Week 7

This week we studied the use of social media in political elections, particularly the 2008 presidential campaign. I wasn’t really surprised by any of the information or statistics because the election wasn’t all that long ago, and I recall hearing a lot about Barack Obama’s ability to connect with younger voters through the internet. I was interested by the comment that politicians are so unreceptive to the use of technology in their campaigns. In this article from The New York Tims, Michael Cornfield (professor of political science at George Washington University ) said, "Politicians are having a hard time reconciling themselves to a medium where they can't control the message. Politics is lagging, but politics is not going to be immune to the digital revolution." I thought this was important because all of the candidates except for Obama seemed to be lagging behind in the last presidential election and I wonder how much of an impact this really had on the results.

I was also interested to read this article about the social profile of political candidates. Josh Bernoff divides internet users (or non-users) into the following categories: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators, and Inactives. I felt like this was a much better way of examining the role of social media in politics. Most other statistics just showed the rate of participation, not what that participation entailed. I think it says very different things for a person to be a Creator versus a Spectator. Both are “involved” in the political digital society, but one is a leader shaping that society while the other is a passive absorber.