The (new) US Government – and Barak Obama – are avid ict & social media users/producers. I found some cool stuff:
The Presidential Inaugural Committee 2009 YouTube Channel. It’s really good. Here’s their website and their twitter profile. The White House’s Blog.
What other info can you find out about Barak Obama, the inauguration, election, US government etc with respect to using social media. Obama is all about reaching people and connecting with him. How did he do it? What do you think of all this? (click the comment button to contribute).
Also, because I have limited experience with wikis, I thought I would try and play around. So, I created a wiki page with all course tasks, with some links and info: http://proftracy.pbwiki.com/comm2p26. Let me know what you think. handy? (tho it’s not interactive/collaborative at this point).
on one of obama’s you tube videos, he gives a number to text where people can receive information on inauguration day and accessibility information to get to the ceremony.
and the white house has a blog that is updated multiple times per day! how cool is that?
talk about reaching the modern world
Here is a cool youtube clip about the social media and the 2008 Presidential Election. It was done on CBC and it talks about facebook, myspace and other usages of web 2.0 to reach out to the masses during the Election. I strongly feel that the main reason for Barack Obama to use the internet more than any other Presidential candidate before was not to convey his message to the US alone, but to allow access to the entire world to here his ideologies. Before, international citizens would have only had access to television programs or radio stations, or biased opinions on websites or blogs. The usage of the internet for his campaign allowed for people to be able to understand his ideologies directly from the source himself.
Barack Obama is the first “Social Media President” in history. He’s by far the first one to understand and harness the power of sharing and communicating through social media platforms to not only get out his message, but to energize a group of Americans and global citizens into action. It wasnt just one type of technology that Obama used, it was a long list that were implemented in his campaign. He had his own website, blog, he was on flickr, twitter, created his own youtube channel as well as utilized linkedin. He also used an array of social networks such as facebook, myspace, blackplanet, asian avenue, race based networks, faith based netowrks, age based networks and even event based networks.
In a class I took last semester we discussed the concept of “Brand Obama”, where Barack Obama became a “brand” and was something “cool” and related to the youth of the USA. This was attributed partly to social networking websites such as Facebook where groups like “Barack Obama is my homeboy” exist, and it becomes “cool” to join these groups and support Obama even if it is not completely understood by the individual what they are supporting. We were shown the Obama website and there was a website linked where one could put their name into a video as a joke.. it was a mock news reaction to a McCain win blaming the person whose name is entered on the site followed by a message to vote for Obama. I will post the website a little bit later once I find the link.
Thank god the states finally has a president who actually is asking for and using the peoples opinion! Bush was outdated in many senses. Hes also the first president to go against the rules of no cell phones insisting hes allowed to have his Blackberry. Mind you it had to be specially made, no camera, no gps, and a few other things, but hes finally allowed to keep it with him! they call it crackberry for a reason!
Obama is the man. I was on the White House website today to see what it now looks like, and although I have never looked at it before his inauguration, it is very organized and modern. It allows accessibility for the younger demographic to find information. Also, he is obviously trying to reach the younger audience with the latest article about the Superbowl. In using a blog, he is also able to reach a much broader audience without using newspapers or other forms of media. Furthermore, the elimination of these corporate news media sources is good for the material being presented. According to many social communication theories (including agenda-setting theory which we learned this week in COMM 2F50), the news we see on television is framed by wealthy individuals who strive to keep their advertisers happy. With these new forms of reaching the public, Obama is able to eliminate these concerns and provide accurate information.
Us Canadians and people around the world all joined in to watch the presidental election and Barak Obama’s victory of becoming president. Many have been affected in some way, even if they are not American. He has made history. Some people felt SO connected to Obama that they decided to broadcast their feelings on YouTube… I’m sure many people have seen or heard about ‘Obama Girl’. If not, check out the YouTube clip of Obama Girl professing her love for Barak Obama
The President Obama and his administration are big users of social media. It is just a sign that social media really has become an integral part of the our society that it actually changed the political landscape and that the most powerful government in the world uses social media to communicate. President Some people say that access to President Obama’s email address is the new symbol of status in Washington. Only a very limited number of people have his email. Here’s a New York Times article talking about the some implications of Obama’s email use:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/01/america/email.1-419991.php?page=1
The Administration of President Obama also has their own Youtube channel. They post his weekly address on YouTube. Presidents before him used mainly the radio for their weekly address. However, Obama truly the first techno savvy President, chose Youtube. Here’s the White House channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse
The House of Representatives also has their own Youtube channel, and it has links to the channels of the leaders of the House such as the channel of Nancy Pelosi, who actually Rickrolled people early this year, it was actually funny.
http://www.youtube.com/user/househub
Barack Obama really knows how to connect with everyone that cares. I never really noticed until Prof Tracy posted this, but, now knowing this, I don’t know how I didn’t see it coming. It’s obvious that many people cared about what happened in the presedential election, what previous candidates haven’t done is connect with those that don’t find news on television or the newspaper very apealing. Barack has connected with all types of demographics, and now most importantly he is getting the youth interested in the concerns with USA.
I blogged about Obama on my blog so you can read my comments there if you want. Its Obama totally used the social media to create a large base for being recognized I also feel a lot of celebrities and the genral population supported him , even with collaborating vidoes with music and images of him for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVi4rUzf-0Q This you Tube video features celebrities in support of Obama, along with American heritage photos and of course images of Obama. As for the wiki I also briefly blogged about it on my blog, I just think colour would make it stand out more but other than that its cool and I don’t think I am even capable of creating a wiki so its hard for me to judge
I think Obama did a good job of really capturing what America wanted to hear as well as saying it through the right forms of media, although since Barak has been president he hasn’t posted on twitter. I found that lately Canadian congress have been making use of twitter and other social media a lot. It’s great to see the government reaching out to our demographic and making use of these new communication tools. This website I found really interesting comparing McCain’s and Obama’s twitter and myspace networks as well as discussing who has mentioned Obama vs. McCain in blog posts. I’m not sure if it’s the controversy, “history in the making” or what thats creating the buzz among bloggers and tweeters but I think that both of the candidites have really jumped on board in the right direction when it comes to keeping citizens, especially young people involved.