social media and the 2008 election

After reading Naomi Klein's article "How Corporate Branding Took Over the White House", I thought back to the previous election in 2008. I remember hearing from teachers and parents that the teenagers of my generation was becoming surprisingly involved in political and economic debates and causes. I think a lot of that had to due with the fact that our generation had grown up during a particularly contentious time in American history; we experienced 9/11, the subsequent War on Terror and the collapse of the housing bubble, fracturing our economy. A lot of kids in my high school had parents who would ultimately lose their jobs in the fallout. George Bush was unfortunate enough to have all of these miseries occur during his presidency. Now to his credit, Bush did try to deal with the ensuing chaos to the best of his abilities, but a lot of the policies he enacted were undeniably flawed and inevitably controversial, both at home and abroad.

At the end of Bush's presidency America was divided internally and mocked globally. We DID need a change, and America DID need a rebranding. As I said before, teenagers were invested in the upcoming election to a scale never seen before in history, and Barack Obama was well aware of this, much more so than McCain appeared to be.

Obama's campaign was very much influenced by the grassroots movements of the 60s. His campaign was the first to employ social media, using Facebook, Twitter and other sites to develop a strong following among the coveted youth vote. Obama also formed alliances with a number of film and music stars, such as Will Smith and Will.i.am, which also increased his loyalty amongst American youth. Will.i.am in particular ended up being one of Obama's biggest supporters, producing both the "Yes We Can" video mentioned in Klein's article as well as a second video called "We Are The Ones", which similarly featured a number of celebrities discussing their vision of an ideal America against a chant of "O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!" in the background. I've included links below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghSJsEVf0pU - "We Are The Ones"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY&feature=related - "Yes We Can"

Hell, the article even reminded me about all those "hip" Obama ringtones I heard emanating from so many cell phones that summer, downloaded from official websites. You would never hear an "official" George W. Bush ringtone, although there were plenty of humorous "Bushisms" ripped from television interviews for people to laugh at, such as the ones listed below:

http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushisms.htm

My point is that Obama connected to youth culture on a level no president ever had before. For all the accusations of social media being impersonal, it felt incredibly personal back in 2008. Instead of waiting for us to come to him, like other presidents would, Obama made an incredible effort in coming to us, and it worked.