This is a portion of a truly insightful article.
Barack Obama and the Facebook Election - US News and World Report:
"We know that Obama's landmark victory was due, in part, to a groundswell of support among young Americans. Early in his campaign, political pollsters were observing that Obama was 'rocking the youth vote.' This proved true: Exit polls revealed that Obama had won nearly 70 percent of the vote among Americans under age 25—the highest percentage since U.S. exit polling began in 1976. Obama enjoyed a groundswell of support among, for lack of a better term, the Facebook generation. He will be the first occupant of the White House to have won a presidential election on the Web.
This election was the first in which all candidates—presidential and congressional—attempted to connect directly with American voters via online social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. It has even been called the 'Facebook election.' It is no coincidence that one of Obama's key strategists was 24-year-old Chris Hughes, a Facebook cofounder. It was Hughes who masterminded the Obama campaign's highly effective Web blitzkrieg—everything from social networking sites to podcasting and mobile messaging. Facebook was not unaware of its suddenly powerful role in American electoral politics. During the presidential campaign, the site launched its own forum to encourage online debates about issues. Facebook also teamed up with ABC for election coverage and political forums. And CNN teamed up with YouTube to hold presidential debates".
Source:
Barack Obama and the Facebook Election. Fraser, Matthew and Dutta, Soumitra. November 19, 2008. Retrieved October 8, 2009.
The majority of youth were very involved in the presidential election. The voice of the younger generation was louder than I have ever heard it, more passionate and radical than ever previously experienced. To think of it, I remember a quote I had once read:
"We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future". ~Franklin D. Roosevelt
The young engaged in deciding the future and stating their presence through the powerful medium, the Internet. Furthermore, Obama won the hearts of those youth. Students were blogging debates and recording themselves, ranting with excitement about the election. I believe that connections were building among the younger generation because we joined online to fight for and believe in something together that was bigger than us, yet united us. The future was changing with every keyboard tap and mouse click. The youth were helping to mold and create the future that we wanted to live in.
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I'm wondering if part of the "power of the internet" that Obama was able to tap into was a result of the stark contrast between him and Bush, in terms of being tech-savvy.
ReplyDeleteConsider this: Bush had virtually no legitimate technological presence (barring the normal, halfhearted websites). Therefore, even though he never said so, he was the anti-youth, or at the very least, the anti-techie. Obama's ease at utilizing the internet made him all the more savvy -- not only technologically, but politically as well.
Quite refreshing after 8 years of, well... "un-savvyness".
Thanks Dave! I completely agree! The youth today are more technological than ever. By the powerful internet's ability to connect and network its users, the youth had the advantage of uniting their similar political opinion and achieve more of an impact.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention, Obama's understanding of this concept (opposed to previous president, Bush) changed the face of the election. Thank you for your post!
I believe that our generation uses technology to our advantage more than ever before. I think that over the years and by the time it is the next election even more advances will be made for campaigning. I think it is a great tool and will open up many doors to get more involved in voting and becoming aware on what is going on in our world.
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