The role of Facebook in American Political Campaigns
Facebook is one of the most common social media platforms in the current world. The commonness of this platform enables it to connect more individuals than other rival platforms like Twitter and WhatsApp. Facebook is a relatively simple platform; owing to its simplicity, many devices on different operating systems can effectively support the platform (Miller, 2017). Additionally, unlike other platforms which might be expensive to install and run, Facebook is relatively cheap to run and most gadgets such as cellphones, iPads, and laptops are sold with Facebook as one of the pre-installed applications. Additionally, Facebook as a social media communication platform has kept expanding and improving. Apart from offering a public timeline where a user can post their pictures, their emotions or their opinions on various issues, these platform provides an efficient messaging and calling service. Thus, a user can utilize this platform to communicate to other users in private conversations or to express their opinions to the public; this public usually consists of a big number of their friends on the platform. The platform allows friends to share a post by another user of their timelines and thus spread the message further. Further, the largest number of Facebook users are young individuals who are excited about many things.
Owing to a large number of users and the frequency and ease of using Facebook, many companies and political parties or personnel use it to push their agenda (Bennett, 2012). The political class in America have used Facebook with various levels of success to spread their agenda in past times. Facebook, as a social media platform whose major users are politically and active youth, has a great potential to create and manipulate social worlds of the American political parties – Democrats and Republican.
Reflecting on the works of Brown and Duguid (1996), social media posts just like books or journals are means of passing information. However, since social media posts are visible to a wider number of people and in a shorter time when compared to a book or a journal, social media, a social media post on Facebook, for instance, is more effective in fostering the formation of an imaginable community. In political realms, a Facebook post is likely to reach many supporters of a certain political party. Moreover, the post can effectively attract individuals to a certain political party or cause other individuals to ditch a party they have prior preferred.
In recent America, the impact of social media, and especially social media on the Obama campaign of 2008 and is important evidence of the strong influence that social media can have on political outcomes. One of the strategies of the Democratic Party was to launch a Facebook campaign. Using Facebook, the party managed to reach several million youths. The high amount of money that the party raised for the campaign epitomizes the success of the Facebook strategy (Cogburn & Espinoza-Vasquez, 2011). The story of the Tahir square protests in Egypt further proves the ability of Facebook to form a media community (Tufekci & Wilson, 2012). The organizers of the protests marshaled support via a Facebook page. A large number of protesters in the square demonstrated the effectiveness of the marshaling strategy utilized by the organizers.
Topic Sentences
More than three-quarters of all social media users have a Facebook account; a majority of these actively utilize their social media accounts.
Facebook and other social media effectively create and maintain imaginable communities by simply spreading information and uniting individuals with a similar goal
The political class have utilized Facebook with various outcomes in the past
Facebook provides a good unedited and uncontrolled platform for spread of propaganda which can help a political entity to gain supporters to scatter their opponents’ supporters
The case of Obama 2008 campaign confirms the effectiveness of Facebook in mass mobilization
The case of the Tahir Square protests in Egypt also demonstrates the effectiveness of social media campaigns in marshaling masses
Conclusion
References
Bennett, W. L. (2012). The personalization of politics: Political identity, social media, and changing patterns of participation. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 644(1), 20-39. DOI: 10.1177/0002716212451428
Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (1996). The social life of documents; introduction by Esther Dyson. First monday, 1(1).
Claire Cain Miller. (2017, July 3). How Obama’s Internet Campaign Changed Politics. Retrieved from https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/how-obamas-internet-campaign-changed-politics/
Cogburn, D. L., & Espinoza-Vasquez, F. K. (2011). From networked nominee to networked nation: Examining the impact of Web 2.0 and social media on political participation and civic engagement in the 2008 Obama campaign. Journal of Political Marketing, 10(1-2), 189-213.
Tufekci, Z., & Wilson, C. (2012). Social media and the decision to participate in political protest: Observations from Tahrir Square. Journal of Communication, 62(2), 363-379. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01629.x
