Barack Obama has been re-elected for another four years as President of the United States. Digital media had a huge impact on this election and the way candidates were able to spread their campaigns. Obama and Romney both had their own Twitters and regardless of whether the authors of the tweets were actually the candidates themselves, the political tweets gained much attention with Obama boasting 22 million followers and Romney holding one million.
News is being conducted and gathered in new ways that politicians in this race were never prepared for. Every public moment of the campaign was constantly being photographed, filmed, tweeted and status updated.
The days of candidates being able to deny something they said no longer exists because anyone can use Google and check facts on their own or bring up the video where the comment was made. Romney seemed to be the victim of most of these digital media instances. His 47 percent speech debacle was a prime example of candidates always needing to be on their toes and promoting themselves as if the whole country was watching.
In order to embrace this public scrutiny, candidates have had to become more public figures than they are political candidates. Before Obama became president, a sitting president had never appeared to promote themselves on a talk show or comedy show. This put Obama at an advantage, as he was used to the constant watch of digital media, allowing him to utilize it in his favor. Late night shows and comedy shows get more views than straight news shows, so it would make sense for candidates to take advantage of these views.
Viral moments are also something that has never been an issue in campaigns before this year. A list was made by visiblemeasures.com that showed the most viral moments of this election determined by the number of times videos of these moments were viewed online. The list cites Romney vs. Big Bird as the most viral moment of this election with “binders full of women” coming in third. This comment made by Romney that he would cut funding to PBS (and essentially cut shows like Sesame Street) caused uproar of Internet memes and jokes pinning Big Bird against Romney. Even Saturday Night Live joined in and brought Big Bird onto the Weekend Update to have his say about the attention.
This constant spotlight on candidates at all times will revolutionize elections in the future, either making candidates more truthful or causing them to be better actors and able to play the public with their image.
As many, if not all of you, have found out by now, Facebook is the new main medium to express political opinions and outrage/excitement when it comes to the election. Tempers flare and the memes fly as people are quick and bold to comment on how our peers have reacted to the news of the re-election of President Obama. If it seems that your news feed has turned into a steel-cage match pinning reds against blues, take heart. In a few days everything will be back to normal and you’ll be back to reading ‘that awkward moments.’ Social media has played the biggest part in the election this year than it has ever held before and it will be interesting to see how it could even play more into future elections.
Mia Glatter can be reached at Mia.Glatter@theminaretonline.com