Politicians have definitely been well-known in making full-use of the new media to receive votes during the election campaign or to communicate with the citizens more effectively. In this modern time, leaders or future leaders of their respective countries no longer just use speeches or the newspaper as their only medium to channel the message to the public. With the ‘invention’ of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, blogs and Youtube which all are under the category of new media, the politicians are able to transmit their message to the public easily, efficiently and quicker. Perlmutter (2008) have also stated that many political campaigns have been using YouTube, Twitter and Facebook for experimentation.
Source: (aperture.org, 2009)
The most well-known politicians to make full use of the new media or social networking sites are the current president of America, Barack Obama. During his election campaign for the election of presidency, Barack Obama not only made his campaigning speech in almost each state in America but also uploaded the videos of his speech to Youtube in order for others who was unable to be present during his speech would get to know the message (May, 2010).
Source: (darmano.typepad.com, 2008)
After being elected as President of United States of America over Republican’s John McClain, Obama made sure he is able to communicate with the American citizens instantly and efficiently by being a user of the Facebook and Twitter community (Nations, n.d.). Besides, after being elected as the forty-fourth president of America, the president decided to make full use of technology and the new media by having set up the Obama Administration which is to accomplish Obama’s vision of open-source democracy (Merritt, 2009)). The administration would decide to again make full use of YouTube by publishing any messages or speeches to reach a wider range of citizens.
In Malaysia, many politicians regardless from the ruling or opposition party uses Twitter as a channel to communicate with the Malaysian citizens (Zahiid, 2010). There are several politicians who have been active in Twitter such as Anwar Ibrahim, DAP Lim Kit Siang, UMNO Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and of course the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak (Zahiid, 2010). Jonson Chong who is a communications director stated that although blogs would provide readers with in-depth information, it does not create an instant and effective communication with the readers or followers compared to Twitter (Zahiid, 2010).
Reference
May, AL 2010, ‘Who tube? How YouTube’s news and politics space is going mainstream’, The International Journal of Press/Politics, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 499-511.
Merritt, K 2009, How Obama will use web technology, Tech Crunch, viewed 10 November 2010, <http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/24/how-obama-will-use-web-technology/>.
Nations, D n.d., How Barack Obama is using Web 2.0 to run for president, About.com, viewed 10 November 2010, <http://webtrends.about.com/od/web20/a/obama-web.htm>.
Perlmutter, DD 2008, ‘Political blogging and campaign 2008: a roundtable’, The International Journal of Press/Politics, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 160-170.
Zahiid, SJ 2010, Blogging is so yesterday, politicians turn to Twitter, The Malaysian Insider, viewed 10 November 2010, <http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/Blogging-is-so-yesterday-politicians-turn-to-Twitter/>.
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