How Digital Media Have Changed Politics

Critically discuss how digital media have changed politics, by examining the ways in which political parties and governments have used the Internet as a tool in their political communication. You may want to focus on one country.

Introduction

For a long time TV News channels had great influence on the people around the world, and they were significant sources of information for the society. However, recent developments in mass media have changed the situation. Since the World Wide Web has been designed in the early 90s, the Internet as a new medium has been growing at the ever-progressing speed. Due to its rapid growth, the Internet has turned the world into a Global Village, consequently changing a large number of our life spheres, amongst which is - the political field. Undoubtedly, the new media possesses a huge political potential. After the 2000s gave us MySpace, Facebook, Youtube and Twitter, political parties and governments started effectively using those means to interact with the publics. But what are the changes, positive or negative, which were brought in by the Internet? Did it affect the electorate and also the quality and effectiveness of presidential campaigns and polls? I will try to provide a comprehensive, however shortened answer to this question, because the length of the assignment does not allow for a detailed research. To start with, an overall definition of the Political Communication will be given. Then, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign will be set as an example of political usage of the Internet (a research carried out by Leuschner, 2012). Finally, the changes (general and societal) will be shown, based on Obama’s example.

Political Communication defined

Political Communication clearly is one of the biggest fields in the area of Journalism and Mass Communication, and they are closely linked. Different countries in the world use different types of Political Communication, depending on whether they are capitalistic, communistic, economically developed or not. But especially dependent on PC are the democratic societies like the USA (Riaz, 2010). However, despite being so clearly important, there is no unified definition of this subject. Some scholars, for example Denton and Woodward, argue that political communication is about intentions of its senders to affect the potential receivers (Riaz, 2010). They state: “the crucial factor that makes communication 'political' is not the source of a message, but its content and purpose” (Denton & Woodward, 1990 as quoted in McNair, 2012). Brian McNair himself notes that “political communication is purposeful communication about politics”, meaning that PC as a whole is not only about verbal or written communication, but also about such visuals as logo design, dress, hairstyle or make-up - everything what constructs "political