Maria Ortiz
Lit2932 — 8:00-9:15
The Use of New Media Convergence on Politics
It’s a Saturday night your sitting at home flipping channels looking for something interesting to watch. As you flip through the channels you stop when you see an icon of the presidential seal show up on the screen with a commentator saying “And now a message from the President of the United States”. All of a sudden you see a serious Will Ferrell sitting behind a desk dressed up in a suit with his hair gelled to the side. He starts talking by saying “Hello my fellow Americans”.
Will Ferrell is impersonating our former president, George W. Bush, and goes on to saying things about the stock market “going into the crapper every time he makes an appearance during the day”. Ferrell does a great job of making Bush look ridiculous and very incompetent. He goes on to say that the reason for his message is to make an endorsement for the running republican candidates and the presidential election between the “Hot Lady and Tiger Woods guy.” He uses descriptions like “heavily patriotized” (that’s not even a word) and “much characterization” to describe the running presidential candidates. Ferell continues by saying it seems like the republicans are running from his publicized endorsement (logically from his unpopularity). Sarah Palin (Tina Fey) then comes out unaccompanied by John McCain stating that when McCain found out the endorsement he could not be found and that her husband Todd was on a snow machine looking for John. Palin goes on to says she’s been working hard traveling around the world and “doing a little shopping.” Todd comes up in a snowboarding outfit reading Team Arctic with McCain in hand. McCain starts talking by saying “Good Evening my friends” (typical). The supposed Bush goes up to McCain and shakes his hands and says, “John was with me ninety percent of the time over the last eight years- when you think of me think of John McCain. A vote for McCain is a vote for Bush.” This is Saturday Night Live and over the course of the election they did many election impersonations through debates, messages like these, and interviews. Using real life election footage and phrases to make fun or emphasis how bad the candidate made themselves look. This is just one of the many examples of how much media can affect politics and the audience views. Who wants to vote for a president who seems to be falling in the steps of a president who has taken the United States to an economic down turn, war, and has made the United States look like a joke to people around the world? Media uses many different techniques to create what people may call “serious fun”.
http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/update-thursday-bush-endorsement/783981/
For the past couple of years the convergence and growth of media (especially new media) has inevitably affected the culture of American politics. While the television may not be a new form of media it has significantly changed in the past couple of years around the styles and current changes of the new types of media like the internet and youtube. The Bush Endorsement on Saturday Night Live for example was not only viewed on television but was also viewed on the internet on nbc. com. Here people are able to watch the programs of Saturday Night Live and are able to comment and express their opinion about the show, the people, their views on politics, or anything they wish to comment about. People also post links to clips, debates, pictures, or other sites in their comments.
New media has converted into a focal mean for information in both a local (United States) and international standpoint. The increasing popularity of the different types of new media like the internet and youtube have not only been a good, quick, and easy way for means of information but have also been frequently used for communication, networking, and self expression. People have become very reliant on the internet, used by almost everyone, on a daily basis. The internet has helped create and build this “empowerment age”, creating this ability to help people with almost anything and everything with a simple click of a button- breaking news in just seconds! This is no wonder why politics are now trying to take action through new media, another way to be noticed and gain supporters.
New media influence on politics was extremely apparent during the 2008 elections. The goal of each candidate during the presidential election is to spread their ideas of change and ideals, gain as many supporters to register to vote and vote for their party or candidate. For example Barack Obama (our former president) encouraged younger adults to vote and become part of the political process. He also kept his democratic votes, tried to reach out to republican voters who might have lost hope on the Republican Party because of the last eight years, and people who are on the fence of what political party they want to choose. Obama used not only the television and the newspaper to gain votes, to reach out to all voters especially young he used popular social networking like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. Obama’s strong supporters also helped spread Obama’s ideas and their own personal thoughts through these different social networks by creating statuses pertaining to politics, posting bulletins, blogs, notes, becoming fans of different networking pages designed to promote his campaign and his future plans.
The use of effective new media interaction with voters helped Obama’s campaign significantly. He reached out to many Americans keeping in their minds that he was one of them. The repeated motivational words stuck in America heads of Yes We Can, It’s Time for Change, and Barack’s image with the word HOPE. These words and images put in all types of advertisements and used as an icon all over the internet to promote his campaign. The 2008 election was very publicized both because of the running candidates, either the first black president or the first female vice president in the history of the United States, and the media surrounding them, whether it was a big news network or ordinary people making their own form of news coverage mainly through videos like youtube.
Youtube is a free video sharing network, where people who can upload, share, and view video clips made by people who are registered under youtube. During the 2008 election youtube was used as a good source of self expression and communication mean. Just by typing in 2008 elections in the search bar on youtube the number of video listing results are about 197,000. There is a big range of videos anything from funny moments in the election, debates, interviews, speeches, predictions, election aftermath, and much more. Youtube has created a mind and voice of its own from its (still on the rise) popularity, international audience, and several users or viewers. Youtube for some candidates creates blasts from the past bringing up stories that candidates might not want people to see or lies and exaggerated truths. For example our former vice president, Joe Biden, had a video that was put up on youtube about him saying,”You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking“. Joe Biden did not mean it that way, he was joking, and had to clarify himself to the youtube video posted. Some videos get so popular that they are even put to show on media news networks. Youtube videos like that can be so believable to some people that it can even impact votes and can change the way people view the candidate and their ideals. People are also able to respond back with other videos or create their own and comment to videos both positively or negative. It’s a world of complete self expression where your voice can be heard through videos that people can choose to either watch it or not. An example of a 2008 election youtube video is a video entitled Obama or McCain- Why you should vote.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYnfhFlS6U8&NR=1
The videos setting seems to be in a shabby garage everything in its surrounding seems to be abandoned, old, and broken. Then the video shows an older lady who seems to dressed in rags, showing distress she begins to sigh before speaking. She begins to talk about the kind of mentality people seem to have when they’re young, not understanding the kind of impact they could have created. She regrets not being able to be part of trying to make an impact and while she talks she turns into a younger version of herself saying that we try to live our lives with no worries while we don’t seem to care about America and our right to vote and express ourselves when that will hurt us in the long run. As she keeps talking she turns younger and younger saying: “we had the power to turn things around” but we failed to. We decided not to vote and stay in silence, “now, our time and hour is now!” While this was all happening captions were being shown on the video about things like global inflation and unemployment growth. This video clip received both negative and positive commentary. Negative in the fact that it dates back to 1996 and some kids wrote how could that possibly be their fault, they thought the video was to dramatic, unrealistic, and some people did not even care about voting and made jokes about the video instead of supporting it. Some people enjoyed the message and the time put into the video and one guy wrote to kids comments by saying that if they did not vote then they had no right to complain and were taking things for granted. Some viewers can either take youtube videos seriously, take it too seriously, or not even care at all, so positive political promotion by a campaign would only benefit the candidate or party involved (a step up).
Globally people seemed to be connected to all types of new and emerging media. New media has played and continues to play a very important part in the culture of politics. People look to new media to become more informed citizens and to become more involved in the democratic process. New media is useful for Americans to express their ideas about the political systems and their beliefs.
