New Media: Beliefs, Ethics and Politics

In 2004, Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook as a way to connect with fellow students. Initially adopted by high school and college students, the social network, according to its 2012 initial public offering filing, has grown to 845 million active users worldwide, with approximately 161 million active monthly users just in the US, making it the premiere social media service in the world (Safranek, 2012). More recently, this same social forum has been used for our leaders political campaigns. Two case studies from different political circles are discussed below.

Since the internet became more widely spread in the early 1990s, the world's networked population has grown from the low millions to the low billions (see internetworldstats.com, 2012). Some of this shift can be attributed to new forms of social media which provide a medium for user-generated internet content (Leung, 2012). According to Louis Leung (2009), these types of sites are popular, as people want to be heard and to express themselves in a social way. Social media provides a two-way platform for them to speak out and be heard.

As social media has become more widespread, so have its users - regular citizens, activists, non-government organizations, telecommunications firms, software providers, and governments to name a few. Each of these individuals and organisations brings with them a new set of knowledge and influence. While the anonymity of the net can produce some less than savoury results at times, the speed and ease of drawing a group of people together is just one way the internet is has become successful in the political sphere (see Shirkey 2011). Politicians have made use of these new media tools to engage with their followers, influencing their thoughts and behaviours through 140 characters. Additionally, social media platforms allow communication directly to politicians or their offices.

The most efficacious example in recent years was Obama's 'Yes we can' campaign, which resulted in 28 million followers on twitter and more than 35 million likes on Facebook. Rather than use social media as another platform to broadcast similar news, Obama's team saw their social media channels as an enabler, a way to foster a community of likeminded people, says Kerison (2013).

Another way politicians have reached their audience is by personalising their posts and again, Obama holds the greatest record. After the US 2012 elections, Obama's twitter read '4 more years' with a photo of the President hugging First Lady Michele Obama. After 54 minutes, the post generated more than 318,000 retweets (shares of the original post), resulting in generating the most retweeted tweet in Twitter's history (REFERENCE).

In January of this year, the possibility of a September election was communicated to a nation, the part of the nation that uses twitter to follow politics. After Obama's success in The States, a number of countries have begun following suit, some with more success than others. Many agree Julia Gillard could capitalise on the new media platforms