By Lamin Njie
Advancement in technology – the internet and by extension social media – has had a big impact on the political and socio-economic life of almost every country in the world in the past decade. America leads in technology advancement; so it would come as little surprise if the impact of the internet/social media is greatest in the country.
What’s the statistics?
According to the Pew Research Centre, around seven-in-ten Americans today use social media to “connect with one another, engage with news content, share information and entertain themselves”. The Washington DC-based think tank revealed at least 70% of Americans today uses some type of social media compared to 5% in 2005 when it began tracking social media use among Americans.
Who uses it?
As more Americans have adopted social media, the social media user base has also grown more representative of the broader population, according to the Pew Research Centre. Young adults were among the earliest social media adopters and continue to use these sites at high levels, but usage by older adults has increased in recent years, the centre said.
Social media and US election
American politicians are nowadays relying heavily on social media to get their messages across to voters. Because of its dependability in terms of audience, various social media platforms are being targeted.
“One of the reasons that the Obama campaign did very well in 2008 was because it was one of the first presidential campaigns ever to make use of a platform called Facebook. Facebook was founded in 2004. It was a relatively new tool still in 2008, but one of Barack Obama’s key strategists was one of the founders of Facebook and he and others helped the campaign understand how to use this platform as an organizing tool that campaigns had never before had a tool that they could use to engage voters so effectively, and a communications tool,” Joanna Weiss, Contributing Editor, Politico Magazine said while speaking to foreign reporters covering next month’s US election on the role of TV Ads and Social Media.
“And some media outlets actually, realizing how big a deal this was, they called 2008 the Facebook election. Little did they know what was coming,” she said.
In 2016, Donald Trump used Twitter in a different way and more effectively than any other candidate had before to bypass the media completely and get his message directly to the people, according to Weiss.
“He obviously is still doing that when he is president, he tweets all day and all night, lots of all caps, lots of exclamation marks, even when he’s in the hospital,” Weiss said, adding platforms such as Instagram are also being used.
The impact on traditional media (newspaper, radio and TV)
The rise of social media and its adoption in terms of advertising is having a big impact on traditional media in America, according to Joanna Weiss. The cost, for example, is far apart.
“A full-page ad in the newspaper or a television commercial is quite expensive. A digital advertisement on a website or a social media platform is much less expensive and easier to target. To give you a benchmark, I think a 30-second spot on prime time network TV would be at about $100,000 for one ad. You can spend so much less on a digital ad. The slide that we looked at before the show, that Facebook ad, that was like a $40,000 ad spend that was much more targeted and had the opportunity to be much more effective and you knew exactly how many people it reached,” Weiss said.
Although Americans’ knack for social media is growing and fast, traditional media still retains some importance in terms of advertising.
“Again, TV ads are still, campaigns are still spending money on TV ads because they do reach a certain demographic. Again, that older demographic, the people who are more likely to be watching cable TV, who tend to be, really at this point, almost 50 and over, if you’re really looking at the TV ratings,” Weiss said.
“There’s still an audience to capture and so there is money to be spent and those ads are very expensive. As digital advertising, not just from political campaigns, but from across the US economy, has migrated as advertising has migrated from TV and newspapers and magazines to the digital world, a lot of media outlets have struggled,” Weiss said.
There’s every indication social media will only continue to grow more and more popular. As this happens, more and more people’s eyeballs and attention would be taken away from traditional media which could present more problems for them.
