People love Social Media, so do Politicians!

In the 2008 election a lot of people said social media really won it for Obama. It helped give him the edge over McCain who wasn’t in touch with the younger generation. This year was definitely going to be interesting but instead of a focus on how social media could aid the campaign, it became much more about how social media would cover the election itself.

Showing Obama still has the upper hand in social media

Twitter had only been around for a couple of years back in 2008 and it was the first time the power of social media in communicating to the masses was really exercised for an event to this scale. By sending out a single tweet Obama would be communicating with his 23 million followers. That is more than a single TV ad would do and twitter was free!

Adrianna Huffington said back in 2008 that; “Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president. Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee,”

Big Bird was a trending topic after Romney’s remark in the debate

Although we followed twitter throughout, and were bombarded with many celebrity endorsements for Obama, what was interesting this year was the reporting through social media. From Big Bird to Obama announcing he’d won on twitter at 11:14pm it was social media we turned to to hear the news. What each candidate had said and who was winning on election night. Television broadcast stations relied on social media to aid their coverage. They have had to accept that simply showing video of what is going on in the debate isn’t enough. They need more to be able to pull in decent ratings because the audience no longer relies on the broadcast version. The audience can simply turn the tv off and turn twitter and Facebook on, and be kept up to date with what’s going on, what’s being said and who is winning. It’s tough for broadcast as they can’t compete directly with social media as it is a different medium.

Example of social media incorporated into broadcast

What they can do, and have done this year is incorporate social media into their broadcast. Many stations had on their debate coverage a twitter feed down the side of the screen. The idea being that you then don’t have the need to check social media as they are doing that for you. You only have to look at one screen. And without the social media running commentary, the debates would have been far less interesting. Opinion is what draws us into the social media sites and the reactions from people all across the world. It is something a simple broadcast can’t cover.

Barack Obama shares the news on Twitter

So election night. We want to watch it on TV. We want to have the cinematic experience! But how many people actually found out the results through the TV? Or if they did, was social media what they used to check it was true? With so many stations broadcasting the election there was a delayed reaction to announcing Obama as the re-elected president. A domino effect then swept through the stations as they each learned the news. But in that split second it was Facebook and twitter that became the fact checker. A broadcast station has hundreds of people working for them. Twitter and Facebook has millions. Therefore social media would know. And right enough that was what people believed. The TV is saying yes but oh wait, okay yes twitter says it is true so it must be. And that is the power of social media. Something that broadcast stations’ try to keep up with but due to sheer volume and scale, it’s physically impossible.

In four years’ time, when the next election comes around, it will be interesting to see what the new hype is. By that time we may have exhausted social media for the campaigning and reporting. There may be a new medium we are all fascinated with. Something which the next candidates will be able to use to their advantage. It’s possible, because 8 years ago, the thought of the internet or social media being able to aid a presidential campaign would have been laughable.

Broadcast or the Newspaper?

While studying journalism the number one question you get asked, aside from whether you are going to hack their phone, is what type of journalism you want to do.

The opportunities are literally endless and the degree really sets you up for every aspect.

My general response has been Broadcast journalism working as a foreign correspondent.

But while reading ‘The News About The News’ by Leonard Downie JR and Robert G Kaiser, it brought up a very interesting point.

We watch the news on television to see the images and hear of the breaking news stories, yet we then read the newspapers to find out what is really going on and the nitty gritty details.

11 years ago today I remember sitting in my after school club watching the television not really understanding what I was seeing before my eyes. A catastrophic event that shook the world and every one of us will remember the first images we saw, not the words, but instead the images.

In the following days and weeks however we then read about it. We read the facts, the background stories and what led to these events.

In an age where we say broadcast journalism is taking over, we really have to look at the facts.

When we really want to find out information on a news story where do we turn to?

It’s not the television and it’s not the radio. Instead we go out and buy a newspaper or search online to find articles.

This is the reason so many newspapers are still around and this is the reason we need newspapers to stay for the future generations.

Broadcast is a great platform for breaking news and showing us videos but it doesn’t show us every aspect of the story.

Newspapers are our investigative journalists.