Derrick Robinson
Professor Chandler
Research Essay
Introduction
With
the turn of the century and technology being more and more of a need, there are
many utilizations of it. From the times you had to be stationary to use the
internet, now we can go anywhere with our phones or tablets and do anything
virtually possible over the internet with our technology. From days where we
had to use house phones or mail to keep in touch with friends and family, we
now have social networking through the internet that keeps in contact with
these same people no matter where they go. Now in this day and age, the
possibilities are limitless with our technology and one can only wonder how
does it influence certain aspects of our society.
A
main aspect that is being researched for this paper is technology and its
influence in the political perspective. With social networking being a
powerhouse and different organizations can advertise their items, this opens
many opportunities for many people to get their word across. With this being
said one could say opportunities can be opened up for politicians who want a
seat in office. It is evident that politicians know how social networking is
impacting society and the many things it could do to help ones future in this
line of business. Campaign strategies over the years have been based online by
building web-sites and even making pages on different sites like Facebook and
Twitter. With millions of people online every day, it is a good strategy to put
themselves into the traffic and make themselves known. With all this, we must
not forget that in these millions of users there are a percentage of them that
are voters.
With moments happening in political history during the
technology era; there has seen a lot of political topics brought up over the
internet, but more importantly social networking sites. Advertisements along
with pages made by a campaign team for a specific political figure could be
seen all over famous sites while also receiving a lot of likes or followers.
Political persons even made Facebook or Twitter sites, making statuses and also
gaining attention as well. Pages like these receive more of the same during
election races as campaigning can be seen from the time it starts to the time
it is over and a candidate has been chosen to run his office.
Question:
So a question has been raised that has motivated my
research-is the social networking sites helping candidates get more influences
of votes since it does have a lot of traffic throughout each site? If
campaigning on sites does not influence votes in any way; does it individually affect
society in some manner? I decided to research this because of how influential
social networking sites may have on people by giving people views, likes, or
took them to stardom. With the subliminal power that these sites have in
society at this time, to wonder how this affects society on a political scale would
not be considered a hypothetical falsie.
For this research paper I will answer the question if political
campaigns on social networking sites do influence votes. By reading academic
journals I will get answers for the mass populace. After reading and
researching these journals I will delve into more research with individual
people by interviewing them and see their experiences in social networking and
how past or current election campaigning strategies on social networks
influenced them in any way.
By gathering references containing the
academic journal “Social networks in
political campaigns: Facebook and the congressional elections of 2006 and 2008.”,
and an interview from a subject, I can break down many variables within the
question and give more insight into the world of social network campaigning
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