Use Of Mass And Social Media Between Nixon/Kennedy And Romney Campaigns

Comparison and Contraction of the Use of Mass and Social Media Between Nixon/Kennedy and Obama/Romney Campaigns

Media communication technologies control and shape society and can have different effects on campaigns. In the 1960s both UHF-band and VHF broadcast television was dominantly being used and consisted of three major networks and a few independent stations (Lule, 2013). By 1969 the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Public Broadcasting System was formed and provided alternatives to network broadcasting (High-tech Productions, 2013). Evening news broadcasts lasted half an hour. Television was positioned as a new medium for political coverage and quickly surpassed newspapers and radio to become a major source of political information.

Both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney spent a lot of money on television for their 2012 campaign. Billboards are another tool used in campaigns to expose people to the name, party, and tagline of a candidate (Duncan, n.d.). In 1990 hand-painted illustrations and graphics on billboards were replaced with digital technology and by 2005 billboards were digital (A Brief History of Outdoor Advertising, 2014). In 2012, Romney’s campaign used digital billboards in states to coincide with Obama campaign rallies to generate attention and free press (Nyczepir, 2012). Romney did interviews on conservative talk radio and news stations. Between July 2012 and September 2012 Obama spoke to both national and local press outlets. He did twenty-six interviews with non-traditional outlets in media, urban, entertainment, sports radio, Spanish language, and students on both radio and television. Putting more effort into social media that do not require media filter, Obama used Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Twitter, podcasting, and Reddit and changed the way politicians utilize social media (Curtis, 2013a). Facebook, an influential social media tool for politicians, encourages users to share, comment, and use the content being disseminated on the site. Myspace is a social networking website that was launched in California in 2003 (Curtis, 2013a). Twitter, an online news and social

The media shapes government politics by influencing political opinion and can sway uncommitted voters who may be the deciding vote. The media teaches values and life-styles and has the power to inform, educate, persuade, and change behaviors. More elections are being decided by a small percentage of the population consisting of undecided voters. The type of medium used, presentation, and the flow of the message are factors that can impact voters. In the past the media audience read, listened, or viewed political information supplied by politicians via newspapers, radio, television, billboards, and brochures. It was a one-way passive communication (Lull, 2013). In 2007 there were 1,456 daily newspapers in the United States selling 55 million copies a day but as the internet expanded its technology some newspapers began to cease or turn to web publication (Bellis, 2017b). The Herald Examiner, the nation’s largest afternoon daily ceased publication November 2, 1989 (Whittaker, 2018). By 2009 newspapers had begun to move into online versions like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a 146-year-old major US newspaper who left print format and became a web-only publication on March 18, 2009 (Palmer, 2009). By 2010 digital printing became a common technology as commercial printing and publishing started to fade due to technology (Bellis, 2017b). Today the public is more engaged in