TECHNOLOGICAL TRENDS IN POLITICS
"In May 2009, the White House announced that it was joining Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace to meet President Barack Obama's call one week earlier "to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative." The Office of New Media was established with the goal of promoting communication, transparency, and participation online. When it was discovered in September 2009 that the White House had begun collecting and storing information about people who post videos and comments on social networking sites, some people were worried about the invasion of privacy. The White House, however, stated that it was merely complying with the Presidential Records Act, which requires the preservation of all presidential records." ( PROCON )
The above paragraph from the White House shows how the United States government is trying to be proactive by encouraging civic participation by staying connected with youth, who happen to be potential votes, through the social media spaces like Facebook and Twitter. An example of such an online government Facebook page is the Department of State Facebook page. The Department of State Facebook page notifies its "friends" that internships or job opportunities are available within the Department and other related government institutions. While Facebook is creating a way to connect with voters and recruits, and creating potential democratic and civic participation, social media, as stated above is a method that the White House uses to collect information from individual citizens. While it may not be in a malicious way, rather to collect information and statistics of potential voters, it is showing the lack of privacy individuals indeed have today. Our very government understands those possibilities and is using those towards its advantage, and corporations and other online businesses are doing the same.
"Social networking sites play a key role in shaping the political landscape in an era called Web 2.0, defined as a second generation of the Internet characterized by the more dynamic way in which people interact online compared to when the Internet first gained popularity, and because of this Presidential candidates are engaging young voters through Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and other social medias" (PROCON)
And the statistics are known:
"More than a quarter of US voters younger than the age of 30 said they obtained information regarding political campaigns through social networking sites. And on Nov. 3, 2008, the day before the US presidential election, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama had 2,379,102 Facebook supporters while Republican candidate John McCain had 620,359. Obama had 833,161 MySpace friends and McCain had 217,811. Obama had 384% more Facebook supporters and 383% more MySpace friends than McCain." (PROCON)
This shows the obvious trend by young people to have Facebook accounts, and how the White House is utilizing this social media tool to its full advantage, to develop young citizen's democratic interests, promote civic participation, but also to retrieve all the data they will need to develop and cultivate young voters, who may vote in majority for the Obama Administration, and young voters who may also vote one day for future candidates of the Democratic Political Party of the United States Congress.
The Democratic Political Party of the United States has another added advantage through minority ethnic groups, their most consistent voter group, and a group that uses technology even more so than people from the other predominant ethnic groups in society. "Minority African-American and Latino adults outpace Caucasians in their use of social technologies. Among internet users, seven in ten blacks and English-speaking Latinos use social networking sites significantly higher than the six in ten whites who do so. Indeed, nearly half of black internet users go to a social networking site on a typical day. Just one third of white internet users do so on a daily basis. The same is true for status update services like Twitter where one quarter of online African-Americans use these services, significantly higher than the 15% of white internet users who do so. English speaking Latinos are right in the middle, with 20% of such internet users using these sites"(PEWINTERNET).
So naturally, minorities' high use of social technologies is to the benefit of certain political parties, and the Democratic Political Party is very keen to pick up on that and use that information to its advantage. "Minority attitudes towards social media also diverge notably from those of whites. For example, minority Americans were very active using social technologies to share information during the 2008 election campaign. And when we asked about government outreach using social media, minority respondents were significantly more likely than whites to say that this type of outreach “helps people be more informed about what government is doing” and “makes government more accessible”. They are also much more likely than whites to say it is “very important” for government agencies to post information and alerts on social networking sites" (PEWINTERNET).