Targeting Voters in the Digital Age Research Paper

Targeting Voters in the Digital Age - Research Paper Example Both Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012 are mirrored images of how voters are targeted in the digital age through social media. A popular opinion is that while the Obama campaign lead because of high interaction with the public and through extensive incorporation of social media and other creative applications, others candidates did not quite manage to adequately engage in dialogue with their voters. The candidates usually go all the way through to make use of the communications technology in the present age to get in the good books of the voters they target which is different from how they used to seek votes in the past age when communications technology and social media were not as powerful as they are now. This research paper basically attempts to scrutinize with the help of research literature how the voters are reached in the digital age, how this digital mania influences campaigns, why the Obama campaigns led over others when delivering their message, and how this whole process i s different from the way campaigns operated some decades before. Like other daily tasks of life are positively influenced by digital technology for example, the ease of depositing bills with our smartphones and listening to the candidates’ speeches online whenever feasible, the political process has also tasted the exciting taste of the digital technology. Both elections of 2008 and 2012 mad extensive use of social media and while â€Å"in 2008, there were about 1.5 million election-related tweets, in 2012 there were 31 million† (Jeffers). It is worth appreciating how through different riveting digital applications the political process is brought into the 21st century and made all the more exciting and comfortable at the same time. The electoral process is made modernized by the digital age and both digital technology companies and political candidates are set out to further modernize this process through employment of latest technologies available. There are many vot ing applications out there in the market presently which allow voters to find the required information about their voters and cast their donations directly to their favorite candidates with one single tap on the touchscreen. According to NYC Votes, voting is a very important ritual and it is their responsibility to bring all facets of the electoral process into the digital age by introducing new applications (Vanhemert). NYC Votes for this purpose has introduced two new applications, mobile web app which is a contribution tool and allows the voters to cast their donations to the candidates and lets the latter collect all donations on their smartphones and Voter Engagement tool which enables voters to find all they want to about the candidates, make donations, and much more. These kinds of things make the political process of elections seem very different to how the candidates reached voters in the past age when nothing was so modernized and all tasks of the electoral process were pa infully time-consuming. Research shows that one of the main reasons Obama presidential campaigns led over those run by Mitt Romney was that people behind the Obama campaigns took the power of digital applications like Facebook and Twitter really seriously and used them to their advantage in any way they could. Social media should not only be considered a change in technology as it is really a change in the public’s tendency to communicate (Jeffers). Research claims that social media was a sure

Social welfare,democracy and government Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Social welfare,democracy and government - Essay Example The social welfare, democracy and government are all intensely connected aspects of a society and a country. The welfare of the country and its citizens are always the topmost priority of any democracy or government. Britain being a democratic country has a prolonged history of social welfare policies and strategies. The country has extensive social welfare policies to cater to the well being of its citizen and communities. â€Å"After war every where in Europe showed a grave needs for social welfare :broadly speaking social-democratic policies were initiated even by conservative and Christian-democratic governments, while social democrats became parties of government in most European states†(Shaw,1999). However, during these years a major shift has occurred in the socio –economic structure of the country which led to a new paradigm to the social welfare concept. Britain is a country with multi – cultural backgrounds and requires a well co--ordinate and structure d social policies and plans to show justice to the society. 2 –According to Smith (1986)â€Å"Historians have engaged in pro-longed debate how far political theories influenced the actual structure of social policies. As most of its history social-policy making in Britain has been closely linked to a wider context of political, social and economic ideas†. A big part of contributing to the welfare of the nation is giving equal rights to all the social groups in the country .The rights of the citizens to vote and select the right representative to govern the country should be an unbiased and unfair fact. The right to vote is the major foundation and strong principle of any democratic government. A democracy to be a successful one, should allot a substantial voting power to all the social groups of the country. As per (Hannemann, 2003) â€Å"In almost all democratic national elections an individual vote cannot change the election outcome. The fact that many individuals n evertheless participate voluntarily in such elections suggests that people do care about democracy as such†. The main reason for the appreciation for the right to vote is that, it gives the citizens of a country a upper hand in the decision making process of the nation. However, with all this well planned social policies and democratic government, there are still many social groups who are devoid of their basic right of the democratic government. A country like United Kingdom has various social groups like youngsters, women, senior citizens, disabled, asylum seekers and prison inmates. Among all of these, asylum seekers and prison inmates are the one which is most undermined in regard to voting rights. According to (Guardian News,2010)â€Å"Prisoners are to get the right to vote as the government is poised to throw in the towel in a long-running legal tussle with the European court of human rights, it emerged today. It is understood that the coalition is to confirm that it is ready to change the law to remove the voting ban on more than 70,000 inmates of British jails†. I) Right to vote an integral part of the democracy Democracy is a form of government which gives exclusive rights to its citizens in the governing of the country as well as bestows other supreme rights to its people. As per (Deth,2009) â€Å"Modern societies are confronted with a number of virtually unsolvable problems. Particularly prominent are complaints and grievances about the increase of social egoism and isolation, declining feelings of solidarity and community, a public withdrawal from the ‘dirty’ realm of politics, the raise in ‘minor’ forms of criminality, and the decrease of social and political engagement – to mention only a few examples†. Britain having a well defined social welfare structure is not justifiable in concern with the real active voting right. Many minorities and under privileged are stolen of their right to vote, ev en being a genuine part of the country. Generally in a democratic nation, an adult crossed the age of