Social Media In The 2008 Election

Social media caused an increased number of voters engaging in the election.Two new internet activities stormed the political stage in 2008. Americans watched online videos that were related to the campaign, and used social networking sites to engage in political activity. During the 2008 election process, utilizing advanced technologies and merging them with traditional sources that offered new opportunities for engagement and interactivity with promising voters. An amendment from the 2004 election, 100% of e-mails sent by McCain and Obama utilized some type of technical interactivity, including hyperlinks, banners, images, videos, audio inclusive language and calls for participation/action (Hendricks and Kaid 49). The inclusive language

(Clayton 145) YouTube also created YouChoose, a section of the YouTube site that was purposely to show candidates’ videos and letting people to engage by leaving video responses, ratings, and comments. (Carty 80) YouTube took action by meeting with nearly every candidate at the start of the campaign season and encouraging them to start YouTube channels (Clayton 145). Also,YouTube created YouChoose, where a section of the site was devoted to showing candidates’ videos and providing a platform for people to engage with candidates through video responses,comments, and ratings (Carty 80). In 2008 a merge of old and new media was created to provide further engagement. For example, ABC made a deal with Facebook to provide debate information. CNN, YouTube,and MySpace joined with MTV to present a presidential series. Also, YouTube and CNN teamed up to present a debate where people could submit questions on YouTube and they were acknowledged through CNN. According to Hendricks and Kaid, the CNN/YouTube debate was the best example of how new media allowed individuals to voice their views or concerns instead of just watching debates (Hendricks and Kaid

He hired Joe Raspers,who worked on Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004, and Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes to control his social media team (Carty 81). They influenced Obama’s presence on fifteen different social networking sites and created his own social networking site: My.BarackObama.com. My.BarackObama.com was also known as MyBO (Carty 81-82). Obama was very engaged on his LinkedIn page where he sought out opinions about how the next president could assist entrepreneurs and small businesses (Holahan). However, he was not engaged or particularly successful on Twitter and he mainly used it to post campaign information instead of engaging with followers. Hendricks and Kaid concluded that on Twitter, “the Obama campaign did not produce interactive content, did not reply to any followers, and used the account strictly as a one-way information push” (16). Regardless of failing to fully take control of Twitter in an engaging manner, Obama’s presence on numerous other sites advertised interactivity.Trying to compete with Obama’s MyBO (My.BarackObama.com) , McCain’s social media team created “McCainSpace”, which was part of his main website (Clayton 143). Unluckily, McCainSpace was extremely difficult and at times, nearly impossible to navigate and was abandoned months before the general election (Stelter). Overall, just having the social media tools does not always work well; one must know how to use these