In “The Untapped Potential of Social Media“, Natch Greyers examines the use of
social media in political campaigns. According to Greyers, the strategic use of social media sites can benefit a politician running for office. He claims, “campaigns that continue to send impersonal messages out into the new media environment are wasting their time and money, while savvier operatives are advised to develop messages targeted to the
specific interest and sensibility of potential supporters in the new media
sphere.” The author provides the example of President Obama’s campaign that
included YouTube videos and Facebook. In addition, using these outlets can help the politician to counteract any bad publicity is being spread about them.
I agree with Greyers’ view that social media can benefit a political campaign
when used to be marketed toward a specific group. This can be a good tool to
spread a campaign to a different demographic, such a younger age group that can
vote but are not informed as to the positions of the politicians. In the Obama
campaign in 2008, it seemed that Obama’s use of social media appealed to a
younger demographic that in turn voted for him. As Natch Greyers mentioned that
campaign ads on webpages, I thought of the overall debate regarding the
advertisements that take keywords from webpages to determine the ad. This can be
viewed as an invasion of privacy and might be associated as spam when one is
trying to avoid such displays, which can have a negative effect on the campaign. Greyers predicts that for the 2012 campaign, the clever politicians will use social media even more to promote their campaign. It will be interesting to see how this will affect the
outcome of the race if perhaps both politicians use this method but in different
ways.
