POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS IN THE NEW MEDIA

Political campaigns in the new media

In trying to determine the impact of new media on political campaigning and electioneering, the existing research has tried to examine whether new media supplants conventional media. Television is still the dominant news source, but new media's reach is growing.

 New media has a significant impact on elections and what began in the 2008 presidential campaign established new standards for how campaigns would be run. Then campaigns have their outreach methods by developing targeted messages for specific audiences that can be reached via different social media platforms.

Both parties have specific digital media strategies designed for voter outreach. Additionally, their websites are socially connected, engaging voters before, during, and after elections. Email and text messages are also regularly sent to supporters encouraging them to donate and get involved.

Candidates have incorporated new media into their political strategy, Some existing research focuses on the ways that political campaigns, parties, and candidates have incorporated new media. This is often a multi-faceted approach that combines new and old media forms to create highly specialized strategies.

 It allows them to reach wider audiences, but also to target very specific subsets of the electorate. They are able to tap into polling data and in some cases harness the analytics of the traffic and profiles on various social media outlets to get real-time data about the kinds of engagement that is needed and the kinds of messages that are successful or unsuccessful.

 One body of existing research into the impact of new media on elections investigates the relationship between voters' use of new media and their level of political activity. They focus on areas such as "attentiveness, knowledge, attitudes, orientations, and engagement.

Citizenship Involvement Democracy survey, Nam (2012) found that "the internet plays a great role in mobilizing political participation by people not normally politically involved, as well as reinforcing existing offline participation. These findings chart a middle ground between research that optimistically holds new media up to be an extremely effective or extremely ineffective at fostering political participation

Towner (2013) found, in his survey of college students, that attention to new media increases offline and online political participation particularly for young people. Research shows that the prevalence of online media boosts participation and engagement. His work suggests that it seems that online sources that facilitate political involvement, communication, and mobilization, particularly campaign websites, social media, and blogs, are the most important for offline political participation among young people.

The work of Halpern and Gibbs (2013) suggest that social media may not provide a forum for intensive or in-depth policy debate; it nevertheless provides a deliberative space to discuss and encourage political participation, both directly and indirectly.

It also shows that some social media sites faster more robust political debate than others such as Face book which includes highly personal and identifiable access to information about users alongside any comments they may post on political topics. This is contrast to sites like YouTube whose comments are often posted anonymously.

BY

KIMATI ELITRUDAH. BAPRM 42582