A staple in American culture is the importance and right of electing a president. Voting through years of progression has gone from starting with strict precincts of the past to all classes of people gaining the permission to vote being the norm. The new wave approaching, in regards to voting, is social media. The relatively young platforms serve as an outlet open to everyone that allows facts to be shared, opinions to be discussed, and news to break out.  With the success of certain public media types like, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter those who weren't involved had to catch up. The newcomers to social media are the older generations who were not exposed to this level of technology in their youth. Now with all the factions of citizens flooding into the media it has become the quickest way to access potential voters through marketing. With politics entering the picture more diplomatic influences enter the realm of social media attracting frequent supporters, reporters, and commentators.  The media creates a mixture of the citizens who have voted numerous times, those who are just recently available to vote, and all persons in between. In reviewing the research it is evident through social media's ability to spread views, promote, and provide nearly instantaneous response denotes an overall positive effect in relation to political campaigning in the United States. 

Even with there being three main social media sources used for political advertisement they all cater different tactics. Facebook is a huge online venue for connecting with news, family, and politics. The site hosts around 190 million American users, and the collection of identity, age, gender, location, passions, and more is all given voluntarily through Facebook (Goldmacher, "Facebook the Vote"). The detailed information assists in the process of selecting possible supporters. Examining the report on what pages people like, who their friends are, the things they post about, and the posts chosen to share on their wall allows specific targeting. Zac Moffatt, whose firm now works for Rick Perry's campaign and Scott Walker's super PAC said "I can literally bring my voter file into Facebook and start to buy advertising off of that." Candidates can go directly to the source by creating their own page and circulating their plans and views publicly. Users interested in a candidate can view their page, analyze the specific information given, browse the posts, comment, and see other comments. If a viewer shares the same sentiment as a runner they can "repost" the information, which shares the post on their profile. The usual negative connotation of comments on Facebook, or social media in general, is the mean spirited and unsupported remarks. Political entrants have operates the page and examines the statements made. If they decide to allow a comment to stay it is an approach to see if there are true backers of their campaign. The followers will come to the defense of the runner, which brings more people associated with the topic or user to the argument and along comes free promotion to the page. Gaining followers and being able to track comments pertinent to the candidates' campaign can be a large help in seeing what policies work for the citizens that have interest in them. Placement of a well-timed viral ad, and the capability to roll with the memes, trigger discussions, and down votes that might spawn from ordinary citizens' engagement with the issues. Used as a testament to social media a picture of President Barack Obama hugging his wife after his victory became the most "liked" Facebook post, and most retweeted photo of all time. (Farrar-Myers, Vaughn) The usually age range for Facebook is extremely broad and can aid the older political applicants if they operated the site personally. To build success on social media presidential contenders need to have some familiarity with the app or website. Using a communications manager or other staff to run their personal account would not be authentic and take away from being fully effective. To achieve the particular connection with followers they need to feel like they know the candidate. Regardless of the power in the position of leadership someone has, their subjects will always want to remember that they still follow a regular person who personally means the best for the people. 

Relative to keeping a subjective relationship with others, Twitter is based on its intimate structure. Like a poet trying to fit a model of a haiku, a user logs on to Twitter and has to express themselves in 140 characters or less.  This set up corrals the writer into a position where they must find the balance of expanding an idea, but keeping more simplistic vocabulary, or shorting with thought while using a more extensive wordlist. The configuration of constructing a tweet places a larger thought process on the publisher while they try to suit the restrictions of the site. With a lowered word count, responses are almost immediate. Citizens have the control to mention quickly on a direct tweet from a candidate that they may agree or disagree with. The site gives the ability to view other comments on the same post, and the power to converse with them and vice versa. "Retweeting" is essentially sharing a post with the people who follow them and inflating the exposure of the tweet. In past times there were less people mentioning texts they have read in a journalists work compared to the vast numbers now. Twitter could enhance the rapid fact checking of candidate claims; allowing reporters to more easily scrutinize claims rather than simply passing them along. Voters using social media are reported saying they spectate more than they talk; many more read news stories that get shared or tweeted, and fewer actually generate their own. All suggesting the online conversation is continued by a comparatively smaller amount of voices, but consumed by a voluminous sum. The candidates who choose to maneuver Twitter as a platform have staff that screen and monitor the things they tweet. This has always been a necessity to make sure images stay intact, but Twitter's arrangement makes things different than the past methods. Press releases or larger scripts can have more contexts and diffuse some topics in one long speech. With the character limitation the staff has to make sure they are very focused and check the text intensely. Donald Trump is popular, but also controversial on Twitter during the current election. Whether people are joking about his hair, adoring him, or hating him, people are talking about him, it is still keeping his views relevant with a plethora of advertisement through tweets. It does not stop there as Donald uses his tweets to spark debate and hullabaloo by being blunt and honest in his opinions whether right or wrong. Recently he has negatively affected his image and this could play and role in the overall presidential election. Donald retweeted an unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz, Ted Cruz's wife, beside a headshot of Melania Trump, his wife. The caption read "No need to 'spill the beans' the images are worth a thousand words." The photos were rude and unnecessary for someone to create, and inappropriate thing for Trump to share to his 7.5 million Twitter followers. The pictures were a product of an earlier tweet from Donald that said: " 'Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!'

Ted Cruz quickly came to his wife's defense on Twitter.

Cruz wrote: 'Pic of your wife not from us. Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you're more of a coward than I thought. #classless." (Daily Mail)

This action was completely unrelated to the election and was uncalled for. Whether the argument is made for freedom of speech, or against people making boorish statements online, both come to one central point. The positive point of users displaying this type of vulgar behavior is that it gives a look inside to who they truly are. Granted Trump already had a reputation for being frank and seeming to not have a filter on his stances. This openness helps residents decide if they approve of this conduct and want to vote for him or not. Donald Trump's tweet will forever be on the Internet, just like every other person who uploads a statement. This new era of technology is letting officials express themselves and recaps on the fact that these authoritative figures are still human. 

A media outlet that has not had any major election mishaps, or ignited disagreements is Snapchat. A more controlled platform than Twitter when it comes to inspecting and monitoring content. Snapchat is a popular camera based form of communication and video chat. The main features include taking a picture, setting a timer for no more than 10 seconds, and either sending it to friends or uploading it to "My Story" which is a compilation of photos and videos linked to the users profile for 24 hours. Businesses have been using Snapchat to give behind the scenes look into events and promote brands. CNN, ESPN, Daily Mail, MTV, Comedy Central, IGN, Food Network, and People are just some of the companies who possess stories that can be viewed by the public. The app also asks permission to exploit location services of the user's phone. By utilizing location Snapchat checks if there are any live occurrences near that location to provide the handler a feed of the affair. This feature is mainly where campaigning comes into play. To have the luxury of Snapchat's "geofence" around an event the company pays them for the feature. If a debate or a certain occasion brings a candidate to a person's area they can check Snapchat for a live showing. The streams come from representatives of Snapchat, a person in partner just for the event, and even regular users of the app. This form of news is beneficial in letting the public feel more involved, almost like an on site reporter. Snapchat doesn't offer its data publicly, but didn't dispute claims that Sanders has the most people watching. One hundred million people use Snapchat daily, 86% of whom are under 35. (The Guardian) Twice as many 18-24-year-olds watched the first GOP debate on Snapchat as opposed to TV. (The Guardian) Bringing in more invested leaners into the political environment will help shape our future constituencies and leaders.

In considering the information amassed for my research I elected to build a stance on the argument of social media being a positive source in regard to presidential campaigns and the voters. The material has shown me connection and the voices that social media provides to not only he representatives running for office, but the people who have to live under our government's regime. We the people are the most important aspect of this country, not just the heads of government. This technical form of media can become a gauge for widespread opinion and to separate the useful and constructive commentary from peers and reporters. Times are shifting as well and this new way of campaigning proves that notion. The previous methods focused heavily on TV advertisements and messages. The techniques grow with the technology developed to distribute media. Noting that candidates were announcing their running via social media channels and the manufacture of political advertisement working with the new age media companies. The negatively centered arguments that come with social media were already present before applied to campaigning.. The problems like unsubstantiated opinions have the power to catch wind and form a crowd more so than before. This happens in life and cannot be avoided because we create this drawback as a human race. Wanting to control the expressions of the masses would be a step towards a dictator and is not what America is founded on. Ideas with little to no real proof for a long time have been announced, like the claims of people being witches in the 1960s. The truth comes to light because as a people we have enough intelligence to push to prove a logical answer, or accept the uncertainty while still forming opinions. With that being said this added voice for ideas with a deficient amount of proof is a freedom of speech that will not be relinquished anytime soon. The insight of an individual's unsupported comments can also give a more personal look into a specific thought process thought processes. The latest advertisement movement can pull candidates away from the uniform, uptight, and highly structured atmospheres of professional media types and places them in more of a communal, and personal field. This can allow, somewhat more than before, a true look into the character of a potential president. In this time and age that is exactly what Americans need, transparency. It is continuously said that society is not ready for complete honesty, which is hard to deny, but the current level of trustworthiness needs to be improved upon. As we grow in intelligence through education, technological advances, physical care, and others aspects of everyday life we disregard the need to grow as a nation. Coming together with people around the world and forming bonds as humans to further better lives is more important than any position of power, or form of currency. 
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