The influence of technology and social media on the 2012 presidential election

The influence of technology and social media on the 2012 presidential election
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The influence of technology and social media on the 2012 presidential election
President Obama was re-elected for another term with a campaign team which was undergirded by a disciplined digital effort which strongly depended on targeted voter communications, and an innovative and wide-ranging usage of social media plus online fundraising tools. This paper is based on the book Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America by Dan Balz. In particular, this paper provides a comprehensive discussion of how one factor influenced the outcome of the 2012 United States presidential election. The factor chosen as to have largely influenced the outcome of the election is technology and social media.
It is of note that in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, people were always searching for updates and news, and even whenever news and updates were not there, the contenders wished that they were. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama both approached the online campaign with dissimilar tactics. In essence, the effect of social media in the presidential election illustrated a sharp contrast in the effectual utilization of technology and social media to draw the voters’ attention (Balz, 2013). In the year 2008, Obama’s presidential campaign was momentous and made history. It is of note that not only was he the first black president of the United States, but Obama was also the very first presidential candidate to efficiently utilize social media a key strategy for campaign. Considering how omnipresent social media is presently, one can easily forget that in the year 2008, interacting with fans on Facebook and sending out voting reminders on Twitter was a rather big deal. In 2007, when Barack Obama made his announcement, Twitter, a vital form of social media, had only just begun; iPhones were not even there yet (Rutledge, 2013). Fast forward 4 years, the media landscape had changed greatly. There was an ever-growing number of social media tools and a fast growing user base. President Obama is considered as the very first social media president.
According to Balz (2013), not only did he have the expertise on his team, but Barack Obama also had an established social media machine up and running. Given that social media is all about relationships, it is very fundamental to create and manage those connections. Even though Mitt Romney and his team also employed the technological tools such as social media in the 2012 presidential election, his team never achieved the traction that Obama and his team did. Balz (2013) states that Obama took over the social media space since his campaign team had a clear understanding of how networks function and work. The Obama campaign team demonstrated to be more effective in attracting likes or followers to his social media profiles in relation to how...