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Final Paper

As social media has evolved over the years, people always find new ways to utilize it. Whether it be to help with their own popularity, or to try and make an active change in the world. Though, it is expected that all these uses are going to be utilized because humans are different, and so social media will be different to match the specific person’s interests. Since the 2016 election when Donald Trump used social media as a campaign tool to help him win the election. Before 2016, politicians didn’t have a huge influence on social media, and no politicians were huge figures on the platforms. Most of the influencers were random people who the rest of the population found interesting. Though that all changed in 2016. Say what you want about Trump, but his strategy of using social media to spread his influence caught on like wildfire. Before Trump, no one took to social media to reach out to all of us about their ideas or what they want to do with the country. Then everyone started to...
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Literature Review

Prior to the 2016 election, Social Media played a slightly passive role when it came to politics and elections. Donald Trump was really one of the first to use Social Media to campaign himself while saving money and having a much larger online reach. Now that it has been shown how powerful Social Media can be, different ways of using it for politics are popping up everywhere. A politician at the forefront of Social Media campaigning is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She is currently sitting at 3.2 million followers on Instagram. One of the highlights of her page is her using Instagram’s relatively new feature, Instagram Stories. Essentially, it’s a polished and more functional Snapchat. These stories are titled ‘Congress Camp’ and there are two parts to them. The stories follow her through the journey of getting settled into congress. Everything from meetings, to orientations, she showed people something they had never seen before. Her tactics closely resemble those of walkthrough video...
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Data post 2

As I continue to look at the data I have gathered, I am attempting to read a little more between the lines than what I previously stated in my first blog post. As far as the walkthrough videos and Congress Camp 1 and 2, I still see the same similarities, with the only difference being the content that the two are creating. Gaming walkthrough videos usually do well on YouTube, and to my knowledge Congress Camp is really the first time something has been done on that large of a scale. I’m 21 and I had no clue the inner workings of the government, and Congress Camp 1 and 2 showed that to me. Regardless of political standing, I believe that due to her teaching the public something, she has established herself as a source that people could potentially learn from, which explains her popularity. The interesting thing when I compare Tulsi Gabbard’s and Alexandria Ocasio-Cotez’s Instagram, their feeds are a lot alike. The two are very outspoken on their political views, but Ocasio-Cortez pos...
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Data

As I begin to look at all of the data I have, I begin to notice some pretty cool similarities between a game walkthrough video, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘Congress Camp’ 1 and 2. Instead of using a video from TheRadBrad, I noticed it would be hard to compare since he doesn’t have a face camera in his walkthroughs, just audio. I switched to PewDiePie, and he is playing Alien Isolation. One of the first things I noticed was the engagement with their audiences. Ocasio-Cortez does a very good job of acknowledging the audience watching her video and talking to them on a person level. Another similarity is the ability to joke around and act like yourself, not like your title. Once again, Ocasio-Cortez has several moments where she shares personal posts and seems to be transparent with her audience. She even includes some of her music of he day! The differences begin to show up when we look at how the information is conveyed. With PewDiePie, since he is playing the game, he is experi...
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Method section 'Before'

To research, I am going to use both Instagram stories titled Congress Camp from Ocasio-Cortez’s Instagram page, and analyze them for any similarities from the first episode of a gaming walkthrough from the youtuber RadBrad. I want to compare these videos and see if the same tactics are being used from a different successful source that effectively teaches people how to do something. Then I want to research the Instagram feed of Speaker John Boehner and compare his Instagram content to Ocasio-Cortez’s to see if her large number of followers is because of her down to earth walkthroughs that teach people something, or due to another reason. Essentially, I want to measure how effective social media can be for a politician’s influence if they are using tactics to help educate people as to what is going on in the government, which gives us a sense of ‘transparency’ and how successful a politicians feed is that doesn’t provide us that unique look into the government life.
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Introduction

Hi, my name is Shiloh and I use Social Media pretty often. I mostly just use it to learn new things and expose myself to different types of activities. Though, mostly I use it to find people to play with on Xbox Live, since we are able to create groups on Facebook where gamers can be in one place. I feel I am mostly on Social Media as an observer and I always find myself intrigued. I hope to explore the deepness of Social Media and learn things about it that can help me better utilize it in the future.
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