It’s a new world for politics
John Edwards announced his candidacy for president of the United States this week. I wouldn’t normally care, being Canadian and all, but the interesting thing was that he did it on YouTube.
Of course, he’s not the first candidate to use social media in his campaign. Howard Dean was the first candidate to launch a blog, and it was, by all measures (except winning) successful.
The interesting thing here is that it costs millions of dollars to run for president. YouTube is completely free. This might be the beginning of a change for the way democracy works in North America. I’m not sure how much impact it will have, but as more and more of the tools of production and distribution are democratized, more and more people will have the power to influence. I think that can only be a good thing.
It will be extremely interesting to see how social media is used in the next election, both here and in the U.S. My prediction is that more candidates are going to realize the power of talking directly to the people through blogs, the power of reaching millions via YouTube with genuine appearances instead of campaign ads and the power that an engaged network can bring to a grassroots campaign.
If corporations are starting to realize this power, it’s only a matter of time before politicians do, too.
[via Seth’s Blog
Hi – saw you browsing at my site so came to visit yours. And am delighted! I wasn’t much paying attention to this – I like Edwards but I love Obama, so…But this UTube thing – being an activist type, I went to a workshop in Oct where they showed how to use Digg and one of the photo sites for the same type of “directly to you the citizen” information. (And don’t you know all the activists have really glommed (sp? even a word?) on to the internet.) I had never thought of that. UTube is another piece. This could all weave together very interestingly – thanks for putting it together for me!