Living in the Digital World 1,

Presentation 2

Group 5Ciara, Emily, Ruby, Mel, Ali, Omar and

Karen.

Barack Obama was elected the 44th president

of the United States in the year 2008.

He was considered to breaking the racial barrier in American politics as the country chose him as the first black president.

Major World Event

Theory – ‘Practice of Everyday Life’

Michel de Certeau's main idea was to give off a 'resistance to domination', where strategies and tactics define two state of minds and how dominance in everyday life can be seen.

He distinguishes between strategies and tactics, where strategies are only available to those of 'will and power', because of that individuals location or status.

In terms of tactics, he explains how the

consumers are not 'subjects' of strategies but their ways in everyday life are more tactical that strategical and everyday life is tactical to them in reality produced by the strategic powerful.

‘Social order' is then created through these strategies formed and from the tactics created by consumers in everyday life.

…

We can argue that Michel de Certeau’s points

are relevant to our chosen ‘major world event’ for Obama and his supporters use tactics such as social networking to persuade the consumers (the public) to vote for him.

Using defended private meanings where Certeau talks about the literature one uses to draw people in or the translation illustrated to give a certain view.

How Does This Theory Link in with Barack Obama’s Election?

So for Obama in his elections, him and his

campaign team used strategies with elements of power they can consider to consume and persuade the audience, the consumers in the campaign.

…

Social Networks can be used to campaign

anything in this modern age. So for Obama’s campaign, groups can be set

up and information can be shared across the social networking sites to inform everyone of what is going on.

For example we have looked at examples from Facebook and Twitter…

Social Networks

Twitter

Twitter is a very popular social network with

175million users to date and you can also link your Twitter account to your Facebook account where for example; Obama could share on Twitter then it automatically posts on Facebook for all of his audience to see.

Obama uses Twitter not to just post about his campaign, but answer questions from his followers and to post images linked to his presidency

Twitter

Facebook is one of the biggest social

networking sites to this day and can be used to build campaigns such as Obama’s campaign.

Features such as hash-tags, groups, events, sharing video’s and individuals posting statuses linked to the campaign that can advertise the campaign on Facebook and get around it with the simplest forms that the site provides.

Facebook

Obama enjoyed a groundswell of support among, for

lack of a better term, the Facebook generation. He will be the first occupant of the White House to have won a presidential election on the Web. Exit polls revealed that Obama had won nearly 70 percent of the vote among Americans under age 25 the highest percentage since U.S. exit polling began in 1976. President Obama's page received more than one million "likes" in a single day compared with about 30,000 per day in earlier weeks. Barack Obama's Facebook page has attracted over 30 million likes since his time as a presidential nominee.

According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, nearly half— 46

percent—of Americans used the Web, E-mail, or text messaging for news about the presidential campaign, to contribute to the debate, or to mobilize others. Some 35 percent of Americans said they'd watched online political videos—three times as many as during the 2004 presidential election. And roughly 10 percent said they'd logged on to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to engage in the election.

Obama, who was often seen thumbing messages on his BlackBerry during the campaign, is a new-generation politician who shrewdly understands the electoral power of the Web. Pulling out all the Web 2.0 stops, the Obama campaign used not only Facebook and YouTube but also MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, BlackPlanet, MiGente, Glee, and others.

Technology has been a partner, an enabler for the Obama

campaign, bringing the efficiencies of the internet into the real-world problems of organizing people in a distributed, trusted fashion.

Obama’s use of the Internet targeted 18- to 29-year-olds, the age group most reliant on new media for political information about the election. Numbers have shown that presidential candidates have increased their presence and activity online. Obama’s campaign managers understood that the reason younger voters tended to ignore politicians was because politicians tended to ignore issues which most concerned them, which is why Obama received such a positive reaction from America’s youth.

Facebook can also be used a negative way of

campaigning also, shown is a image of an against-

Obama campaign group

As much as Obama enjoyed using the internet

as a way for him to get more supporters, the backlash he received from said supporters through the same social media he used took a toll for the worst: conspiracies, accusations of murder and even threats.

News such as the BBC, The guardian and The

Times are also used to promote campaigns.

In the case of Obama’s election, they were able to pass on information to the consumer, (the public) such as; video clip’s of speeches, and interviews of other campaigner's voting for him.

News

BBC NEWS, 5TH NOVEMBER, 2008

For Example…

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/us/politic

s/05campaign.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://danm.ucsc.edu/~dustin/library/de%20certeau,%20the%20practice%20of%20everyday%20life.pdf

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/us_elections_2008/7710038.stm

References