Right so I’m finally using my chance to bring up the big man of the hour. He has a bit in the start but he is in no way the whole focus. I promise.
America
Trump, Trump, Trump. You odd oaf. I say oaf – some might say genius. In your own way you managed to convince a nation to elect you. My favourite thing about you though, is not your firing of many hopefuls on the apprentice. It isn’t your incessant mentioning of China during your campaign speeches. It’s got to be how active you are on twitter. there are a bunch of personalities who JUST use twitter to promote their work… a bit like me (but just a tad bit more active) however I digress!
You doing this means that people get to hear you directly from the office. The nation has a direct connection to the oval office. You adopted social media in enough time pre election to be literate. Literate enough to actually succeed in its use. THAT is where I commend you my good man. As I said in my first post, you understand a whole other audience. You haven’t neglected the younger voters. Granted, a lot of younger voters come across as “lefties” (as that is apparently an insult) you still tried. And that’s what we appreciate.
Hillary on the other hand still worked on the social media. But she got the help of pretty much every TV and social media personality. Casey Neistat released a video demanding all youtubers to reveal who they are voting for. As America should do everything in their power to STOP trump. Now he claims he was never paid to say these things and that it’s all opinion but somehow I’m not too sure. It’s a bold move ‘calling everyone out’ in what could be described as a cry for views. It certainly did that part – hitting the YouTube trending list almost immediately.
Even just going onto her twitter shows that she has abandoned use of it. This could potentially be due to her loss in the election however, that is still no excuse. Interestingly; when she did use the account properly, it was to quote speeches and slam Trump… think of that as you will. As a Brit, the election doesn’t exactly affect me directly (yet), im just looking at social media from an outside perspective.
Britain
While I sit here typing about american social media use, I haven’t even touched on the lovely topic that is Britain. Originally in the GE, there was some great use; most notably the green parties campaign videos
Here’s the link if you haven’t seen it – Green Party Election Broadcast
this video is a fun way to campaign. At the time the Greens were seen as a wasted vote; lets be real, nothing is a wasted vote. a vote represents your opinion, so of course its personal.
As you can see, utter poll domination by two parties, so naturally the greens just wanted to stand out a bit. With 972k views, the video was somewhat of a viral success – in Britain.
Britain’s current leader is how you DONT do democracy. Theresa May bless her cotton socks was in the right place at the right time. Pretty much half our nation was for the conservatives. The other half was split. Likewise the battle for Brexit featured on the web a bit – with the leave campaign stating why to leave and the remain campaign just slagging off the leave campaign. After the results came out, David Cameron didn’t want to take charge, so just ran off. Apparently it is that easy. once he went; in trotted Theresa May.
Much like Clinton, David Cameron’s twitter is just filled with things. with a congratulations here and there, and a tweet about Basketball. Perhaps this really is a sign of self protection? I guess with social media comes a sense of danger. Like they always say, whatever you put online is there forever. Even the controversial Alexis Tsipras is like everyone else online. Alexis is someone who goes against all of the norms of a politician, yet his feeds still consist of the regular posts (with a motorbike picture now and again).
Just like my first post talking about the similarities of the US and the UK, looking at social feeds tells you the similarities of online politics or… policlicks; lovely shameless plug there.
Some days I do wish for everyone to break the trend, for world leaders to just g all out and share funny cat videos. who wouldnt want to see Putin cooing over a cat video? its got to be the stuff of dreams.
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