Final Project

I decided to use a meme for my final project, and relate them to how political candidates use social media during a campaign.  Memes allow a concept to quickly spread, and when used on the internet, they are usually intended to be funny.  I think humor is important for retaining the idea, if the person finds it funny, it gives the person another way of remember the idea.  It is easier to recall information when you have more than one "path" to the memory and thinking something is humorous can provide that second path.  Humor also provides a common ground for people and a way to encourage people to share the information.  And if you don't find it funny or thought provoking, you quickly move onto the next one.  I created these three myself, based on two popular memes.

I picked the Futurama Fry meme because I like the show, but mainly because it is intended to ask questions that people may have, and because the answers they have in their minds are too surreal to give enough credence to say out loud, they are left wondering the answer.  It is about the cognitive conflict between what we believe and what we want other people to think we believe.  I'm not sure if the meme is that deep, or I just over analyzed it.

The second meme is the Success Kid, and it is about celebrating little victories in life.  If you follow a candidate on Twitter or Facebook, you are telling everyone, that cares to know, which side you are on, and some people can become very polarized.  Friends might be disappointed to learn that you are Conservative or Liberal.

Photo Essay

Link to the essay:  http://cspearsdigitalmedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/church-and-state.html

This photo essay was taken at a church in Columbus Ohio, which was acting as voting place, and it was taken on Election Day.  The purpose of the essay was to show how a religious place was being used for a government event.  Unfortunately there were not many people at the church when we visited it, I assume because it was in the middle of the day, and most people were at work.  Because of the scarcity of people, the church itself became the focus of the essay.  Many shots were from different sides of the church with indications of Election Day such as flags and small signs guiding people to the voting entrance.  Some photos were shots of cars in the parking lot that had stickers for either President Obama or Mitt Romney, and political signs from across the street for local candidates, which had the church in the background.

Infographic Revision

The purchase of car in usually going to be the second largest a person is going to make in their lifetime behind buying a house.  The auto industry is one of the largest in the world; it wields a certain amount of political power.  The information for this infographic came from polling car owners in the state of Michigan, where a lot of people are employed by the auto industry.  The Auto Union has been a strong proponent for voting and especially for the Democratic Party, which is why I found it interesting that most of the Detroit brands, with the exception of Lincoln were on the Republican side of the spectrum.  The Republican Party was strongly opposed against the bailout that many have agreed, would have ended two of the three Detroit companies and the many companies that supply those two.  In his reelection campaign, President Obama used his decision to bailout those companies, and its success to show that his policies were better fitted for the current economic climate then Mitt Romney’s policies, which was in favor of a structured bankruptcy.  Those points helped President Obama secure wins in states that had high numbers of auto workers which included the key swing state of Ohio.

This infographic is meant to be very simple, only two sides, either the brand was on the Democrat side or the Republican side.  It was not my intention to show how liberal or conservative brand owners, as a whole, were going to be, but simply show that the brands have more owners that support one party over the other.  The brands are listed from top to bottom by how likely their owners are to vote, and the spaces in between are to give the reader an idea of how much more likely or less likely a brands owner are to vote compared to another brand.  A Cadillac owner is more likely to vote than a Chevrolet owner, and a Chevrolet owner is more likely to vote than a Hyundai owner.

Twitter Revisited

When I learned we were going to use Twitter in class, I was relieved because I had used it before, but felt that there was more to learn.  I've had a Twitter account for years, even though I hardly tweeted, I wasn't even sure how to properly use hashtags.  When it came to using Twitter in class, we focused on how the political candidates used it in their campaign.  When the President tweeted personally, he signs bo at the end.  Looking through his tweets, you aren't going to see many with bo at the end, showing that most of the tweets were composed by staff.  I doubt Romney was any different, but that isn't surprising and with all the candidates had to do during the campaign, it is understandable that they didn't have time to tweet.  I learned how Twitter can be a good way to gauge certain topics, and get quick opinions from people.  I used Twitter to get news and sports updates and during the election, it became hectic with people tweeting about the results.  While most people were watching the results on TV, I was watching the results online.  I had both the New York Times website and the BBC News site on tabs, and I would periodically switch to them when a state went to one candidate or the other, and I then went to Twitter to see people's reaction.

This first photo is of President Obama's tweet soon after securing victory in the election.  The number of retweets is over 800,000, those people wanted to tell all their followers that they are happy with the President winning the election.

This second photo comes from Mitt Romney's Twitter page, and as of December 9th, these are the last tweets posted.  The November 6th tweet was asking people to vote for him, and then he didn't tweet for another 4 days and that was to thank people for their support.  What is interesting is how the tweets basically stopped when the election ended.  It was clear that the Romney camp used Twitter solely for the campaign, which isn't surprising.  I sure Romney didn't wrote many tweets himself, and campaign staffers composed the account.  Without the election there is no need for the account to be updated.  It wouldn't be a bad idea for Romney to keep up with Twitter, I'm there are plenty of people that still want to hear what he has to say.  He is still in a position to help his party, but they should come from him personally.

Twitter is a good tool to get your message out, but it is limiting to what you are able to say.  I think Twitter should be used to direct people to other sites that can post the entire text.  I will continually use Twitter, and while I won't be getting anymore campaign tweets, at least for another 4 years, I will still use it to find news stories and sports updates.