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Annotated Bibliography

How is Social Media used in political campaigning?

Derrick Greene Professor Malcolm Campbell English 1102 February 26, 2012

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Annotated Bibliography McGrath, Michael. Technology, Media, and Political Participation. National Civic Review 100.3 (2011): 41-44. Academic Search Premier. Web. 20 Feb. 2012. Technology, Media, and Political Participation is a peer-reviewed, academic journal written by Michael McGrath, the chief information officer and senior editor of the National Civic League (NCL). In this journal, McGrath focuses on use of technology, more specifically phones, is increasing to reach out to more youthful voters, primarily African American and Latino youth. In 2008, our country saw the largest turnout of youthful voters for a presidential election in history. When broken down further, African Americans had most participation with about 27.5 percent, while whites had about 24.9 percent, and Latinos were at around 17.6 percent. The digital divide, which refers to the difference between people and communities that have, and do not have, accessibility to information technologies, has seemingly been important historically as there has usually been difference in how people get their information. African Americans lag way behind white Americans when it comes to personal household wealth, but they are actually more likely to use cell phones (McGrath 41). With this information, ColorOfChange.org has enhanced their methods of communicating with their target audience. ColorOfChange.org is an online organization whose primary goal is to strengthen the political voice of African Americans. The president of this organization, Rashad Robinson, says that there is really no digital divide between African Americans and other communities, and therefore have taken advantage of the high cell phone use among this community. Robinson says youth do not live in places where they are going to have the door knocked on or do not have permanent addresses or do not easily have access to Internet, so the

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best way to reach them is through cell phones. Cell phones are a way to access the Internet without a computer, but it is also a way to help people quickly figure out whether or not they are registered to vote, where they can vote, where they polling location is, and send them maps to get there. Voto Latino is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civic engagement organization that was founded in 2004 by Rosario Dawson. This organization tried to encourage young Latinos to register, vote, and get involved. With phones and improving technology, they can physically go out and talk to these young Latinos, and if they choose to register, they can do so right there on the field team members phone, and the registration information will be recorded and linked to national registration files in real time. This saves them from going to the same places and same people to get them to register when they already registered that morning. Voto Latino also has a website that is to be linked to Facebook and is viewable and consumable on peoples phones. Voto Latino also plans on incorporating text campaigns to further strengthen their already strong use of phones and technology in campaigning to youth. There was a great deal of information in this journal, and McGrath is a very credible source as he is an editor of the award-winning National Civic Review, he is the organizations chief blogger, and has a Masters degree from UC Berkeleys School of Journalism and a Bachelors degree from the University of Texas, Austin. In this journal, McGrath puts a different spin on my topic as far as the way technology is used. Technology can be used in more ways than just Social Media to campaign, and here McGrath has demonstrated how cell phones are key in getting voters to the polls on Election Day. Cury, Lucilene. "Barack Obama's Election: Digital Media's Success?" Journal of US-China Public Administration 8.7 (2011): 830-838. Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 Feb.

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2012. This academic journal written by Lucilene Cury focuses on comparing the successes of American President Barack Obama and Brazilian 2010 presidential election candidate Marina da Silva through their uses of technology, especially social media, to gain support. Silva did not win her election, but just like Obama, who did win, Silva was able to steal the political scene in Brazil with her green wave which was inspired by Obamas use of the Internet in 2008. The election had been pretty much decided in Brazil in 2010, until Silva came out of no where with her online campaign and as a result took the election to a second round. Two ideas came about after further investigation of Silvas success: (1) Digital technology, mainly through social networks in the internet, publicizes, in an open and wide way, the candidate; (2) But it is necessary that this candidate presents a profile capable of convincing, statesman posture, intelligence, consistency with the ideals prized by the citizens, those being ecology, multiculturalism, acceptance of racial diversity, the capacity of offering a worthy and more human condition to the people, after all, a commitment with the social causes that motion the planets citizens in the year of 2010 of this century. Obamas success came through gaining support after generating videos with more than a million visualizations on YouTube and a base formed by 13 million e-mails, a network of 3 million individual donors, and about $500 million obtained online. Obamas success has already been mimicked by Silva, so it is clear that this will be a future tool of politicians. According to the article, Eric Messa, "In the social networks, it is needed to be discreet and appropriate. Rather hearing than talking. It is necessary to give the power of speech to the elector. Cury also agrees it is important to listen to citizens comments in social media.

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Cury is a professor at the University of So Paulo, So Paulo, Brazil, and her article is important to me because she covers how Obamas successes have already been mocked and shows that it wasnt just a one time, one campaign thing that worked for Obama. In fact, the use of social media will only increase from this point on. Preston, Jennifer. Republicans Shake More Hands Using Social Media. The New York Times. Web. 24 Feb. 2012. Jennifer Preston wrote this article for The New York Times online, and she focuses on how Republicans have used social media to reach out to the people of Iowa as they approach the caucuses for the upcoming election. Newt Gingrich rallied volunteers on Facebook to make phone calls on his behalf throughout the state of New Hampshire which has led to Gingrich having more calls in New Hampshire than any other candidate. Michele Bachmann created videos from her bus tour of the 99 counties in Iowa as a way to promote her support online. Republican candidates had been primarily using Facebook and Twitter to broadcast their messages and raise money; however they are more frequently turning to these social media sites to mobilize voters and become more connected with voters as that makes voters feel they can trust the candidates more. Preston is a reporter for The New York Times who focuses on the intersection between social media, politics, government, business, and real life. She has worked with The New York Times since 1995, and she has won several awards for investigative reporting. I can use her article because she gives specifics of what different politicians have done as far as using social media to reach the voters. Allbritton, Robert. Politico. 2012. Web. 25 Feb. 2012. Politico.com is a website that features many different resources all about current politics.

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The site features news articles, blogs, and all of the most current political updates. The website has a large number of journalists and editors that are constantly putting out new articles to keep their visitors up to date about what is going on. This website will be a great resource for me as I move forward in writing my paper because I will be able to continually come to this site to see what is going on and to find new information concerning my topic.

Derek, Your annotated Bibliography is outstanding you used the correct MLA format and your articles werent too long but wasnt too short. Your topic is connected with my topic as well because we are both talking about Facebook and just by me reading your bib it brought more ideas for me research about my topic. But overall your bib was pretty good I didnt see any mistakes youre on the right path keep up the good work.