Social  Media  on  e  Government  How  can  „Social  Media”  be  used  as  a  communication  channel  (A2C)  for  the  United  States  government  and  its  political  parties?  

Project Paper

Authors: Rolf Camacho Köniztalstrasse 14 3098 Köniz Matriculation number: 07-198-724

Mohit Kumar Chemin des Epinettes 53 1723, Marly Matriculation number: 09-205-907

Examiner Prof. Andreas Meier

Assistant Luis Terán

Date

30.11.2012

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Table of Contents

1   Introduction  ................................................................................................................  5  1.1   Background  and  Motivation  of  the  Thesis  .........................................................................  5  1.2   Problem  Statement  and  Research  Question  ......................................................................  5  1.3   Objectives  and  Output  of  the  Thesis  .................................................................................  5  1.4   Addressee  .........................................................................................................................  6  1.5   Procedure  and  Methodology  ............................................................................................  6  

2   Social  Media  ................................................................................................................  6  2.1   Types  of  Media  .................................................................................................................  6  2.2   Social  Media  Sites  .............................................................................................................  7  

2.2.1   Facebook  ...........................................................................................................................  7  2.2.2   Twitter  ...............................................................................................................................  7  2.2.3   LinkedIn  .............................................................................................................................  7  

2.3   Use  of  Media  Portals  .........................................................................................................  8  2.3.1   Facebook  ...........................................................................................................................  8  2.3.2   Twitter  ...............................................................................................................................  8  2.3.3   LinkedIn  .............................................................................................................................  9  

3   Government  agencies  ..................................................................................................  9  3.1   Importance  of  Social  Media  for  agencies  ...........................................................................  9  3.2   Social  Media  in  governments  ...........................................................................................  10  

3.2.1   Facebook  .........................................................................................................................  10  3.2.2   Twitter  .............................................................................................................................  11  3.2.3   LinkedIn  ...........................................................................................................................  12  

3.3   Usage  of  Social  Media  ......................................................................................................  12  3.4   Employee  Access  ..............................................................................................................  13  3.5   Social  Media  Account  Management  .................................................................................  13  3.6   Acceptable  Use  ................................................................................................................  14  3.7   Employee  Conduct  ...........................................................................................................  14  3.8   Content  ...........................................................................................................................  14  3.9   Security  ...........................................................................................................................  15  3.10   Legal  Issues  ....................................................................................................................  15  3.11   Citizen  Conduct  ..............................................................................................................  15  

4   Political  parties  ..........................................................................................................  16  4.1   Importance  of  Social  Media  .............................................................................................  16  4.2   Presidential  Election  ........................................................................................................  16  4.3   Social  Media  in  Political  Parties  ........................................................................................  16  

4.3.1   Facebook  and  Twitter  ......................................................................................................  17  4.4   Usage  of  Social  Media  ......................................................................................................  17  

4.4.1   The  Election  .....................................................................................................................  17  4.4.2   Democrats  and  Republicans  ............................................................................................  18  

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4.4.3   Promoting  individual  thinking  .........................................................................................  19  4.4.4   Social  media  activity  ........................................................................................................  20  4.4.5   The  Dangers  of  social  media  for  political  parties  ............................................................  22  

5   Conclusion  .................................................................................................................  24  

6   Bibliography  ..............................................................................................................  25  

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Table of Figures

Figure 1: Facebook U.S. Department of State (State Department 2012a) ............................ 10  

Figure 2: Twitter U.S. Department of State (State Department 2012b) ................................. 11  

Figure 3: LinkedIn U.S. Department of State (State Department 2012c) .............................. 12  

Figure 4: 8 Elements (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.2) ................................................. 13  

Figure 5: Which party runs social now? (O'Neill 2012) .......................................................... 18  

Figure 6: Social Networking Democrats (McGee 2012) ........................................................ 20  

Figure 7: Democrats and liberals who use social networking sites (McGee 2012) ............... 21  

Figure 8: Websites of Democrats and Republicans (Times Settle 2012) .............................. 23  

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1 Introduction

1.1 Background and Motivation of the Thesis Social media has grown exponentially in the last years. The use of social media enables the users to be part of a real time information exchange. An enormous amount of data is transferred between servers, which are the result of people sharing information.

There are different platforms to choose from, such as Twitter, Facebook and Xing. Even though they all follow the same basic principle, the exchange of information, they all fulfill a different role in the industry.

The aim of this thesis is to show how the U.S. governments and political parties can use social media, such as Facebook or Twitter, as a means to transfer information between the civilian and administrative population.

1.2 Problem Statement and Research Question Mass media has gained a strong foothold within the online information exchange. Facebook with over 1 billion users has the potential to reach a large amount of people simultaneously. Even though there are governmental agencies and political parties using these online services, there is still a lot of room for improvement.

The potential and danger behind this technology is disregarded and not used to its full potential. Governments have fallen due to the use of Facebook and Twitter, as this played a vital role in the Egyptian uprising, the “Arab Spring”. It is questionable whether the American administration has the Know-How to effectively and safely use this information tool.

Forbidding such a method of spreading information would result in a public outcry and suppression of public freedom. This is certainly not an answer, but the government has to learn how to effectively use these platforms. Romney has been heavily criticized for his opinion about the 47% of America, which worsened his public image (Madison 2012). This would not have happened, if he had taken several precautions.

The following questions will be answered in the following Thesis:

1. What use does social media bring governments in the information exchange? 2. How can political parties use social media as an effective tool to spread influence? 3. What dangers lie in using and accepting the use of social media?

1.3 Objectives and Output of the Thesis The objective is to analyze the use of social media within the American government. With this analysis, a better understanding can be reached on how governments use these tools to effectively communicate to the citizens.

The final result will yield how the government communicates with the American population.

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1.4 Addressee In recent years we have seen that, government agencies have realized more and more request from their employees about the use of social media at work place. However it is not easy for the government to allow their employees the use of social media (because of certain threats). Moreover governments using social media could make stronger leverage between government agencies and the public (A2C) within the USA. At the same time government, public and political parties could benefit form such a tool.

1.5 Procedure and Methodology Firstly there will be short overview that what is social media, and what kind of social media tools we could use in USA for government and political parties. However privacy and security threats, legal issues will be analyzed, and their more appropriate solutions. Moreover public preference will be considered for their chosen social media tool.

In addition we found and reviewed document policies and guidelines form the Internet, and from government agencies. Through this paper, we will be able to see the influence of social media networks on political participation.

2 Social Media

2.1 Types of Media There are currently many different types of sites in the World Wide Web. This paper will focus on three different types of mediums, which are used to share and spread information.

The first on is based on just information sharing. It is the simplest out of all of the social media family. This type does not focus on building a social profile, but relies heavily on users constantly uploading information. Not a lot of emphasis is on building a profile, but much more about user posts. This is a simplistic approach to making a just a communication channel. Twitter follows these qualifications.

The second is based on building a social network. Through this, information is stored on the profile, which can be accessed anytime by the user or the people allowed to view the users profile. This information usually consists of:

• General Information (age, location, work, preferred movies, etc.) • Pictures • Posts from friends • Own posts

The focus lies that not only can people comment on your so called “channel”, but also post comments on pictures or links which are posted on your profile. It is tightly integrated with communicating about everything you do with your profile. Facebook would be a good example.

The last is based not on your social life, but on your work life. Here lies the importance of creating a work profile, a medium with which potential partners or employers can view ones qualifications for future jobs and projects. There is no such thing as posts, but an integrated email client, with which members can communicate with each other. Such a service exists in

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the name of Xing. Especially created for the business environment. Information on your profile is based on:

• Educational Background • Past jobs • Current employment • Experience

This medium is built on the purpose to make it easier to find employees and employers. This simplifies the search for Know-How or attractive companies.

2.2 Social Media Sites

2.2.1 Facebook Facebook, originally known as „the facebook“, has reached a user base of over 800 million people with the simple idea of connecting individuals. What started with the thought of creating a student network for thousands of schools and universities in the U.S., evolved into a complex network accessible through everyone in the world. Not only has Facebook revolutionized the way people communicate with each other, it has also grown into a multi-billion dollar company. Mark Zuckerberg outdid the competition, not by just offering another platform, but by optimizing the website to make it interactive and socially accepted, and most important of all, free. “Founded in 2004, Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected.” (Facebook 2012) The social network’s wealth is not monetary, but it is the data stored on their servers. The information of collected from each person in Facebook is worth billions of dollars to thousands of companies. By gaining access to new client information, controlled and effective marketing strategies could be implemented at lower costs.

2.2.2 Twitter „Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest stories, ideas, opinions and news about what you find interesting. Simply find the accounts you find most compelling and follow the conversations.” (Twitter 2012). The real difference between Twitter and Facebook is that Twitter is more centered around conversations. There is a 140-word limit per message, so one can not write a long message to a friend. “Each Tweet is 140 characters long,” (Twitter 2012) All of this is based on fast information exchange, where everyone can be part of a new idea.

2.2.3 LinkedIn This social network is based on professional relationships between future employers and employees. „LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 175 million members and growing rapidly. LinkedIn connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals.” (LinkedIn 2012) It allows you to present yourself professionally to the world, raising your chances in the job market. Instead like Facebook, your account is based on information, relevant to your skills and experience.

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2.3 Use of Media Portals

2.3.1 Facebook Facebook is a way of communicating within a members or individuals of a community. It shows how people share their feelings within that community through liking, baby announcement, event creation, organizing different media types. But one question, which has always arisen is, why do people really use it?. According to a new survey by University of Boston, we all used such kind of tools to satisfy two basic human needs (Eler 2012). First: the need to belong and secondly: the need for self-presentation. In the past few years we have seen that the usage of Facebook has increased dramatically.

Facebook use is also influenced by cultural and socio demographic factors, which clearly shows the first basic social needs. When Facebook is used intensively the level of loneliness is reduced. However as said before, it is also fulfills the need of self-presentation. For instance if you quit Facebook for couple of months you would have missed those status updates, photos, videos from your friends and relatives and would not be able to share your thoughts on them (Laird 2011).

There are more than 1 billion Facebook network users worldwide (Facebook 2012a). Around 70% of Americans use Facebook. Most of them share their personal information like marital status, jobs, favorite movies and so on Facebook and about half of the young population in America get their news via Facebook. Around 48% of 18-34 years old check their Facebook right away, when they wakeup (Bustos 2012).

2.3.2 Twitter Twitter has more than 500 million users worldwide. Twitter gives a fast and quick pulse on news and events. Twitter makes all the things that are happening feel like it is closer to home, and it makes available the reach to a broader community (Handley 2009)

By using Twitter one could find out the truth behind big news through the opinion of different groups of people and also welcome the ideas on the topic of your interest. With the help of Twitter one can create a topic and get the feedback from people, who follow twitter. It is one of the best network to get in touch with and to get a better answer from the people.

Twitter is a micro blogging platform. One has to express in 140 characters about, what you are thinking about, what you are currently doing and what you are interested in?. Twitter helps to find serious focus group and interesting feedback mechanism. Followers have a choice to follow and unfollow a conversation or a person (Grant 2009)

Recent survey shows that what do you use twitter for? The result of that question ranked from most popular to the less popular. The data shows that 22% use Twitter for communicating and engaging, 18% use for retwittering links, 16% use for sending out links to sites where content is thought as valuable content, 13% use it for getting drive traffic information, 10% use it for creating friendships, 8% use it for creating more followers, 5% use it for developing leads, 5% other and last but not least 3% for customer service (Bullas 2012). Twitter has more than 106 million accounts, and the number of Twitter posts is increasing by 3’00'000 each day. Twitter gets more than 3 billions posts each day, which is generated by over 180 million unique visitors (Twitter 2012)

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2.3.3 LinkedIn LinkedIn is a professional social network with a dramatically increasing number of users every day. It connects you from your personal network to huge professional networks. The educated population and graduates see LinkedIn as a great network for professional opportunities and learning. However there are many more ways to use LinkedIn. According to a research, 642 people have been asked that why they use LinkedIn. The result was impressive, 11% people says that they use it for research and to find a job application, 15% people use it fort o find a job, 7% people use it to learn more about sales products, 57% people go through LinkedIn to help themself up-to-date with business contacts and last but not least 10% people use it to market their product or services (Gold 2012).

Moreover LinkedIn network helps to learn that how to use technology transformation from your workplace to your personal interest by sharing your ideas with your colleagues and diverse groups of people you do not even know. In fact in recent years we have seen that most of the HR manager use LinkedIn to find the skilled employees for the companies. LinkedIn made it easier for HR manager to find the desired person for a particular job because LinkedIn is a network, which is full of industry network specialist (LinkedIn 2012)

3 Government agencies

3.1 Importance of Social Media for agencies The intention to promote social media in government agencies has been to improve a real interaction between citizens and administrations. The transformation of government policy and behavior is important to make a proper information-sharing center. This way, the government can change their decision-making patterns. However, through the use of social media, inputs and preference for certain changes from the citizen can be taken into consideration.

As discussed earlier this is not an easy one-way process for the government to implement social media. The government has to plan strategic guidelines for applying social media in public sector. Moreover well balanced structures need to have a good implemented strategy, updated law and change in culture and practices. However in the last few years, government agencies work as a watchdog, because after allowing the use of social media tools within agencies, the danger of data breaches also rose, and this would restrict security and their functioning (Vgl. Godwin et. al. 2008). There are certain barriers for the use of social media. Firstly, there are cultural issues and a lack of a strategy for using these tools, because many agencies see social media as a technical issue instead of a communication tool. Secondly, In IT there could be a waste of employee time, a decrease in bandwidth left for other users. Third, almost all online sites need agreement on the terms and conditions from the owner, while this is difficult for government agencies to give such kind of access to their employees due to certain legal threats. Lastly, advertisement on government pages is looked down upon.

In the past few years the US government has changed their guidelines, rules for the social media providers. On January 2011, OLYMPIA, Attorney general have announced that Facebook has agreed to improve its terms and condition for federal and local government agencies, which are using social media tools (Vgl. Godwin et. al. 2008). The new guidelines

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also consist learning about federal compatibility terms of services agreement before creating a new social networking account for any government agency. Moreover the federal state has seen dramatic demand from their employees about using social media to do their work.

According a survey of CTG, University of Albany, It has been seen that there are three different ways for using social media tool at work. First, employees use it for official agency interest such as running a contest on behalf of the agency policy area. Moreover there could be many more ways to officially use social media, which do not include citizens. Second, employees use it for professional purpose, it implies to maintain coordination between agency and private parties. Third, employees are using this tool for their own personal interest, which has nothing to do with their professional life. In fact the question, which arise in front of the government agencies is how to identify that their employee are using these social media for their personal, professional or for agencies purpose, because every kind of use has different security, legal and managerial restriction. Now government agencies have to decide, whether that is good idea to allow their employees to access these online sites for the use of official agency or personal or professional interest, and to what extent it should be permitted to the employees. (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010)

3.2 Social Media in governments The Federal Government has become more and more confronted with the use of social media. New questions arise of how the government should use this communication channel.

Currently the U.S. government is using all three mentioned social networks. Although each is being used differently for different purpose, the same principal can be seen, which is communication. The Department of State will be analyzed here.

3.2.1 Facebook

Figure 1: Facebook U.S. Department of State (State Department 2012a)

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There are currently over 160'000 people who liked the U.S. Facebook page. This might seem like a large amount of people, but compared to the entire population of the United States, which lies at about “313’847’465 (July 2012 est.)” (Central Intelligence Agency 2012), it is rather small. The U.S. government actively posts videos and Information about current political ties with other countries, press briefings. Through using Facebook, the government can posts videos, pictures and text together on one post. Not only that, but anyone can post their opinion on any matter. Through this combination of different media types, the government has a quality based communication channel.

This enables the government to give people a large amount of information. Useful information such as the location of embassies or important events are one way the government are informing the people through social media.

3.2.2 Twitter

Figure 2: Twitter U.S. Department of State (State Department 2012b)

With Twitter the U.S. government took a different approach. As already mentioned, Twitter has a word limit, which means that this social media can only be used for quick communication. Here the government relies on communicating in short message with different people. Be it ambassadors or normal Americans. This is used to inform a large amount of people quickly about a new event happening or a meeting going to take place. The government seems to be using Twitter in conjunction with its own Websites. On Twitter only basic information is uploaded, but through the link, the user can inform himself/herself more about the post.

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3.2.3 LinkedIn

Figure 3: LinkedIn U.S. Department of State (State Department 2012c)

Here the United States informs who is currently being employed. Not only does this inform the American population who exactly is helping run the country, but it gives access to a mass market of future employees. This is perfect, since a government is always looking for new people, so this simplifies the search for qualified employees. It also brings a huge human resource pool to choose from.

3.3 Usage of Social Media There is quiet a problem with these social media tools and their usage. There are no clear guidelines for employees who work for the government. With the following tool, the U.S. government can ensure that the usage of these sites is optimized. Each state should not make their own set of rules, so the central government in Washington should list rules, which should be applied in each state.

According to Jana Hrdinová, Natalie Helbig and Catherine Stollar Peters in “Designing social media policy for government: Eight essential elements”, there are eight elements, which each government needs to consider, to have a successful social media policy. “Our analysis identified eight essential elements for a social media policy: 1) employee access, 2)account management, 3) acceptable use, 4) employee conduct, 5) content, 6) security, 7) legal issues, and 8) citizen conduct.” (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.2) This can also be viewed in a simplified graph. Which shows that each element is just as important as any other. Without one, there would be a gap in the circle, which therefore would make it incomplete.

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Figure 4: 8 Elements (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.2)

3.4 Employee Access Who should or should not be allowed to access social media related web pages. “Government agencies are managing access in two ways: 1) by controlling the number or types of employees who are allowed access to social media sites or 2) by limiting the types of sites that are approved for employee access” (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.3). This is important, because one way or another, not everyone should be allowed to openly speak about what he is doing. There is an amount of discretion, which each employee must follow. The CIA is one organization, where crucial information needs to stay within their own four walls. It would be a disaster if information about active employees in hostile zones were uncovered. So it is important to keep the amount of people who openly communicate with the public low in numbers. This way, the government has control and oversight over which information is released. Not only that, but by allowing fewer numbers of employees access to Facebook or Twitter, the internet will not be flooded with information, potentially confusing citizens. But by allowing key members, for example in the human resource department access to LinkedIn, qualified future employees can be found. So it is important to determine how each employee can bring value to the government by gaining access.

3.5 Social Media Account Management “Account management encompasses the creation, maintenance, and destruction of social media accounts.“ (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.6). It is important, that the government knows which accounts are created and used by important people. Making sure that the information is consistent with their policies and political views. “One strategy was to require approval by only one designated party, which was most frequently the public information officer.“ (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.6). Assigning a party, who will be in charge of the account management is preferred. This helps the government keep in control what information is posted and can best present itself to other countries. The agency in charge needs to make sure that also old accounts from ex-employees are removed. This helps with keeping information up to date.

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3.6 Acceptable Use “However, as the use of social media in government evolves over time, acceptable use policies may need to address the blurring boundaries around personal, professional, and official agency use.“ (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.7). It is important to define a clear set of rules, what employees are not allowed to use the social media sites for, when working. Chatting with friends or looking at their posts is not work related. These networks should serve purposes on the business / governmental side and not on the personal side. There should be a clear difference between using sites for professional purposes and using social media for personal gain. Although guidelines for acceptable use should not only be followed when just working, but the entire time. It is important that representatives of an agency always present themselves in the best manner. This means that also when on vacation or when at home, they should be careful about what they are posting, because this can have a negative impact on their work situation and agency. “Unlike the question of acceptable personal use during designated times or non work hours, the question of acceptable employee use for professional and official agency reasons remains complicated” (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.7).

3.7 Employee Conduct “In general, professional employee conduct is already governed by policies such as an ethical code of conduct that addresses what is “right” and “wrong” in terms of employees’ behavior, and sets out the consequences should a violation occur.” (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.8). This conduct can help employees and agencies remain on good terms with the public. This should not be disregarded, but very closely analyzed. Bad behavior or comments can put a whole organization under criticism. Many things such as racism, bad language, hurtful opinions should be avoided. “In addition to a standard conduct code that addresses things such as racially offensive language, some of the policies do address issues more specific to social media, including respecting the rules of the venue, striving for transparency and openness in interactions, and being respectful in all online interactions” (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.8). It remains important to respect other users’ opinion on what the agency. This helps shape important relationships with citizens, because they see that the organization is not arrogant and open to critique.

3.8 Content “The question of content management with respect to an employees’ professional and personal use is left largely unexplored in policy and guideline documents” (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.9). It is important for any agency to know which information is released to the public or to other agencies. Citizens and government employees do not need to know every single bit of information. They also do not need to know about secret documents, such as the army’s server or base locations. Of course not all information channels can be controlled and employees would not be happy if an IT-administrator was always checking on what they were doing, but they need to know how use these tools without risking information getting into the open. “Outside of official agency social media pages, these professionals are more and more engaging in work-related group discussions on sites such as GovLoop or Linkedin and leaving online comments in response to work-related topics on external blogs” (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.9). Each agency must give their employees courses on the dangers of posting valuable information on open sites. If secret documents were stolen

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through a hacked social media website, such as LinkedIn, there could be dramatic consequences for the person involved and the agency he/she is working for.

3.9 Security “Governments are working to develop best practices to ensure the security of their data and technical infrastructure in light of the new uses, users, and technologies related to social media use.” (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.10). With access to the world wide web and especially social media, arises the threat of security breaches. IT administrators can limit the amount of people who are allowed to access Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. This reduces the amount of people who can release information. If there ever was a security breach, it could also be easier tracked, because with less people who have access to these platforms, there is a higher chance of finding the suspect responsible for the security breach. “Minimizing and/or eliminating the addition of web links to other web sites, such as “friends”, to minimize the risk of exposing a government user to a link that leads to inappropriate or unauthorized material” (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.10). No matter how strong an antivirus software is or how well built the firewall is, it always the user who must make smart decisions to avoid being infected. A worm can bring down an entire agency, this can become a very big problem, if users do not know how to properly use the web and especially these sites. Through courses and seminars, employees can be made aware of how to responsibly use their computers and for example not click on unknown links.

3.10 Legal Issues “The use of social media tools raises the issue for many agencies about how to ensure that their employees are abiding by all existing laws and regulations.” (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.11) Each employee has the responsibility to abide the law, whether it is while working or outside of the office. It is important to make employees aware that most of the work information, which they post on Facebook or Twitter, is not theirs. Therefore disclaimers have to be used to avoid lawsuits. Freedom of speech is also very important. “Some policies proactively address potential legal issues by requiring the use of various disclaimers on social media sites.” (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.11) People who manage the Facebook site of for example the state department cannot just undermine anyone voicing their opinion on a certain matter. That would go against one of the basic principles of the U.S.: Freedom of Speech.

3.11 Citizen Conduct “Social media sites, unlike more traditional media such as newspaper or radio, allow for instant two-way public communication between government and citizens.” (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.12) Each agency must accept the freedom of speech and opinions of any follower. That means that bad comments can fill up the entire Facebook fan page. Through a conduct, each agency knows how to deal with comments, without angering more people. There are not only rules for the agency, but also for the citizens who post information. “These rules generally refer to limitations on offensive language, inciting violence, or promoting illegal activity” (Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters 2010, p.12) Having a clean site shows that the agency is serious about what it is doing and can therefore offer a good environment for information gathering.

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4 Political parties

4.1 Importance of Social Media In the U.S. both parties, Democrats and Republicans, are using social media to make their opinion open and clear to the citizens. There was a smaller role of social media in the political parties campaign four years before (Vgl. Fox News 2012). However now social media has been playing a vital role for both the parties. On one hand democrats are showing their prime time speeches live on the web, while republican have hired bloggers and communicators to engage directly with the people on the Internet.

Facebook and Twitter both have already shown their interest in the convention. During the last four years social media has been widely changed. According to a press media the tweets in 2008 Election Day are equal to a six-minute tweets of a single day now (Vgl. Fox news 2012). Political parties are allowed by social media to control their messages, and then these messages have been put through an online network of a friend, which helps political parties to create a credibility value for the citizens. A smartphone application has been released by democrats to provide videos, photos, blog posting. This application can also helps visitors to find conventional location, hotels and restaurant etc.

By using Facebook, the Democratic Party can directly communicate with the people who are for Obama. “We shouldn’t hold the middle class hostage while Congress debates tax cuts for the wealthy. Let’s begin our work by actually doing what we all agree on: Let’s keep taxes low for the middle class. And let’s get it done soon—so we can give families and businesses some good news going into the holiday season." (Democratic Party 2012) This is important information, which the democrats, especially the president, want to share.

4.2 Presidential Election In the 2008 presidential election, we have seen that the main factor, which has played a major role of Obama winning, was the social revolution such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (O’Neill 2012). The U.S. has the highest number of Internet user in the world. Moreover a political campaign is more or less a marketing and advertising campaign. Recently we have seen form both of the parties that online web and social media is no longer to be neglected, mainly because of widely access to online services and technology (Vgl. Daryn 2012). In fact social media can no longer be used just as a base of a political polling.

Recently the US presidential campaign shows that web 2.0 has moved on to a very successful tool of communication for political parties. With the help of social media networks, it has become easy to interact with the voters (Vgl. O’Neill 2012). After using social media networks, the younger population within US could be inspired by the political parties through posting topics and debates.

4.3 Social Media in Political Parties Each political party has used social media in different scenarios, such as during the election to gain followers or use social media to promote individual thinking among members. Using social media as a motivational factor can also help to get more people to vote, so that the Democratic or Republican party can move into the white house.

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4.3.1 Facebook and Twitter The Democratic Party got the voting engine started by convincing not only republicans to vote for Obama, but also get their own people to vote. Not the entire +18 population does go vote, this happens in every country, so the Democrats have to help them get motivated so that as many people as possible go to the voting polls. “Five other ways you can get out the vote for President Obama today: http://www.barackobama.com/do-something“ (Democratic Party 2012).

With using Twitter, short messages are enough to get everyone to vote. “Every vote counts. If polls are still open in your state (http://www.barackobama.com/lookup ), please go #VoteObama—and bring someone along.”(The Democrats 2012).

Both social media tools are used for trying to outdo the other party and gather as many voters as possible. Through social media they, the republicans and democrats, can directly interact with the people they need to win the election.

4.4 Usage of Social Media The usage of social media does not seem to be that different between governments and political parties. The same rules apply with how political parties should handle information and who to trust. This was already covered in chapter 3, so this chapter will focus on the presidential election of 2012.

4.4.1 The Election Political parties use social media tools for their political campaign and for political strategy. As we have seen in the 2008 presidential election, president Barack Obama used online and social media networks to reach the voter, and he has been successful in doing so. The Political campaign of 2008 clearly shows that online and social media network has huge potential for the political parties to reach their goal quickly. Political parties put their agenda through social media in front of the citizen and get their response and feedback (Vgl. Stieglitz, Brockmann & Dang-Xuan 2012). By using social media, political parties ask their opinion from the supporters and form the people about their choice. However political parties are now using social media application for mobile devices, because after using such kind of methods, voters can be influence by their friends and families when it comes to the voting,

According to the Atlantic there are some concrete, specific things we actually know about how social media shape election (Vgl. Meyer 2012). First people and campaign mostly use social media for dissemination and not for dialogue, political parties just push their message out without any clear filtering. Second, during the campaign period, campaign websites remain the main hub of US presidential campaigns. The reason was very clear because these websites serve to donate money and for followers to join a community. It is much easier to find the right people through official campaign websites and social media sites. Third, non major parties sometimes tends to converse more on twitter because it could help the major party by using twitter likes, re twitting etc. Fourth, the political knowledge doesn’t come through online political discussion because political group users do not share much new information. There seems to be a trend, that part of the information discussed upon is false and inappropriate. Around 25% of Americans spent their time on the Internet on Facebook, 15% of the population spends their time on twitter. Three-quarters of Americans, which are on the Internet, use social networks (Vgl. Meyer 2012).

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The Democrats used Facebook to not only get people to vote for them, but to actually get help from these very same people to convince other Americans to vote for Obama. “There's still time to get voters in battleground states to the polls. All you need is a phone and an Internet connection to have a direct impact on tonight's result. Start calling.” (Democratic Party 2012)

4.4.2 Democrats and Republicans

Figure 5: Which party runs social now? (O'Neill 2012)

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As we can see, the graph above shows that the 2012 US presidential election was much more advanced in using online media from a social media point of view. This year both Democrats and Republican use social media to explore their voice and sentiment (Vgl. O’Neill 2012). In the graph, we can see that the Democrat Obama and the Republican Romney seemed to be using using Twitter about the same, but Obama has a clear lead in Facebook. When it comes to Sentiment, Obama has a small lead compared to Romney, when it comes to the population liking them and not liking them on Facebook and Twitter.

Moreover forums like Facebook and Twitter should be more transparent to help people understand the difference ideas each party stands for. The reason is very clear because social media sites have different kind of users with different thinking, different views, and different opinion, which will influence the users around them (Vgl. Meyer 2012). Each user wants to know more about the reality and this leads to them choosing which candidate they will vote for. The fundamentals of a democracy states, that each and every part of information should be accessible to everyone during the election.

There is difference between political knowledge and political participation. With a high political participation, the party shares a large amount of information and actively communicates with its members. In fact in recent years political parties use social media networks to clarify their agenda and that they are not trying to hide anything from the voters.

4.4.3 Promoting individual thinking Political parties use social media to promote individual thinking by sharing knowledge, opinions and ideas with each other. Social media helps political parties express their own opinions and promote citizen participation to help them during the election phase. US political parties are among the leading parties who use social media networks as instruments more often for their campaigns. As we have seen in 2008 and 2012 during US presidential election, president Barack Obama has successfully deployed social media with both his presidential election campaigns. It is very important for political parties to join social media to help their citizen to have better insight in their agenda. The United States is a country, where the young population has a high amount of access to social media sites and online information mediums. The rise of web 2.0 has immensely transformed the world and has increased the relevance of the Internet for the political parties in the communication sector. Moreover it became normal that social network disseminate very important information for political parties. Political parties want to catch the insight of their citizen to listening them via Facebook by public sharing, via micro blogging ( for example Twitter) and last but not least by political blogging (Vgl. Stieglitz, Brockmann & Dang-Xuan 2012).

Social media also indirectly decreases the expenses of political parties with since there are less long-term costs to be considered in using Facebook or Twitter. Using newspapers or other print medium costs a lot of money, because you have to pay the owner of the medium a fee. This is not the case with Facebook or Twitter, since both social media sites are free to use. The main focus lies on the young and middle aged population via social networks (because they are some of the highest Internet users) rather then the older aged population, who don’t use social media platforms often. Political parties use YouTube (a video sharing platform) by providing information to the population who have access to the internet. In the past few years we have seen a huge number of views on YouTube on the video form political parties. Nevertheless this kind of social platform gives in short videos a clear

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overview of what political parties stand for, for example whether they are for or against the war on terrorism. Now the young generation spends their time not to watching TV or reading newspaper, but by using online social network. “The Internet has passed television in the amount of time spent a week, the Web portal and media firm found in a report called “Born to Be Wired” released Thursday. Young people, ages 13-24, spend an average of 16.7 hours a week online, excluding e-mail, compared to 13.6 hours watching TV. After TV viewing, they listened to radio for 12 hours, talked on the phone for 7.7 hours and spent six hours reading books and magazines for personal entertainment.” (Weaver 2012)

So we can say that now Internet makes it easier for political parties to directly engage with the citizens and openly communicate with them the importance on voting for them and what benefits they can bring.

4.4.4 Social media activity In 2012 US election, Democratic Party was more active on social media networks compared to the Republican party. This year political parties use social media to make their campaign more successful and to reach as many citizens as they can and also to see the point of view of there contestants of on these social media sites. If we compare Democrats and Republicans, the Democratic Party are more likely active and followed by citizens on social networks, which basically means that they have successfully engaged themselves with the citizen (Vgl. McGee 2012). Moreover with the help of following graph we can easily understand that, how the social media affect the behavior of the citizens.

Figure 6: Social Networking Democrats (McGee 2012)

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It could be that due to the conservative mental state of the Republicans, that they do not yet fully accept the Internet as an important platform and Democrats openly accept new channels faster. This needs to change for the Republicans, so that they can gain more influence in the different media sectors.

Figure 7: Democrats and liberals who use social networking sites (McGee 2012)

It also seems that due to the higher importance of websites to democrats, they have a feeling of being more involved. This could be due to the fact that websites can be accessed from at home or at work. Different devices ease the participations in-group discussions, such as personal computers and even mobile devices, such as smartphones. So they have can spend more time on several issues, whereas the people who do not use the Internet, have to go to meetings. Such meetings and get-togethers are more time consuming and cannot be done everywhere at any given time.

Allowing members to be apart of something and take part in discussions help a party to become more transparent. Questions can be answered and the overall communication channel becomes better than just using television networks, where one person gets to make a call and ask a question to the television moderator.

It is also important to note, that this can be a very important motivational factor for voters. If a voter really feels that he is actively being apart of something, there might be a higher chance of him going to vote to make a difference. During the 2012 election, more people voted for

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Obama. This could have happened because maybe his party was able to motivate them more to not only vote, but also vote for the Democrats.

4.4.5 The Dangers of social media for political parties However it is not always the case that social media helps political parties for the campaign, because sometimes it gives rise to negative information as well. On July 21th 2012, the Washington state democrats home page featured news linked to three unfavorable stories about the presumed republican nominee Rob McKenna – the Washington state attorney general. On the same day, The Washington state Republican Party home page featured a video criticizing likely democratic nominee Jay Inslee from resigning the US representative seat to run for governor. This video appeared along side an article titled “Irrelevant facts by Jay Inslee” (Oviatt 2012). Through this incident, both parties suffered from negative attention on their official Facebook and Twitter pages about the candidates.

Nonetheless, It seems that the visitors of political party website and social media network pages of these political groups will not be satisfied by updates or comments. So any negative information can have a bad long-term influence on the followers.

It is of the upmost importance that parties should be careful about what they post, because of the backlash from the user base. One could blame that Romney received too much negative social media coverage and that this might the reason he lost the election. "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it -- that that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. ... These are people who pay no income tax. ... My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." (Madison 2012). This comment has caused a great amount of criticism against Romney, making the Americans think, that he does not care about the working class. One could argue that this speech played a major role in the election. It was not the working classes fault, that they were facing harsh times in the economy and needed support from the government.

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Figure 8: Websites of Democrats and Republicans (Times Settle 2012)

The above picture shows how each website uses feeds, videos and headlines to spread information to their followers. Each party needs to be very careful about what is going to be posted on the website, so that the same thing, which happened to Rob McKenna does not happen again.

Any information, which is put on the Internet, is very hard to get rid of. Immediately when people are able to access something, which means that there is no more control over the data, because there are various tools, which can be used to copy the Information. Screenshots can be taken of websites, paragraphs can be easily copied to word files. It must be crucial for any administrator to always control what kind of documents will be uploaded.

Another danger lies within the speed at which information travels. Due to the Internet, in less than 24 hours an entire nation can be informed that a political member held a racist speech at a convention. Politicians must now be even more careful about what they say in public. Due to new technologies, information can be recorded on mobile devices and immediately be uploaded to Twitter or Facebook. The phone apps for these web services support video playback and upload, making the tools to sharing digital information even faster and easier.

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5 Conclusion Each government must be careful which steps it takes to integrate itself more into the social media era. It is important that governments can see the potential behind such a big system and use it correctly to satisfy not only its own needs but also those of the citizens. The potential to actively spread information through a cheap and extremely fast network, outdoes what televisions and newspapers have been doing for years.

It is of the upmost importance that governments and agencies keep investing time and money into quality networks. Through working together with citizens, the administration can gather a great amount of information. For example during a storm, through carefully filtering the most important information, a large amount of quality data can be gathered to assess the situation and organize better relief plans to help the victims.

Even if these social media networks have a lot of upsides, there is also one big downside. Governments have fallen with the help of Twitter. It is important that governments do not restrict their citizens and do not try to block their opinions. Citizens want to express their opinions on what the administrative group is doing with the country. Even if the government gets criticized, it will have to use this information to make better policies and regulations. The administrative group is there to serve the citizens and not the other way around. Through using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, the administrative department can not only gain a large amount of useful data, but also get feedback for implemented strategies.

Creating a uniform relationship between the government and citizens was hard to do, because of the limits of reaching out to everyone at the same time. This hurdle has become easier to overcome, through the invention of social media. Without these barriers, the government can better represent the people and find out which facts really matter to the citizens.

 

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