#selfiestrategy

[adigitalworldstudent-blog]

The growing relationship between political campaigns and social media

With more than 65% of adults now using social media – a tenfold jump in the last decade (Perrin 2015), it’s no surprise the relationship between political campaigns and social media is growing. As teenagers mature in the shadow of Web 2.0, eligible to cast their first vote, social media is playing an important role in their evolving lives (Kahne & Bowyer 2018, p.470). With the most important chance of winning a campaign being the message, some politicians are scrambling for wins by sending out tweets, that well they really shouldn’t.

With 74% of internet users turning to social media during the 2008 election to be in some way involved in aspects of the campaign (Smith 2009), social media may very well be a politician’s winning ticket. Political campaigns can take months to get off the ground, and as a result, politicians are increasingly turning to social media and bypassing reporters to Tweet or Post their message to social media.

Think back to the popular video below ‘Crush On Obama’ – what message does this send to the public? Could you envision such a video made about Kevin Rudd or Tony Abbot? Umm…. probably not! They just don’t portray themselves in this image. 

I think the reason a lot of people like Barack Obama is because he sends out the message that he is cool and liked by many.

Kevin Rudd’s and Tony Abbot’s Twitter, however, show two very different levels of engagement with Kevin Rudd having 1.56 M followers and Tony Abbot 647 K. I think this goes back to the point made before of the message.  Politicians are leveraging social media to send out verbal and visual messages as a strategy for representing themselves as a leader. Kevin Rudd’s strategy to winning public favour is by being fun and having a good time, remember his selfie strategy, who wouldn't want a president that's fun to be around right? Tony Abbot, however, has a lot less of a following then Kevin Rudd and I would say his strategy to winning the public favour is to take a more serious approach about matters of the country, but perhaps not a lot of people can take his seriousness at 6am in the morning.

So how effective is social media as a political campaign strategy for greater civic or political participation? I would say very effective! Social media helps people to feel their participation is important in the election process. And while it’s unlikely a large number of Twitter followers suggests that an election is going to be won or lost (Jericho 2012, p.263), it will support in delivering a campaign message during election time.

References

Barely Political 2007, Crush On Obama, 13 June, viewed 10 December 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU>.

Dancing Barack Obama 2018 [IMAGE], GIFER, GIFER, viewed 10 December 2018, <https://gifer.com/en/3VlO>.

Donald Trump's Tweet 2018 [IMAGE], Donald Trump’s Noteworthy Tweets, Newsday.com, viewed 10 December 2018, <https://www.newsday.com/news/nation/donald-trump-s-noteworthy-tweets-as-president-1.12632966>.

Jericho, G 2012, 'How many votes are there on Twitter?', in The Rise of the Fifth Estate, Scribe, Victoria, Australia.

Kahne, J & Bowyer, B 2018, ‘The Political Significance of Social Media Activity and Social Networks’, Political Communication, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 470-493, viewed 10 December 2018, <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10584609.2018.1426662>.

Perrin, A 2015, Social Media Usage: 2005-2015, viewed 10 December 2018, <http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/08/social-networking-usage-2005-2015/>.

Smith, A 2009, The Internet's Role in Campaign 2008, viewed 10 December 2018, <http://www.pewinternet.org/2009/04/15/the-internets-role-in-campaign-2008/>.