The brave new world of future election campaigns
President election is the huge event in the life of nation, isn’t it? Especially now, when there are so many opportunities to follow and to get involved. 2012 elections in the U.S. are intensively discussed on the news portals, in social networks, blogs etc. New media give so many possibilities! At the beginning of the year Google launched the elections hub for people to watch, learn and discuss the upcoming event, President Obama runs his own twitter under @BarackObama, Mashable discusses the possibility of voting on-line in its report , while U.S. government is already implementing this option for military or overseas voters.
Technologies create the brave new world of inexhaustible opportunities. According to Techcrunch, the 2008 election was about Facebook, while this year elections shifted to Twitter. What will come next? And how will new media change the nature of election campaign? Another article of Mashable is discussing the possible portrait of the candidate to the President in digital world of 2040. Let’s have a look at the problems he might face:
According to the video, if any potential candidate to 2040 presidential race uses Facebook as a place to socialize and share his thoughts, he automatically becomes unelectable. Because each careless comment or status post, each easy-going photo of his/her students’ years entertainment activities will be found and brought to the light during the possible election campaign of the future. Does it mean that everyone should be really attentive to the content he shares in the web, that it is important to carefully monitor all the digital movements of yourself. Well…it would certainly do no harm. But apparently Facebook and Twitter won’t have such a great influence in 28 years? First of all, they can simply retire till that time, or people will become social-media averse and sick of sharing. Another scenario, proposed by Mashable, is a new hypersocial media, where all the data (from foot size till real-time pulse rate) would be available. Also social norms and value can change completely, and things unacceptable nowadays will become usual in future.
No doubts, world is changing. And this digital “improvements” will touch every side of our life, including politics and election campaigns. There is no chance to control the information anymore, but smart political engineers will find the way to convert the danger of new media influence into the benefits for their candidates. For sure, on-line political campaigns will replace the more expensive TV advertising. Possibly, we will be able to watch the reality show describing the life of candidate in all the detail. Or, maybe, politicians will seek for the funds for their campaigns through projects like Kickstarter. Electorate is getting smarter. So who will win in 2040? The one who can provide the proper and up-to date communication.
