Social Media and Society

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...

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...

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...

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.