Bringing the worlds together

So it only seems fair that politics is everywhere in the world, so why not the social media world as well?

Social media has seen the increase of politics using different screens such as YouTube and Facebook to influence the political landscape. Many politicians, especially in the Western world (IE. America, Australia, Europe, etc) are using new technologies to reach out to a larger audience and also the the younger audiences that tend to use social media sites. 

The first proper use of politics in social media was in YouTube where candidates announced their goals and that they were running and copies of the press conferences and any other footage of the person was uploaded so that people could view it in order to make their decision. This allowed their messages to reach further than they had before and also to a vast difference in ages also with younger audiences becoming more interested in some politics after gaining attention on the sites that they used regularly. 

As you can see, its not just one candidate that uses social media to boost their campaign, but many now. Since the idea of using social media came together to reach larger audiences, it has continued to grow and grow in every way. From inspiring messages on YouTube, to tweets between candidates and voters, and messages and goals set on Facebook and updates about what is happening. All of this is increasing the chances of them becoming discovered more and raising the real issues. Barack Obama is the most popular and uses social media that at least half of all his campaigns and messages are through social media and gathering support for his presidency through this. 

But social media could also be used to damage the campaigns of other candidates. This occurred in part with Sarah Palin with Tina Fey appearing on Saturday Night live and impersonating Sarah Palin. Tina's impersonation of Sarah Palin created more attention and more hits than any of Palin’s YouTube clips. Many people believe that any chance Sarah Palin had of being accepted as a legitimate Vice Presidential candidate was destroyed by Fey’s performance which could then be viewed over and over on YouTube.

Social media can be great for helping campaigns rising to power, but in some ways they can also be bad. Once something is up on the Internet, its there forever. Thousands, if not millions of people will see it and they wont forget about it either. Although they can reach a larger audience, it may not always be what the original content was intended for and can easily be manipulated by the technology we have at our disposal and changed to a completely different message than what was intended.