Policymaking In The Age Of Internet

“Social media platforms held the promise of being more egalitarian and democratic than mass media in a sense that all users could equally participate and contribute content” (Dijck & Poell, 6). This explains a basic purpose of social media that remains consistent with the democratic values of freedom that the U.S. is founded upon by providing citizens with a platform where they are free to speak their mind. What makes this even more interesting is the ability for people to share their opinions on a stage that has relatively no geographical boundaries. Rather than restricting the spread of individuals’ beliefs, social networking sites help spread messages and information to anyone, faster than was previously possible. According to Dijck and Poell, “social media platforms seldom deal with ‘natural’ geographically or demographically delineated audiences; instead, they expedite connections between individuals, partly allowing the formation of strategic alliances or communities through users’ initiative” (Dijck & Poell, 8). Social networking sites are naturally designed to increase connectivity and interactions among individuals with common interests or beliefs. The idea of connectivity has significantly influenced the way in which protests are held in America and around the world.

President Obama not only was the first African American to be elected, but was also the first presidential candidate to effectively use social media as a major campaign strategy. In many ways the election of Barack Obama mimicked that of John F. Kennedy, both having changed politics forever. For John F. Kennedy it was the television and for Obama it was the internet. Barack Obama’s strategy of using the internet as a campaigning tool was a key to his victory in the election. He used the internet to organize his supporters. He had many more friends and followers on his Facebook and Twitter than his opponent John McCain did. The social media landscape looks a lot different now. There has been an increasing number of social media tools now than there were

    In today’s modern time, social media has a huge impact on political environment. How the World Changed Social Media claims, “ Such political activity as there is on social media is usually at a national level and is conducted mainly by supporters…” (Miller 142,143). Social media presents a national level bias. During the last ten years, politics has gained much traction on these sites.  For example, campaigns for national

How presidential candidates present themselves in the media can be proven to impact election results dramatically. Political figure using social media did not start to become more common until after the 2008 election because Twitter and Facebook were just recently created, but by looking at data from the past two elections it shows that the news presidential candidates put on their social media can correlate with how people will decide to vote. After researching what topics political candidates post and how they present themselves in the media with election results it can be established that a candidate’s presence in social media can have an impact on how people might vote in an election. “By 2008 candidate websites were standard and campaigns

This topic I became very interested in after learning more about it with the homework and reading we did. I learned that the Network Society is a social group created through the medium of "online" or other relations that are not made face to face. Network Society can have vast impacts on the economy and political and cultural influences. Unlike in person communication to where you are limited by space and chance of seeing the right person, there are no special limitations on the network. The digital divide, although shrinking in many areas, is still an important issue that separates the world. With the increased reliance on the internet, people without access to it fall behind socially and possibly economically. The digital divide is eased with public digital infrastructure such as free computer usage at Libraries but it can still put certain populations at a severe disadvantage than those with internet access. With digital text books, online quizzes and online grades via canvas, it would be quite impossible to attend this college without adequate access to technology, which some still do not have. Technology has developed into a near necessity for many people in America and especially for every student enrolled in the University of Washington Tacoma. Another part of this Network Society is the governments integration into the society and their attempt to stay more relevant with the times

In fact, the 2008 presidential election has even been coined as the “Facebook Election”. Although the concept of social media was still on the rise, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube were not completely unaware of their role/leverage in American electoral politics. In fact, during the presidential campaign, each site found their own way to encourage users to discuss the election or issues contained

The Georgia Institute of Technology is a one of the top public research universities in the world. The technology and society program is one of the top-rated programs at Georgia Tech. The program aims to lead in the research and breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress. This paper investigated and discussed the effect of the Internet on democracy over the world in the period of 1992 to 2002 by using several methods including survey, research and discovering the relationships between the Internet and policies. Numerous previous reports and tests were cited in the paragraph as well as charts. Although the data were gathered only for the period of 1992 to 2002 which means the findings may be outdated, the writers’ predictions in

What’s everyone doing now a day? Do you see people walking around reading a book or talking face to face with another human being? Not exactly, now a day you see people walking around with phones in their hands and worrying about what their social media status looks like. Internet has become a very large influence in everyday life, impacting life from health to political beliefs. With the elections coming up in November we see candidates heading to medias to gain publicity, but non of them have used Ron Pauls’ tactic of starting his campaign online and using the Internet to his benefit.

Since its introduction on a public scale in the 1990s, the internet has been associated with many changes in social experience. Many aspects of social life such as education, work, commerce and even personal relationships have changed through the internet. However, researchers have found that, at least in the early years, access to the internet is shaped according to gender, class, ethnicity and education. During the 1990s the typical information technology user was a white, male, professional with a background in IT. This bias in internet access was named the ‘digital divide’ to point out the implied social inequalities. It was said that the internet was

Theorists contend that representative government is headed for direct democracy by way of the Internet. Essentially what will happen is that representatives will no longer be needed because citizens will be able to use the Internet to make decisions. Grossman contends that “the more power [citizens] have to control their government and to involve themselves in making its decisions, the better” (41). Over the years citizens have been obtaining information through the media, newspapers, and other forms of mass media. The issues that arise with obtaining information through these sources are that the government can easily censor them. With the Internet comes “vastly expanded capacities for data collection, for computation, and for automation” (Kamark & Nye 22).

As a logical consequence, Postmes and Brunsting (2002) reasoned that the Internet is changing society because people's cognitive processes, triggered by access to information and communication, replace the strong social ties that traditionally underpin committed activism. In simpler words, in the past, humanity used the herd instinct as the main driving force behind committed forms of activism. Thanks to the Internet, we climb another step or three on the evolutionary ladder, and simply do away with the herd instinct and replace it with reason. The argument, if put this way, does not sound particularly strong. What can be taken away is that social media is still evolving, that social media changes the way we – or most of us communicate, that social media is used in social and political activism, and that the Internet increases quantitative if not qualitative access to information.

The issue of the Internet having psychological benefits has two sides, as does any issue. James E. Katz and Philip Aspden present the yes side of this issue. Katz and Aspden used a national random telephone survey to back up their side on the issue. The survey conducted in October of 1995 compiled the individuals who took the survey into five specific groups. The groups consisted of those not aware of the Internet, non-users aware of the Internet, former users, recent users-those who started using the Internet in 1995, and longtime users-those who started using the Internet prior to 1995. The survey questioned community involvement (community, leisure, and religious,) involvement in existing communities (face to face, family, Internet,)

In the writing by Briggs (Young People and Political Participation: Teen Players) she notes that “social media are a critical new space for political discourse and engagement, which political institutions cannot afford to neglect” as the younger audiences use social media, and the people they follow as a guide it seemed vital that modern day politics has to infiltrate social media formats. This can be utilised by politicians and their agenda to widen the scope of their message. In the Praeger Handbook of Political Campaigning in the United States, Benoit investigates how successful an organised strategy using new media to win an election can be for political candidates. He states that “the innovative use of new media contributed to President Barack Obama's presidential campaign win in 2008” (Benoit, 2016). Obama's presidential campaign was one of the first to set the standard for political strategy online. The literature talks about the expansion of the internet and how that has provided a suitable platform for political agendas to grow exponentially. With the focus of the research project highlighting the specific use of social media it is important to reflect on the initial stages of online political campaigning, and to understand how Trump has cultivated this style of political

Social media has grown at phenomenal rates over the past decade, with its rise being easily visible in several fields such as publishing, business, and activism, among others. The rise of its use in the field of politics is well known by those who are on and off social media, as a result of increasing number of politicians using this global platform to their maximum advantage.

I am opposed to such content on the Internet and therefore am a firm believer in