Be it Twitter, Facebook or Snapchat, Barack Obama’s presidential supremacy owed much of its success to these social media platforms. This trend has been followed by his successors too; which is much clear from the deep indulgence of Donald Trump on Twitter. And carrying on this further, Michael Bloomberg, owner and co-founder of Bloomberg L.P., has spent over five hundred million dollars in his political campaign while juggling out with multiple advertising media, including partnering with influential meme aggregators to evince his affluence.
Michael Bloomberg had a dominant presence in the whole campaigning phase. Bloomberg News and digital space were all flooded with his campaign ads. He had spent a considerable amount on anti-Trump social media ads in some states. Hefty expenditure on Pay-per-click Google ads, targeted Facebook ads, recruitment of social media influencers, and association with Meme 2020, engagement of 500 deputy digital organisers, and purchase of billboards of all prime locations demonstrates the fatal effects the candidacy power differential can cause by deluding the voters.
An analysis of Bloomberg’s campaign by John Wihbey, an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University suggests over-advertising and jamming of news channels with campaigning activities peter out the de facto motive of democracy. He suggests that social media sites should also disclose some important facts along with the sponsored ads highlighting the amount of money spent and people reached to give substantial information to various interested parties to make an informed decision.
This revolution has influenced the U.S. political scenario to a great extent causing a shift from door campaigning to phone campaigning, from long manifestos to snackable snippets and from promoting ideology to just blabbering out luxuriance. Although this changing scenario indicates the strategy of connecting with masses in their convenient state, it deflects the attention from idea propagation to just a show of power.
Kriti Vishwakarma
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