Social Networking Sites and The Election by Dianne Taryla

It has been said many times that the outcome of the Presidential Election can be determined by one group, the youth voters. Those aged 18 to 24 can put a President they’ve elected into office for the next four years. Aside from being encouraged to vote, how else are these youths getting involved in the election? They are using every college student’s favorite social networking website, Facebook.

On Facebook you can be a supporter of the candidate you are voting for. Becoming a supporter of a candidate is like adding them as a Facebook friend; each candidate has their own profile like everybody else does. Each candidates profiles show their information, and they each have a wall, where people can write comments about why they support each candidate. On these Facebook’s they also have photo albums of the events that have taken place, and links to their other pages. Even Michelle Obama has a Facebook.

Not only have the candidates gotten themselves involved in social networking sites, but users of Facebook have also involved them. People have created groups that show their support or dislike for the candidates. There are groups that support the candidates and groups that announce the non-support of a candidate by others. There are groups called “One Million Strong for Barack Obama” while other are called “One Million Strong against Barack Obama.” This does not only occur with Barack Obama, there are groups called the same thing for John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Joe Biden.

Also making their way onto Facebook are motivational campaigns encouraging young people to vote. There are groups and profiles for Rock the Vote, Vote or Die, and Choose or Lose. These are organizations that use celebrities to encourage voting among younger people. After looking up each of the candidates on Facebook, it seems that according to who has become a supporter of each of them, Barack Obama is in the lead among the youths. He has 1,947,330 supporters, while John McCain only has 548,914.
Posted by Dianne at 12:40 PM 0 comments