The Past, The Present, and The Future of Social Media and Politics.

In the past ten to 15 years, technology has changed the way that things get done and even how news is past on. To give a full picture of how much technology has changed, the first iPhone came out in 2007 and now in 2019 we have the iPhone 11. With technology there also came social media. Examples of Social Media would be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. These became tools that politicians could use to spread their message and the steps wanted to take to create change. 

The first political election that social media had an impact and would further change how races were run would be the 2008 Presidential election. The person who changed the process was is former President Barack Obama (Owen). He was one of the first that took to social media to spread his message and to bring people together under the same ideals. The top to social media posts that came from his Presidential race would be BarelyPolitical.com’s “Obama Girl” and will.i.am’s “Yes, We Can,” ( Walton 2010, as quoted in Owen).  Though these were made outside of his inner camphian. They still had a role to play in attracting millions to watch the videos that were produced based on his race. 

Moving on to the next big election, which was 2016, Twitter and political advertisements are the heat of the conversations. If you don’t know this by now, our current President, President Trump uses Twitter to voice his opinion on everything possible. He is also being looked at for working with Russia to persuade voters by using advertisements on social media. This is important to look at because of how the media has affected everything that we do. 

Now what does this mean for the future? Who knows. The important thing to look at here would be the social media is how most people get their news. There has to be more factual based news and the ability to get more than one side of the story. Without that change, there is going to be more of people only seeing one side of the story.

Work Cited:

Owen, D., Owen, D., Georgetown University, & Georgetown University. (n.d.). The Past Decade and Future of Political Media: The Ascendance of Social Media. Retrieved December 15, 2019, from https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/articles/the-past-decade-and-future-of-political-media-the-ascendance-of-social-media/.

Written by Ashley Elisara