Growing up digital. Tapscott: Third Half

"The Obama effort is the first real trans-media political campaign of the twenty-first century, where the role of engaging, two-way technologies including mobile devices, laptops, and social networking sites became as important as traditional media," says Brian Collins. This portion of the book gave me another perspective of the way politics run in the twenty-first century. I figured that since politicians have had a specific way of raising awareness of their political stature that it wouldn't change by much since whatever has been working for all these years has made them successful. Of course a new generation has bloomed and things are ran a lot different than prior elections. The secret to most of the success is understanding the current generation you have to work with. All generations have and continue to grow in a different realm than those that have came before them. 

In our current generation the social network is the portal to the road of success in the elections of today. If you can integrate this to your election plan you will have a better chance of reaching out to the younger crowd who are just turning 18 and are eager to get their voices out. As an example Barack Obama was able to integrate without much problem into our generation. He began expanding his influence throughout the social media and letting the community get involved with personal interaction with the candidate back in 2007-2008. He was able to assist those that supported him with fundraising and spreading awareness in local areas all over the nation. Because this new generations believes in personal interaction with the whatever it is their getting involved with, for this instance politics, Obama made him self accessible to get those questions answered by the public on a regular bases. He interacted with the people that supported and thus got him more supporters than Hilary Clinton at the time. He was able to get more donors that donated less than $200 each for which Hilary received less money total but with bigger money supporters.

This shows the improvement and the adaptation people have to take as new generations come in. What happens today won't be the same for tomorrow as what worked today might not work next year.

An example of statistical data shows hows Obama's integration with social media got him more supporters online.
 
http://www.tapmag.net/wordpress/2008/10/08/politics-2-0-how-the-obama-campaign-won-the-internet/