As the Internet and social media have become more and more prevalent, they have had a great effect on politics in the United States. This became extremely prevalent with Obama’s 2008 campaign as he used the Internet and created his own websites to generate followers. In 2012 though, he then used Facebook as his major platform, which was a huge turning point for his campaign, and for politics as we know it. For the first time, the two presidential candidates were able to really interact with people all over the country, and even the world on a more personal level. The people were also able to connect better with each other and spark creativity. Both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were able to humanize themselves and become more relatable through their strong presence on Facebook. Although Facebook is a very powerful tool for political campaigns, it is not the only social media platform that has changed politics. Obama also had public accounts on Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Youtube, Tumblr, Flickr, Instagram, and Spotify and Romney had public accounts on Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Flickr, and Google+. The idea that Obama had a larger presence on social media makes me wonder if this has anything to do with his success in the election. This brought me to question if maybe social media has made an impact in the 2016 election as well.
https://www.facebook.com/barackobama/
Twitter has become an extremely popular platform for politicians and their followers to communicate, along with people to discuss politics amongst each other. This dates again back to 2008, when Obama was elected president for the first time. In the past, Twitter had been a mainly conservative platform, but Obamas victory brought about a venting ground on Twitter for conservatives. With this connection of angry conservatives communicating on Twitter, began The Tea Party Movement which is lead by republicans who called for political change following Obamas’s election. Micheal Patrick Leahy, a key member of the Tea Party Movement then created the hashtag #TCOT which stands for Top Conservatives of Twitter. By the end of 2008, this top list of conservatives had grin from 35 to more than 3,500 who held conference calls together. Twitters head of news, government and elections, Adam Sharp stated “I think it was less Twitter coming to politics, and more politics coming to Twitter and finding it as a platform to communicate and to organize effectively without a lot of the costs historically associated with that.”
https://twitter.com/INTJutsu/status/797582453699411968
https://twitter.com/RNRMaryland/status/797612351184900096
Twitter had an unimaginable impact on the most recent 2016 election. Both presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton tweeted insults both about each other, and at each other directly. These tweets received millions of likes and retweets by their perspective followers each day. These tweets encourage supporters to spread the word on conservative or liberal views and spark conversation. This opened up the possibility of open dialogue between presidential candidates, and the people of the United States. This is especially true of Candidate Donald Trump, who is known for outwardly speaking his mind without a filter. Political science professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison Barry Burden says “Twitter was taken to a new level this year because of Donald Trump. His aggressive and unconventional use of the platform generated news even when his tweets violated standard norms of campaigns by being uncivil, conspiratorial or offensive.” When reading Trump’s tweets you can truly hear his own voice coming though, making him seem more relatable because the snippets of information and opinion are actually coming from him. Now with the election being over, this definitely makes me wonder if Trumps huge and overpowering pretense on Twitter had anything to do with his success in the outcome of the election.
Barcelona 2016 