Political campaigns are organized efforts that seek to influence the decision making process inside a country. Political campaigns in democracies mostly refer to the electoral process where representatives are chosen by the society (Unknown).
How political campaigns have been changed through the years will be clarified in the following. In the past, political candidates were focusing mainly on TV ads to get their political message out. But TV ads are an expensive medium because not only did the candidates have to pay for the crew, the producing and the editing of the ad, they also had to spend a lot on money on broadcasting this ad on TV.
In addition politicians have previously focused almost exclusively on election posters and campaign events, political parties had to rethink their campaign strategy in recent years and integrate additional media platforms due to the innovation of social media. But the old fashioned way of political campaigning has not disappeared completely. Political candidates are still including television ads that broadcast on TV and political posters in their campaign strategy, but they are also increased the number of ads published on their own Facebook pages or YouTube channels. This is because this way of advertising is less expensive and online ads are also less expensive in the production. Posting their messages on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or any other social media platforms is for free, and a wider range of people have access to it. Before social media became this huge influence in the life of the society politicians focused mainly on newspapers, televisions and radio during their election campaign. It was their only possibility to address the general public. They travelled through the country, visited small towns, gave speeches and attended meetings with the society to address a wide public. Today visits to small towns are still a common part of election campaign because as in the past for voters the authenticity is one of the main reasons for voting for a candidate.
Campaign posters, campaign events, TV broadcasts – they nowadays have very little effect on the group of those uninterested in politics, which is often millions of people. Crucial to their orientation in the political landscape are exchanges with others, with friends or colleagues. Parties had to take this into account and understood that they have to mobilize a large range of potential voters – they must offer their potential voters a discussion platform on the Internet to exchange their views, ideas and questions about political matters.
Over the years the importance of social media and the media in general has rapidly grown especially because it provides new ways to organize the participation of the citizens in political life. Political candidates have increased their presence on social media platforms recently, because it allows them to post news about their campaign program, videos, updates for upcoming visits and so on, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They are not restricted by airing dates, time slots and TV producers.
Nowadays without the Internet, a party cannot win the elections. Especially for young people, the web has become the number one information medium in recent years and it has surpassed television and daily newspapers. In addition blogs and online social networks are becoming increasingly important for the political culture because they allow a direct interaction between citizens and politicians. Parties have undoubtedly learned from the election campaign of Barack Obama how important social platforms like Facebook and Twitter are during the election campaign (EPRSAuthor, 2014). Through social media platforms the society gets the opportunity to get in contact with the politicians directly, for example through his or her Facebook or Twitter page. The information exchange is faster, easier and direct. On the other hand it is easier for politician’s to reach the potential voters directly and they can also target a specific matter directly.
New media has reshaped the methods and possibilities in the political communication process by influencing the ways politicians are not interacting with society and vice versa. But also the contact with the opponents has become easier with social media ‘ they can interact with each other or with each other’s campaign more easily and faster. For instance, criticizing each other: in the past that was mainly only possible through newspapers or in a TV duel where the candidates debated with each other to try to make the other candidate look bad. Utilizing social media they can debate more easily through social media platforms. But the old media should not be forgotten, because television and print media still act as the most important and most influential platform in political campaigns (EPRSAuthor, 2014).
The most famous example of the usage of social media during an election campaign is probably the 2008 election campaign and Barack Obama, who revolutionized campaigning through social media.
In 2007, Barack Obama was a little-known senator from Illinois that was running for President for the Democrat Party. And on the 4th of November 2008, Barack Obama was the first African American winning the presidential elections against the Republican candidate John McCain. He then became the 44th president of the United States of America. But not only was Barack Obama the first African American president of the United States of America, he was also the first presidential candidate to use effectively social media as his main campaign strategy. Obama dominated the social media because he and his team understood how media networks work. The real power of social media platforms is not the number of posts or Tweets but the users engaging in political matters.
The golden rule of social media marketing is to put the product, in this case, Barack Obama himself out there the be recognized and known by the public. To do so, there are different possibilities: becoming an active blogger or tweeter and establishing a strong presence on Facebook and Twitter. And this is exactly what Obama and his team have done for his political campaign. They implemented social networking in their strategy. His activity on social media platforms gives him the chance to get his message out there across several media platforms.
The major success for the victory is the fact that the campaign of Obama used social media for their electoral campaign and its strategy. In addition to lowering costs the other idea behind social media was that Obama’s campaign helpers understood the need of political information exchange with the potential voters (Aaker). Obama has taken campaigning into a new digital age by embracing social media platforms and using them as a central platform of his presidential campaign. He and his team of PR agents turned social media into a major force for his campaign (Aaker). With this, the Obama campaign wanted to integrate volunteers by giving them the feeling that they could make a difference by participating in political life through social media. They did not only use it to get in contact with volunteers and everyday citizens that are interested in engaging in political matters through e-mail, text messaging and online video. The Obama campaign had millions of supporters on social network platforms. These platforms include the Barack Obama website, a Facebook page, Twitter, MySpace and a YouTube channel. In November 2008, Barack Obama had around 2.5 million supporters on Facebook, almost four times as much as McCain. In addition he had 115,000 followers on Twitter – more than 23 times more than McCain had. Furthermore there were 50 million viewers watching Obama’s YouTube channel with related campaign videos (Aaker).
The Obama team used several media platforms to support his campaign. These are discussed in more detail below.
Firstly: barackobama.com
This is Barack Obama’s official website and it is run by Chris Hughes (he is one of the co-founders of Facebook) (McGirt, 2009). On the website, members and visitors were able to create blogs and form groups and post photos. But the members are asked to publish a profile with just one picture. During the 2008 campaign, more than 2 million accounts were created on the website, which shows the strong Internet presence of potential voters from the Obama camp. The groups formed on the website also organized events and get-togethers with other supporters of the Obama campaign (Brandon, 2008). Furthermore, millions of Dollars have been raised to support the Obama campaign through the website.
Secondly: Facebook
The election in 2008 was even called the ‘Facebook election’ because of its immense use by the politicians during the campaign. And for Obama, Chris Hughes (Facebook co-founder) was a key strategist in his team. It was Hughes who planned Obama’s campaign based on media technologies ‘ from a social network site to a YouTube channel to podcast videos. In contrast to normal Facebook users, Obama stuck to a minimal use of Facebook himself – his personal profile just featured the motto of his campaign, his favorite musicians and his hobbies. (US News, 2008). To promote his bespoke Facebook page, the Obama campaign spent several thousands of dollars on it. Over time, the Obama team created a lot more Facebook accounts, including one called ‘Barack and Michelle Obama’ or several focusing on specific demographic areas (Aaker). But not only did Obama use Facebook as a weapon in the election campaign process. The founders of Facebook have not been unaware of the powerful role Facebook holds in the electoral politics. Because of this, several news agencies and social media platforms teamed up to cover the progress of the elections – for example: Facebook teamed up with the ABC for election coverage, and in addition, CNN teamed up with YouTube (US News, 2008).
Thirdly: Twitter
@BarackObama is the official Twitter account of the current President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. It was created as part of his new media campaign strategy. In addition to his twitter account the President also uses the Twitter account of the White House (@WhiteHouse) for his activities as President. The @BarackObama account count more than 15million followers and had more than 4000 tweets posted. Furthermore in 2011, Barack Obama was 3rd to achieve more than 10million followers (Counter). The president had used the Twitter platform to promote his campaign and to achieve support for his legislation process. Other ways Obama used Twitter include responding to matters asked or posted by the public and communicating with his potential voters (EPRSAuthor, 2014). Twitter even became so important in the Obama campaign that during speeches or public forums, Obama answers questions tweeted by other users on his Twitter account. (Peter, 2012)
To sum up: Twitter has become one of the most essential tools for political campaigns. But the impact of the use of Twitter on elections is only on piece of an immense media platform usage.
Fourthly: YouTube
Back in the days when presidential candidates wanted to get a message out to the wide public they turned to the old medium, the television. In 2012 the Obama campaign added one platform to their already existing social media platform ‘ a YouTube channel. And when President Obama and his campaign teams prepared their election strategy they implemented a documentary on the presidents YouTube channel. This documentary about the goals of the campaign appeared on the YouTube platform and enabled Obama to get his message across in a passive way. This way, it allowed viewer to copy and paste the link of the video and send it to friends, family, and political interested, and also was this video posted Facebook pages. And it offers candidates a way to disseminate their campaign goals into online communities where people share and discuss matters. The video got spread everywhere in a short time. Videos give the voters the opportunity to watch them again and again and also enable Obama to seek the support from the voters directly. But even if YouTube has a huge impact on electoral campaigns, television will remain a dominant platform for campaigns to reach the public (Peter, 2012).
To sum up the popularity of YouTube channels offer the public complete access to the speeches made by the candidate and not just an edited version of the speech chosen by the television producers. Barack Obama has done a great job of making sure he has a strong presence on his YouTube channel including keeping the channel updated with speeches and insights into the political work.
After this example of a campaign and a politician that have changed election campaigns, it is questionable if politicians’ personalities are more important than the ideas and believes they stand for.
Winning or losing? Election campaigns are only about it. Parties want to influence the society to gain the most possible votes in the end. But is political campaigning with social media really about the campaign and their ideas or is it focusing more on the politician’s personality?
A lot of politicians use Facebook pages to connect with their voters and supporters, but they also use it as a private channel for direct communication. If we move back to the example of Barack Obama it can be clearly stated that he is not only using his social media platforms for political matters. He also opens up to the society, about which music he likes to listen, what his favorite food is, what his hobbies are and which his favorite sports team is and it is a smart move (Facebook). People are interested in the person they vote as their Head of State or Head of Government. The President is usually an unapproachable person. With Obama however, because society has access to his private information (for instance his favorite musician), the public can relate to him better. Maybe they listen to the same music, and this gives a feeling of connectedness with the President. Politicians are required to have an extensive public profile. It is comparable to a product-consumer relationship ‘ the product is the politician and the consumers are the people. The politician (product) has to fulfill the needs of the society (consumers). If the society is not satisfied with the politician he will loose his power.
In my opinion politics have changed a lot in general through social media platforms. It is less about what a party or politician stands for, it is now more important what kind of personality a politician has. I cannot say if that has changed because of new media technologies or if it is now more visible, because of the 24/7 surrounding, than before.
Summing up, there is a widespread agreement that political campaigns have changed over the past decades. In particularly, the role of political parties and their strategies which nowadays mainly rather include social media platforms than the use of posters and television ads. There are many arguing that the use of social media platforms for campaigning has alienated the traditional norms of electoral campaigns.
Over the past few years, politicians worldwide have increasingly tried to establish direct relationships with citizens by using social media platforms. These social media platforms can be used for direct political messages for the society. Of course it has to be said that not all citizens of a society have access to social media platforms and some may not want to have this access. This means that only a specific part of society has access to them, the others are excluded from political life. Politicians have to take this into account and include the old fashioned way of visiting TV shows and televised debates. Furthermore, social media is not able to replace the face-to-face contact with politicians that citizens are able to experience on so called campaign meetings. The face-to-face contact is still the most powerful weapon of political campaigns.
It is not useful to only focus on social media platforms. They can be a additional tool, especially to get in contact with the younger part of society because they are using social media platforms more often than the older generation, but if there is anything that recent elections have proven, it is that getting in direct contact with the voters is not only important, it is essential for a successful election. In the past couple of years, the number of people using social media websites has risen. Besides posting about their daily habits, publications about their political views have increased. From Twitter over Facebook to YouTube videos, social media has become one of the most powerful tools for politicians and supporters in political campaigns. It has also become popular among potential voters because they can reach out to the candidate directly and ask critical question directly. It offers a two-way communication. Barack Obama has proven, that the use of social media plays an important role and is since then even unthinkable in the way political campaigns are run (Peter, 2012). Many politicians all over the world have followed that strategy in recent years for political campaigns as well as for the political life in general.
Social media platforms create a new way of political dialogue ‘ it reduces the power of mass media in political processes and focuses more on peer-to-peer contact with potential voters. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube channels offer the opportunity to get information directly from the politicians or the political party than from censored mass media platforms. Individual interactions are more in the focus of politicians using social media as a platform to target a specific group. These interactions are not only focusing on the connection between politicians and society but also inside the society – from individual to individual. The interactions between individuals are based on demographics, interests or political belonging. The connection with family, friends and colleagues about a shared political issue are also a main focus of the political campaigns, because that means that people are engaged in political matters. All in all it can be said that social media platforms have renewed and replaced the way political campaigns are run in the 21st century.
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