Politics and Social Media - who would of thought?

Who would have thought that politicians would understand let alone use Social Media? Politicians and 'Cool' don't really normally go hand in hand. Well, if like me you don't like all the ads at election time and the endless 'debates' on traditional media, the politicians are coming to get YOU!!

In recent elections, politicians have used TXT, twitter, Blogging, My Space, Facebook and their favourite platform You Tube to spruik their messages to those of us who really don’t want to listen. There have been some very interesting clips during these election campaigns as politician’s try to understand how to capture this audience’s attention. Initially the tried and tested boring ad campaigns were used to little effect, but things are changing. Here is an unusual You Tube clip that I had to share it.

Personally when I saw this my first thoughts were the links between Hitler and concentration camps.  Surely, an educated woman like Hilary Clinton did too, yet she put her name and face to this clip. Whereas the successfully elected Barrack Obama had his own series of You Tube clips featuring ‘Obama Girl’. The publicity that these caused for Obama during the election certainly didn’t harm his reputation. Here is one of the first released:

As the old saying goes ‘Sex sells’ and this young lady is definitely using her feminine wiles to ‘sell Obama’. But I must state that apparently she wasn’t an official member of his election campaign. Another common thing in politics is parody. We have all seen comedians and cartoonist impressions of politician’s over the years but You Tube means that these parodies can carry across the world so we can all have a giggle at politician’s anywhere. I could not discuss politics without including at least one parody and Sarah Palin is an easy target:

So that’s how the American politicians have used social media. I will now look at Australia. Bob Hawke and Paul Keating were Prime Minister’s before the advent of You Tube but I am sure there isn’t an Australian around who had never heard some of their one liners. Lucky for us someone has put a few to music:

I am sure if You Tube had been around in their election days they both would have had innovative campaigns. But would they compare to Kevin 07? Kevin Rudd was a pioneer in Australian politics as he used all media throughout his campaign and as Prime Minister also. He wasn’t afraid to go on ROVE and joked openly about the PM skit that was shown on their regularly. I know I enjoy laughing at silly things politician’s say and do (see previous blog with George Bush’s sayings) and Kevin Rudd is one of the funniest especially when he selling to us his ‘fair dinkum aussieness’.

 I could show you so many more political clips but think I have said more than enough about politician’s so until next time….