, music lovers will be able to enjoy unlimited access to songs of their choice free of charge for one whole year and at the end of the year, they get to keep the downloaded music content for life. (Nokia, 2008)

Music lovers can download music of their choice anywhere and at any point of time. This form of selling music through digital media is best described by Naughton(2006) as the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ medium; wherein push forced us to be passive audiences and take in whatever content that was provided to us, and pull that allowed audiences to take lead and actually choose the content that they prefer or that is relevant to them, which is the situation now.

Several record companies have also signed up with the social networking website, MySpace, to allow their songs to be sold on the website, thus enabling artists to actually make profits out of their albums. (Hefflinger, 2006)

However, artists such as Madonna and Radiohead are not in favour of selling their music online as they are still skeptical about whether their music will be protected from piracy. (Harmon, 2002)

With the Comes With Music phone, record labels are hoping this will be kept to a minimum, as consumers will not be able to perform peer-to-peer music downloads.(Hartley, 2008)

References

Harmon, A 2002, Copyright Hurdles Confront Selling of Music on the Internet, New York Times, viewed 12 November 2008, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E2DC1739F930A1575AC0A9649C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

Hartley, A 2008, Unlimited mobile music will combat P2P piracy, TechRadar UK, viewed 12 November 2008, http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/unlimited-mobile-music-will-combat-p2p-piracy-471719

Hefflinger, M 2006, Snocap to Enable Artists to Sell Songs on MySpace, Digital Media Wire, viewed 11 November 2008, http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2006/09/06/snocap-to-enable-artists-to-sell-songs-on-myspace

Music piracy ‘does hit CD sales’ 2004, BBC News, viewed 12 November 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3995885.stm
Naughton, J 2006, The age of permanent net revolution, Guardian, viewed 11 November 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/mar/05/newmedia.broadcasting/print

Ojanpero, T (Executive Vice-President & Head of Nokia entertainment and communities business) 2008, Nokia launches pioneering ‘Comes With Music’ digital entertainment service, media release, 2 October, Nokia, viewed 12 November 2008, http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1256586

Sabbagh, D 2008, Nokia offers unlimited music for one-off fee, Australian IT, viewed 12 November 2008, http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24440421-15306,00.html

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