The Internet and It's Use in Politics - Essay Example

In May 2010, a survey observed the Republicans (who were Congress members) as reaching out to new Facebook connections at a faster rate than the Democrats. As a result, by August 2010, members of the Republic Party claimed to possess double the amount of “fans” of the Democrats on Facebook. Prior to this, Hillary Clinton, the present US Secretary of State and Paul Nelson, the Republican member of the South Dakota House of Representatives had used the YouTube and MySpace sites for their respective election campaigns.

(Bardes, Shelley,Schmidt, 192) How media sites encourage public involvement in politics The social networking sites undertake special projects to increase public participation in political issues.In January 2008, Facebook cosponsored a primary debate regarding the candidature of US Presidentship. This was the media site’s first notable political project, where one million of the site’s users participated in debate groups and were also allowed to present their own questions to the concerned candidates.

Facebook also organized debates on the implementation of the US health care bill. Though, these were not initiated for any achieving any particular objective, important insights were gained from the passionate arguments that took place regarding the bill. This ultimately paved the way to the complete transformation of the US health-care system in March 2010. The social networking sites have the young population as the majority of its members. Modern politicians have realized that they can use thesenetworking platforms to disseminate their political ideologies among the youth of the country (Bardes, Shelley,Schmidt, 192).

Social Media’s influence on Campaigning In the 20th century, political campaigns were mainly conducted on the streets with the help of posters, placards and bill boards. To reach out to a wider population, the campaigners relied on the traditional means of communication like advertising through the television, radio, phone banks, newspapers and e-mail. In contrast, political campaigns in the 21st century depend heavily on the online communication methods. Political advertising is conducted through the Internet, RSS feeds, podcasts, interactive websites, social media sites, blogs, microblogs, mobile text messages and the e-mail.

Campaigners specially utilize the platforms of YouTube, My Space, Facebook, other networking sites and micro-blogs like Twitter,to communicate their ideas to potential voters.The on-street campaigns had adequate time (days and sometimes weeks) to design advertising messages to influence the voters. After the election, the polling results also required some time to be analyzed and reported. On the other hand, the modern online campaigns operate at a phenomenal speed throughout the entire day. Election results, on field data and early voting information are received, deciphered and reported within a matter of a few hours.

The on-street campaigns could involve a limited number of participants in their election propaganda.The rest of the population was left as spectators who were only required to cast their votes on the election day. In comparison, the online communication methodsensure the involvement of a greater number of potential voters in the election campaign. People