Comments on: Social Media and the U.S. Elections

By: Adriana Gallegos

Adriana Gallegos — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 02:34:07 +0000

Mark,

I do agree with you that we don’t know if the video affected either McCain or Obama, but it seems like there wasn’t much coverage about the Wright video during the presidential campaign, there was more coverage on it during the primaries.

By: Carol

Carol — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:23:27 +0000

I hate to sound repetative, but I do agree with many of you stating that social media allowed for the younger demographics to get more involved by being able to access the information. The younger demogeaphic is defenitely more involved with social media compared to print media. As Mike and Adriana have mentioned it was not the determining factor. As Mike also stated were different determining factors that influenfed people’s decision. Some of the reasons maybe the result that this election had a large turnout of voters including first time voters. Both sides of the isle felt very strongly about either candidate. I, like others also recieved the update via email. Both candidates reached out like never before through different venues. What social media did do was to create awareness and involvement of the public to become more proactive in getting their candidate elected.

By: Mark Story

Mark Story — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:06:47 +0000

Good comments, Joe.

I’m glad you pointed out that an “Internet election” is not trnasferrable to the population as a whole because a) not everyone has Internet access and b) those who do, while they tend to be more politically active, do not always fit that profile.

I completely agree with what pretty much everyone is saying — and that is, in many ways, we have just scratched the surface of social media and elections.

By: Joe O.

Joe O. — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:48:14 +0000

This election was definitely an INTRODUCTION to what an online campaign looks like, but wasn’t, at all, an all-out online election. I think, in 2008, we’ve only dipped one foot in the pool of online campaigning. Years from now, it’ll be interesting to see how far we’ve taken this. Chip was right in that the entire electorate was not nearly represented in their activity online. So, determining who’s ahead by facebook group members, friends, or youtube views can be misleading. Since the internet is still fairly new to society (15 yrs or so since AOL ruled the world?), young people are probably the one’s who use it more frequently as an everyday source; working or tech savvy older adults use it too, but that is not the norm. Neilsen says 75% of youtube visitors are between the ages of 12-24! Obama won the young vote early on so I believe it is natural that he saw more buzz in the social media realm. Where there are young supporters (or avid internet users) there will be a larger online showing. Ron Paul had a huge online presence, but I’m sure these numbers don’t come close to the actual number of votes he received. Until my generation grows old and we’re at the point where everyone uses the web as an everyday source of information, it’ll be hard to gauge popularity by these types of web figures.

However, some key things did happen online this election year that should stick. Like Mike said, fund raising. This brought an enormous amount of participation (and $$$) from citizens mainly because it was so quick and easy. Also, the online dialogue between the candidates was fantastic. The Youtube debates are a perfect example of this. I think 2008 was a nice introduction to online campaigns, but far from what it could/will be.

By: Anca Bilegan

Anca Bilegan — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:29:39 +0000

I think Chip Griffin was right when he said that only a troubled person commits suicide, regardless the culture.
The Korean cultural emphasis on “saving face” may have played an important role in Choi Jin Sil’s decision, but unless she had other serious issues, I doubt that she would have committed suicide.
Vilfredo Pareto said “Give me a fruitful error at any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself”. The thousands of vicious cyber attacks on Choi reflect how people love to gossip and they don’t bother to check if they have the facts or if they have just rumors, as long as the topic is interesting enough.
Celebrities will always have to deal with gossips and they could try to mitigate the harmful stories by being the first to talk about it when they are somehow related to those stories. As Alan Kay said “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”. Choi was probably friends with the down-on-his-luck actor whose suicide was blamed on her. I’m not saying she could have anticipated that she was to be blamed for his death, but she could have predicted that people would link her somehow to the actor. If she had posted her thoughts and regret on his death, she would have been ahead of the rumors that made her responsible for the actor’s pass away and probably there would have been less people to give attention to the rumors posted by the employee at the Seoul securities house. My point is that meaningful online presence has become a necessity.