Welcome to the age of mobile technology, and welcome to the age of the savvy politician who knows how to flood your inbox begging for support. With more and more people tapping into the internet and mobile phones to get their current information; some politicians out there either know it’s the ideal way to get the youth vote or have a young staff who tells them how to get that emerging and crucial demographic.
Case and point, go to Barack Obama’s website and sign up for his newsletters, within minutes you’ll be receiving a greeting from him (or his staff) thanking you for your support, and on a daily basis you will be greeted with minute to minute updates from the Obama camp. You will be bombarded with emails from staff, Michelle Obama, and even some directly from Barack himself; I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw some from his kids either.
It seems in order to get the news out to people today is to tap into the technological market. But who hasn’t right now? Well I did my own little study and signed up for emails from all potential presidential candidates. Overall you still have a small percentage of politicians who have mastered this kind of marketing. Just by checking out your own state senators and representatives you can tell which ones are trying to take the new media path. Most politicians have their own website which is easily accessible but you can tell by the quality and the updates which one actually try to engage the viewer. Funny thing is a large percentage of people access the internet for their most up to date information, so it’s sad to see the lack of concern for keeping their sites current.
Another thing with mobile technology is that it is all about the headline that is presented. Most screens are 2 inches by 2 inches (if you are ever so lucky), and if you don’t have the headline that captures the people you need to then you are losing a large part of your audience. For the most part people will use their phones and other mobile devices to keep track of the latest daily horoscope and celebrity gossip rather than the crisis’s that are taking place across the world.
Over this past weekend I took the initiative to do a little research; go to the mall, look for people on their phones and ask what they are using them most for (without being too rude, of course). I got twenty five people to respond and the majority say they don’t use it to keep up on current events. Most common answers: texting friends and family, sending and taking pictures, talking to friends and family, playing games, checking the weather, checking traffic, checking emails, and browsing the headlines. Less than half even had the phones capable of going online, and some who have the function don’t even use it just because their monthly bills will increase tremendously. Some of the teens that I talked to stressed that point due to the fact that their parents get mad at the prices they end up paying if they do go online.
Even though there is so much hype about using various types of mobile technology, the majority of the population doesn’t have the means to purchase the equipment needed to utilize that kind of technology. Which branches off into a whole other issue that is the economy, but we can save that for another day. All in all it is still hard to get people informed even with all the technological advances that are in place. What we need are politicians with that kind of character and charisma that can translate through technology and into the people’s lives, and get everyone to start caring and get involved.