Political Campaigns

Political campaigns are organized efforts that seek to influence the decision making
process inside a country. Political campaigns in democracies mostly refer to the
electoral process where representatives are chosen by the society (Unknown).
How political campaigns have been changed through the years will be clarified in the
following. In the past, political candidates were focusing mainly on TV ads to get
their political message out. But TV ads are an expensive medium because not only
did the candidates have to pay for the crew, the producing and the editing of the ad,
they also had to spend a lot on money on broadcasting this ad on TV.
In addition politicians have previously focused almost exclusively on election
posters and campaign events, political parties had to rethink their campaign
strategy in recent years and integrate additional media platforms due to the
innovation of social media. But the old fashioned way of political campaigning has
not disappeared completely. Political candidates are still including television ads
that broadcast on TV and political posters in their campaign strategy, but they are
also increased the number of ads published on their own Facebook pages or
YouTube channels. This is because this way of advertising is less expensive and
online ads are also less expensive in the production. Posting their messages on
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or any other social media platforms is for free, and a
wider range of people have access to it. Before social media became this huge
influence in the life of the society politicians focused mainly on newspapers,
televisions and radio during their election campaign. It was their only possibility to
address the general public. They travelled through the country, visited small towns,
gave speeches and attended meetings with the society to address a wide public.
Today visits to small towns are still a common part of election campaign because as
in the past for voters the authenticity is one of the main reasons for voting for a
candidate.
Campaign posters, campaign events, TV broadcasts - they nowadays have very little
effect on the group of those uninterested in politics, which is often millions of
people. Crucial to their orientation in the political landscape are exchanges with
others, with friends or colleagues. Parties had to take this into account and
understood that they have to mobilize a large range of potential voters - they must
offer their potential voters a discussion platform on the Internet to exchange their
views, ideas and questions about political matters.
Over the years the importance of social media and the media in general has rapidly
grown especially because it provides new ways to organize the participation of the
citizens in political life. Political candidates have increased their presence on social
media platforms recently, because it allows them to post news about their campaign
program, videos, updates for upcoming visits and so on, 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week. They are not restricted by airing dates, time slots and TV producers.
Nowadays without the Internet, a party cannot win the elections. Especially for
young people, the web has become the number one information medium in recent
years and it has surpassed television and daily newspapers. In addition blogs and
online social networks are becoming increasingly important for the political culture
because they allow a direct interaction between citizens and politicians. Parties
have undoubtedly learned from the election campaign of Barack Obama how
important social platforms like Facebook and Twitter are during the election
campaign (EPRSAuthor, 2014). Through social media platforms the society gets the
opportunity to get in contact with the politicians directly, for example through his or
her Facebook or Twitter page. The information exchange is faster, easier and direct.
On the other hand it is easier for politician's to reach the potential voters directly
and they can also target a specific matter directly.
New media has reshaped the methods and possibilities in the political
communication process by influencing the ways politicians are not interacting with
society and vice versa. But also the contact with the opponents has become easier
with social media ' they can interact with each other or with each other's campaign
more easily and faster. For instance, criticizing each other: in the past that was
mainly only possible through newspapers or in a TV duel where the candidates
debated with each other to try to make the other candidate look bad. Utilizing social
media they can debate more easily through social media platforms. But the old
media should not be forgotten, because television and print media still act as the
most important and most influential platform in political campaigns (EPRSAuthor,
2014).

The most famous example of the usage of social media during an election campaign
is probably the 2008 election campaign and Barack Obama, who revolutionized
campaigning through social media.
In 2007, Barack Obama was a little-known senator from Illinois that was running for
President for the Democrat Party. And on the 4th of November 2008, Barack Obama
was the first African American winning the presidential elections against the
Republican candidate John McCain. He then became the 44th president of the United
States of America. But not only was Barack Obama the first African American
president of the United States of America, he was also the first presidential
candidate to use effectively social media as his main campaign strategy. Obama
dominated the social media because he and his team understood how media
networks work. The real power of social media platforms is not the number of posts
or Tweets but the users engaging in political matters.
The golden rule of social media marketing is to put the product, in this case, Barack
Obama himself out there the be recognized and known by the public. To do so, there
are different possibilities: becoming an active blogger or tweeter and establishing a
strong presence on Facebook and Twitter. And this is exactly what Obama and his
team have done for his political campaign. They implemented social networking in
their strategy. His activity on social media platforms gives him the chance to get his
message out there across several media platforms.
The major success for the victory is the fact that the campaign of Obama used social
media for their electoral campaign and its strategy. In addition to lowering costs the
other idea behind social media was that Obama's campaign helpers understood the
need of political information exchange with the potential voters (Aaker). Obama has
taken campaigning into a new digital age by embracing social media platforms and
using them as a central platform of his presidential campaign. He and his team of PR
agents turned social media into a major force for his campaign (Aaker). With this, the
Obama campaign wanted to integrate volunteers by giving them the feeling that they
could make a difference by participating in political life through social media. They
did not only use it to get in contact with volunteers and everyday citizens that are
interested in engaging in political matters through e-mail, text messaging and online
video. The Obama campaign had millions of supporters on social network platforms.
These platforms include the Barack Obama website, a Facebook page, Twitter,
MySpace and a YouTube channel. In November 2008, Barack Obama had around 2.5
million supporters on Facebook, almost four times as much as McCain. In addition he
had 115,000 followers on Twitter - more than 23 times more than McCain had.
Furthermore there were 50 million viewers watching Obama's YouTube channel with
related campaign videos (Aaker).
The Obama team used several media platforms to support his campaign. These are
discussed in more detail below.
Firstly: barackobama.com
This is Barack Obama's official website and it is run by Chris Hughes (he is one of
the co-founders of Facebook) (McGirt, 2009). On the website, members and visitors
were able to create blogs and form groups and post photos. But the members are
asked to publish a profile with just one picture. During the 2008 campaign, more than
2 million accounts were created on the website, which shows the strong Internet
presence of potential voters from the Obama camp. The groups formed on the
website also organized events and get-togethers with other supporters of the Obama
campaign (Brandon, 2008). Furthermore, millions of Dollars have been raised to
support the Obama campaign through the website.
Secondly: Facebook
The election in 2008 was even called the 'Facebook election' because of its immense
use by the politicians during the campaign. And for Obama, Chris Hughes (Facebook
co-founder) was a key strategist in his team. It was Hughes who planned Obama's
campaign based on media technologies ' from a social network site to a YouTube
channel to podcast videos. In contrast to normal Facebook users, Obama stuck to a
minimal use of Facebook himself - his personal profile just featured the motto of his
campaign, his favorite musicians and his hobbies. (US News, 2008). To promote his
bespoke Facebook page, the Obama campaign spent several thousands of dollars on
it. Over time, the Obama team created a lot more Facebook accounts, including one
called 'Barack and Michelle Obama' or several focusing on specific demographic
areas (Aaker). But not only did Obama use Facebook as a weapon in the election
campaign process. The founders of Facebook have not been unaware of the powerful
role Facebook holds in the electoral politics. Because of this, several news agencies
and social media platforms teamed up to cover the progress of the elections - for
example: Facebook teamed up with the ABC for election coverage, and in addition,
CNN teamed up with YouTube (US News, 2008).
Thirdly: Twitter
@BarackObama is the official Twitter account of the current President of the United
States of America, Barack Obama. It was created as part of his new media campaign
strategy. In addition to his twitter account the President also uses the Twitter
account of the White House (@WhiteHouse) for his activities as President. The
@BarackObama account count more than 15million followers and had more than
4000 tweets posted. Furthermore in 2011, Barack Obama was 3rd to achieve more
than 10million followers (Counter). The president had used the Twitter platform to
promote his campaign and to achieve support for his legislation process. Other ways
Obama used Twitter include responding to matters asked or posted by the public and
communicating with his potential voters (EPRSAuthor, 2014). Twitter even became
so important in the Obama campaign that during speeches or public forums, Obama
answers questions tweeted by other users on his Twitter account. (Peter, 2012)
To sum up: Twitter has become one of the most essential tools for political
campaigns. But the impact of the use of Twitter on elections is only on piece of an
immense media platform usage.
Fourthly: YouTube
Back in the days when presidential candidates wanted to get a message out to the
wide public they turned to the old medium, the television. In 2012 the Obama
campaign added one platform to their already existing social media platform ' a
YouTube channel. And when President Obama and his campaign teams prepared
their election strategy they implemented a documentary on the presidents YouTube
channel. This documentary about the goals of the campaign appeared on the
YouTube platform and enabled Obama to get his message across in a passive way.
This way, it allowed viewer to copy and paste the link of the video and send it to
friends, family, and political interested, and also was this video posted Facebook
pages. And it offers candidates a way to disseminate their campaign goals into
online communities where people share and discuss matters. The video got spread
everywhere in a short time. Videos give the voters the opportunity to watch them
again and again and also enable Obama to seek the support from the voters directly.
But even if YouTube has a huge impact on electoral campaigns, television will
remain a dominant platform for campaigns to reach the public (Peter, 2012).

To sum up the popularity of YouTube channels offer the public complete access to
the speeches made by the candidate and not just an edited version of the speech
chosen by the television producers. Barack Obama has done a great job of making
sure he has a strong presence on his YouTube channel including keeping the channel
updated with speeches and insights into the political work.
After this example of a campaign and a politician that have changed election
campaigns, it is questionable if politicians' personalities are more important than the
ideas and believes they stand for.
Winning or losing? Election campaigns are only about it. Parties want to influence
the society to gain the most possible votes in the end. But is political campaigning
with social media really about the campaign and their ideas or is it focusing more on
the politician's personality?
A lot of politicians use Facebook pages to connect with their voters and supporters,
but they also use it as a private channel for direct communication. If we move back
to the example of Barack Obama it can be clearly stated that he is not only using his
social media platforms for political matters. He also opens up to the society, about
which music he likes to listen, what his favorite food is, what his hobbies are and
which his favorite sports team is and it is a smart move (Facebook). People are
interested in the person they vote as their Head of State or Head of Government. The
President is usually an unapproachable person. With Obama however, because
society has access to his private information (for instance his favorite musician), the
public can relate to him better. Maybe they listen to the same music, and this gives a
feeling of connectedness with the President. Politicians are required to have an
extensive public profile. It is comparable to a product-consumer relationship ' the
product is the politician and the consumers are the people. The politician (product)
has to fulfill the needs of the society (consumers). If the society is not satisfied with
the politician he will loose his power.
In my opinion politics have changed a lot in general through social media platforms.
It is less about what a party or politician stands for, it is now more important what
kind of personality a politician has. I cannot say if that has changed because of new
media technologies or if it is now more visible, because of the 24/7 surrounding, than
before.

Summing up, there is a widespread agreement that political campaigns have

changed over the past decades. In particularly, the role of political parties and their
strategies which nowadays mainly rather include social media platforms than the
use of posters and television ads. There are many arguing that the use of social
media platforms for campaigning has alienated the traditional norms of electoral
campaigns.
Over the past few years, politicians worldwide have increasingly tried to establish
direct relationships with citizens by using social media platforms. These social
media platforms can be used for direct political messages for the society. Of course
it has to be said that not all citizens of a society have access to social media
platforms and some may not want to have this access. This means that only a
specific part of society has access to them, the others are excluded from political
life. Politicians have to take this into account and include the old fashioned way of
visiting TV shows and televised debates. Furthermore, social media is not able to
replace the face-to-face contact with politicians that citizens are able to experience
on so called campaign meetings. The face-to-face contact is still the most powerful
weapon of political campaigns.
It is not useful to only focus on social media platforms. They can be a additional tool,
especially to get in contact with the younger part of society because they are using
social media platforms more often than the older generation, but if there is anything
that recent elections have proven, it is that getting in direct contact with the voters
is not only important, it is essential for a successful election. In the past couple of
years, the number of people using social media websites has risen. Besides posting
about their daily habits, publications about their political views have increased. From
Twitter over Facebook to YouTube videos, social media has become one of the most
powerful tools for politicians and supporters in political campaigns. It has also
become popular among potential voters because they can reach out to the candidate
directly and ask critical question directly. It offers a two-way communication.
Barack Obama has proven, that the use of social media plays an important role and
is since then even unthinkable in the way political campaigns are run (Peter, 2012).
Many politicians all over the world have followed that strategy in recent years for
political campaigns as well as for the political life in general.
Social media platforms create a new way of political dialogue ' it reduces the power
of mass media in political processes and focuses more on peer-to-peer contact with
potential voters. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube channels offer the
opportunity to get information directly from the politicians or the political party than
from censored mass media platforms. Individual interactions are more in the focus of
politicians using social media as a platform to target a specific group. These
interactions are not only focusing on the connection between politicians and society
but also inside the society - from individual to individual. The interactions between
individuals are based on demographics, interests or political belonging. The
connection with family, friends and colleagues about a shared political issue are also
a main focus of the political campaigns, because that means that people are
engaged in political matters. All in all it can be said that social media platforms have
renewed and replaced the way political campaigns are run in the 21st century.