Politicians are evolving their methods to reach out to their masses via the Internet. The 2008 U.S. presidential campaign depicted Obama's campaign's use of Facebook,You Tube and Twitter which had helped his victory. The election of Barack Obama as president was in parallel to John Kennedy's election in which Kennedy's has used television that forever changed politics. For Mr. Obama, it was the Internet. One of the unique features of The Obama campaign was the use of social networking sites like My Space and Facebook. Facebook is more popular among kids these days and thus alot of college students had joined Obama's Facebook site increasing his popularity among the young people. He has over 1.5 million friends on My Space and Facebook, and he currently has over 45,000 followers on Twitter.
It is no longer a one way system where the government hands down the laws to citizens, why not use the Internet to let citizens and organisations work together with government officials to find solutions to problem accentuating on a peer- to- peer network.
Mr Obama had also used YouTube as a medium to connect and reach out to his audiences. Most of his speeches are recorded and posted it on YouTube to create a larger community of supporters, communicate with his followers and make his campaign and the political process more transparent
Apart from using the existing social media, Obama's campaign had also launched its own web page entitled MyBarackObama.com ( http://www.barackobama.com/) and online action groups to fight against false rumours about Obama's personal background and tax policies. Two million profiles were created on Obama's own social network with 200,000 offline events planned where campaign donors can have dinner with Obama , 400,000 blog posts and more than 35,000 volunteer groups were created
Mr Obama had a balanced approach towards his campaign. He not only used social media as means of reaching out to his audience but had also used the traditional face to face approach. The campaign was filled with creativity and enthusiasm which manifested through the YouTube videos, Facebook page and even organizing events outside the barriers of social media such as dinners with the public to get to know their perceptions.
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