This week, I was listening to my favorite podcast Freakonomics and stumbled upon an episode that was incredibly relevant to our class and this time period around the election. If you find the time, I highly recommend reading the transcript or listening to the podcast. For those of you that are more strapped for time, I'll highlight some points that I thought were the most interesting.
First, the podcast Venkatesh describes his experience working on the Obama campaign and their "digital first" strategy for campaigning. He states that for non-traditional Presidential candidates, such as Obama, Trump, and Sanders, the digital media space is a necessity versus the traditional marketing avenues (newpapers, television, etc) that entrenched political rivals use. He mentions the decreasing cost of advertising in digital media and how it will ensure that the digital format grows in importance in future political campaigns.
Second, Venkatesh points out that candidates that use social media in an authentic way will achieve the most success as the authenticity draws larger audiences and followers. For example, regardless of how we feel about President Trump, there's no disputing that his unfiltered, raw approach keeps followers glued to their Twitter feeds. This is no different from regular users; people want authentic content to consume on the platforms.
The last point that I thought was interesting was the spread of misinformation on social media. Venkatesh explains that political advertising is blamed for the spread of misinformation, but the majority of misinformation spread is actually through organic avenues - social media users themselves spreading it. Thus, he is actually opposed to bans on political advertising, as the political advertising isn't the root of the problem. Placing a ban on political advertising would merely appease opponents while not solving the root issue.
Source: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/bonus-sudhir-mcgowan/
No comments:
Post a Comment