Presidential PR with Social Media

During the last election, Barack Obama got plenty of publicity for his social media and its role in his success. Obama was all over it: Facebook, Twitter, iPhone app, the works.

Looking at elections in other nations over the past several years, it is clear that Obama has not been alone in trying to win votes online. In 2007, the candidates in the French presidential election battled online as well as on television. Nicolas Sarkozy had a complex, 17-channel video site, while Segolene Royal built a blogger network, encouraging supporters to blog on various topics related to her campaign (there was also a short0lived but highly popular website called DiscoSarko, which allowed visitors to select various tunes and have a flash image of Sarko boogie down to them -- see below).



But today, even leaders in nations that used to shy away from digital media in politics are embracing the Internet to connect with their constituents. For most of the 21st century, Russian politicians eschewed social media (instead, they were a popular tool among dissidents). But in the last few years, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has made a point of embracing the media channels most popular among his constituents. He began by producing a video blog, which he then started mirroring on LiveJournal, Russia's most popular blogging platform. And now, as Twitter makes inroads in Russia, Medvedev has launched his own Twitter account, @KremlinRussia (as well as a mirror account translated into English, KremlinRussia_E, to reach out to non-Russian audiences) in order to connect with more people online in a direct, personal way.

What do these developments mean for democracy around the world? Clearly, like any other type of media, social media can be manipulated in various ways for political means. However, it would be nice to hope that this is yet another step toward creating more transparent governments and presidencies around the world -- a system where leaders talk to the people not only through press conferences, but by texting from their cell phones as well.