Blog #2 Jour 4460: Obama & Social Media

Social media has slowly crept into many if not all aspects of life. Today you can scan a barcode with your smart phone and get coupons or fashion tips. Starbucks offers free drinks on Foursquare. A great portion of companies have a link on their websites where a reader can share on Facebook, tweet the information to twitter or post it to Linkedin. However, one place I really didn’t expect social media to play a direct role is the presidential election.

During President Obama’s State of the Union Address tweets went out containing quotes from his speech. On Youtube there is an ad that appears before videos that describes a virtual chat that the president will have via Youtube. During this chat he will answer questions from Americans. People had until January 26^th to submit and vote on questions. President Obama will conduct the online interview on January 30^th.

I think that this approach is very smart. If the rest of the country, especially the youth, are using social media to connect and stay up to date on events why not use that? It could also bring about votes for the president.

Through his use of social media it shows me that he is not afraid of change and can adapt to use it to his benefit. Plus, a president on Twitter is pretty cool to me.

In some ways I feel an online campaign is better than a “traditional” one. Simply because it can pull more people into politics and actually help them understand what’s going on.

Although, since not everyone uses social media and it’s still older Americans who go out and vote, it wouldn’t be wise to run a campaign completely on social media. People still want to see that perfect grin Obama has. But, maybe one day campaigns will be run on social media. And, maybe one day the president will deliver speeches using holograms. The last statement could just be the wish of someone who thought the coolest part of Star Wars was the holograms. It would still be pretty cool though if Obama was coming out of your phone or computer though. I could settle for being able to vote online though.

However, I feel that social media can become overwhelming. It seems like every company, organization and institution is trying to flood your timelines and newsfeeds. And a new application for smart phones seems to come out more often than the sun. Learning how to use it can be frustrating. Especially on Twitter when you almost have to learn a new language to understand it.

I think social media is only just beginning to grow. I don’t know how it’s going to get bigger and more technical, but it will because, to me, it’s our generation’s media. The only time I really see someone my age pick up an actual newspaper is when they need to read it for a class or they’re at work and can’t use their phone or the Internet to look at the news. My Twitter timeline keeps me up to date on local and national news and trends.