Why Internet Becoming an Irreplaceable Tool for Winning Elections?

Nowadays, modern technologies cover almost all areas of human life. People use them every day
for different purposes and political communication is not an exeption. In my speech, I will analyse
the importance of the Internet for political life. STOP in the framework of research study and I will
expand on the idea that these days, winning an election requires the use of internet platforms.

(In my opinion )different internet platforms can give more opportunities for different political
debates and produce more egalitarian politics, which means that not only political scientists or
experts can express their opinion publicly, but ordinary people too. Also, Internet is a comfortable
space for politicians because It links citizens worldwide and reduces communication costs. For
example, they may not spend so much money on paper advertisements or brochures while doing
digital advertisements online.

The second study1 proves a mobilization theory I wrote about in the first paragraph. This research
analyses 2008 Obama’s presidential election campaign. According to the article, Barack Obama is
the first politician who won the presidential election without the support large corporations, firms
or economic sources. The future president chose to keep in touch with voters by using Youtube
online platform. 2008 In March, Obama uploaded video with his famous speech “A more perfect
Union”, which received 1.3 million views in one day. And in August he launched his official
Obama TV channel, with more than 2,000 hours of visual documentary, personal life and campaign
information. This Obama marketing campaign was called as one of the most successful campaigns
in history.

After four years, during 2012 president elections the popularity of social networking reached
unprecedented heights. Each candidate (Obama and Romney) understood that It is necessary to use
Internet platforms for their campaigns. They tried to find and steer target audiences in a direction
that benefited them. And I believe, it can be assumed that Obama was more successful in that, then
his opponent. According to the study2, Obama had 20 million more Facebook likes, 19 million more
Twitter followers, twice as much uploaded news on his official website, and twice as much videos
on Youtube. Of course, it is not enough to win elections by having more followers in Internet,
because candidate’s personal characteristics, behaviour and ideas are also important, but Obama’s
and Romney’s example shows that success in virtual media brings more votes.

In conclusion, I can say that the importance of technology will only grow, so politicians, who
increasingly invest in internet communication, can expect success.

1
Costa, P., 2009. Barack Obama’s Use of the Internet is Transforming Political Communication, pp. 35-37.
2
Box-Steffensmeier J.M., Schier S.E., 2013. The American Elections of 2012. New York and London: Routledge.