Media Convergence and Interactivity Among Politics

Social media and politics play an important role for political candidates. It is crucial for a candidate to have media convergence. Certain social site, likes Twitter and Facebook, are key factors in gaining attention for the candidates. All of the social websites, newspaper, magazines, and any other media outlet come together to support or rally for one cause, recently this being the political elections. One particular article summarizes how social media dominates elections. “On Twitter, Mitt Romney has about 376,000 followers, Newt Gingrich has more than 1.4 million followers, Rick Santorum has close to 165,000 followers and Ron Paul has about 27,500 followers. They are all dwarfed by President Obama, who dominates the Twitterverse with more than 13 million followers. Of the GOP candidates on Facebook, Romney last had about 1.5 million likes, Gingrich has 295,979 likes, Santorum has 177,829 likes and Paul with 908,056 likes. But again, President Obama surpasses all the GOP candidates with 25.5 million likes.” Utilizing the power of the social networks is extremely important for politicians gaining an advantage in the race.

Media interactivity and convergence are closely related. Interactivity involves a close relationship between the user and the source. In this case, we are talking about the politicians and their social media sites. In one article, the author studies President Obama’s use of social media in his 2008 election. President Obama took 5 major steps to get his audience to listen to him. “1. Build his political brand 2. Create MyBarackObama.com 3. Present across multiple social media sites 4. Donations 5. Encourage participation.” The President needed to be up to date on all of his sites and encourage his audiences to check out his social media. Without their support, then the President may have not won the election. “The effectiveness of Obama’s online strategy to engage and mobilize people can be seen in some of the numbers:

•                6.5 million online donations

•                $600+ million campaign funds raised, most of it online

•                13 million email addresses

•                1 billion email sent

•                2 million profiles on MyBarackObama.com

•                200,000 offline events planned

•                400,000 blog posts written

•                35,000 volunteer groups created”


Social media is one of the most influential parts of a political election. “For anyone doubting
that a social media message is fleeting, 94 percent of social media users of voting age
watched a political message in its entirety on a social media site…” The number of social
media sites used for political elections is outstanding. As I said earlier, without this kind of
technology who know where we would be in the political spectrum of the world.

Sources:

• Are GOP Candidates falling behind on Social Media? -ABC News
• The Evolving Use of Social Media for Political Campaigns -socialmediatoday

• Election 2012: How Social Media Will Convert Followers into Voters -pcmag.com