During the 2008 Obama presidential campaign, volunteers help develop a “Call Friends” application feature which helps organize contacts in swing states, so that the user would find it easier to call friends and families to “make sure they are registered and voting for Barack.” Other features include up-to-date news, video and photos made available to help convince potential voters.
A co-developer Raven Zachary states that “This would be a beginning of a new wave of mobile technology, designed to help political candidates.”
Why the shift to use of the latest technology in politics? When did it start, and was it a gradual process? And most importantly, it is really effective on the audience?
Firstly we have to understand that the developing of the iPhone tool is a wise insight in the case of Obama’s campaign managers. They took the chance in delving in the fact that the iPhone is a new and popular device especially among young adults (who, remember - are of voting age!) to bridge a ‘deeper’ connection with them and improve voting turnout amongst the 18-24 age category (Sloustcher 2008).
To make use of the iPhone application tool effectively, the campaign managers have to understand the genre conventions and change, from mainstream media to a more private and individual form which is to each voter personally. As different forms /genre bring with it a different social experience, therefore different meanings are applied onto the genre.
The function of this application tool should be matched with its users’ habits, expectations, and context of use (Penman 1998).
One cannot change the genre without changing the meaning, or the interpretation of the text. Whereas genre is decided by the audience, purpose and context factor, which differs for both mainstream media readers and the iPhone users.
In the latter, the audience would be the younger, more technologically updated working generation who are of voting age. The purpose of the creation of the application tool would be to update them on the advancement and news of the campaign as well as try to ‘convert’ them into Obama supporters and then to translate that into physical votes on campaign day. As for the context, it would be available for download to all iPhone users who are eligible to vote in the US.
Therefore the proper genre change should be understood to achieve the correct aims and goals
Oh, and did it really work on the audience? We would never know the real level of effectiveness, but it must have helped.
Obama won the presidential election.
References
Penman, R. 1998, 'Document structures and readers’ habits', Communication news, vol 11, no. 2, pp. 1 & 10-11.
Shiels, M. 2008, 'Obama uses iPhone to win support', BBC News, viewed November 16 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7649753.stm
Sloustcher, M. 2008, 'Obama iPhone App – Digital Propaganda or Communications Genius?', Pepper Digital, viewed November 16 2009, http://pepperdigital.typepad.com/pepperdigital/2008/10/obama-iphone-ap.html
