In “Re-Imagining the Nation: Storytelling and Social Media in the Obama Campaigns,” Himanee Gupta-Carlson discusses the importance of narrative in constituting the nation as an “imagined community.” She discusses the emergent role that digital storytelling and social played in Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. According to Gupta-Carlson, how are campaign narratives different in the present digital age? Are all of the differences positive, or are some negative? In your response, feel free to reference the campaign narratives that have emerged in the 2016 presidential campaign.
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As we learned earlier in the course, presidential candidates create a messages or brand for their campaign. This message allows the public to understand what the candidate stands for and learn about his/her characteristics and values. Our new digital age has transformed a candidate’s ability to create and communicate their narrative.
Gupta-Carlson said that, “While they lack the physical immediacy of a face-to-face contact, [social media sites that allow one to share their personal photos, videos and stories] create an unusual level of intimacy” (Gupta-Carlson, pg. 3). This ability to communicate with voters at a very intimate level has deeply changed a candidate’s ability to present their narrative. Now a presidential campaign is much more about the people, and how they react and maybe even mobilize for a candidate, as opposed to a campaign revolving solely around the presidential nominee. The narrative is no longer one sided, a candidate does not just deliver a speech and allow the audience to react in the isolation of their home. Now, using all forms of social media, candidates have the ability to speak directly to the people.
One aspect of the new digital age I think is very positive is the Internet and social media are a medium where almost anyone can express themselves. You don’t need to be affluent or educated to engage in political dialogue or share your story on a candidate’s website. Although this may be not always be positive for the candidate, it does foster equal citizen participation in politics.
I think the digital age also may make keeping a candidate’s narrative consistent very difficult. Videos and new information can be released in a heartbeat creating a roadblock or need for change within the candidate’s calculated narrative. For example, Trump’s campaign took a major blow two weeks ago when a video was released depicting him saying lewd and sexually abusive remarks about women. Because the media can transmit and then interpret new information within minutes, Trump’s campaign had to transition from discussing his fitness for presidency to attempting to cover up his scandalous past.
Although the digital age does make it easier to feel closer to a candidate, the media has the ability to twist almost anything anyone says to create bias and influence voters. This is one downfall of a technologically reliant campaign.
Obama’s campaign took full advantage in America’s growing interest in social media and used voter accessibility to outlets such as facebook and twitter to encourage action and promote his narrative as an American promoting change for the better. Although we have seen in our current election how social media has been extremely detrimental to the Trump campaign, Barrack Obama capitalized on the use of social media to promote his story as a multicultural American who represents the “new”, more diversified America. The success of his campaign can be, in part, attributed to his encouragement to get involved and get active in the process. As he said in the article, he didn’t just want bumper stickers, he wanted people to “give 5 dollars, makes some calls, host an event.” This was key to his success. In terms of the differences between Obama’s narrative and the current narratives of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, where social media once gave a voice to the voiceless, it has now also given a voice to racists bigots who hide behind the curtain of anonymity. Obama’s campaign called for more constructive uses of social media and encouraged communities to converse with each other and develop their own perspectives on the presidential election and the issues surrounding it. Hillary Clinton has a similar message and frequently uses the word “we” when talking about what she plans to do in office. Trump on the other hand, with his child like remarks toward Hillary and his numerous racially charged accusations on supreme court judges and Obama himself, has encouraged anonymous racists to get involved in the online/social media driven debate which has revealed that racism is unfortunately still alive and well in America. Social media does not necessarily have to be detrimental to a candidates campaign however, that has been the case for Donald Trump because of his lack of ability to control what is said about him.
Himanee Gupta-Carlson discusses the importance of narrative in constituting the nation as an “imagined community,” and has shown how campaign narratives have differed in the present digital age. Now, with technology, candidates are able to interact with the public in an intimate way that was not able to be done during the time of Clinton’s campaign. During Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaign, Obama as well as the “imagined community” were able to be in contact with one another through social media. For example, someone was able to post a comment or status on Facebook about Obama’s campaign and other people were able to come together and comment their thoughts on it. Overall, this allowed the community to come together. Another example of the intimacy technology has created is when the Obama campaign sent out a text to supporters on the night of the election saying, “We just made history. All of this happened because you gave your time, talent, and passion to this campaign. All of this happened because of you. Thanks. Barack.” This allowed and made people feel important and connected to Obama on a new intimate level that had not been done before. It was a different form of intimacy than the public felt from commercials where a candidate would just speak directly to the camera in the past.
These campaign narratives that have differed because of the present digital age can be viewed as both positive and negative. Obama showed it to be positive by using messaging and encouraging people to act and post on different forms of social media. This allowed the public to come together. In contrast, some social media has also been used poorly, which can make the present digital age be viewed as negative and hurt a candidate. Donald Trump has used Twitter in his 2016 campaign, and personally I think that this has been a negative thing for him at some times. He has posted offensive and inappropriate comments on it about other women and their appearances and has called people pathetic and weird on it. Although Twitter, in general, could be used very positively in the campaign and election by bringing the community together and allowing both Trump and Clinton to connect with people on the “intimate” level that Himanee Gupta-Carlson talks about, Trump has actually hurt himself in some ways through using it. Someone might not view the present digital age as negative because Trump has brought this on himself, but I think that regardless of if he put it on himself or not, his communication through Twitter has been a negative thing for his campaign and the community at times of the 2016 election. His tweets have not brought people together. Therefore, the new forms of technology and media could be looked at as negative and bad for an “imagined community.”
In Himanee Gupta-Carlson’s “Re-Imagining the Nation: Storytelling and Social Media in the Obama Campaigns,” campaign narratives are now a shared experience among constituents and candidates rather than a passive experience from candidates to constituents. Although campaign narratives have been around for decades through the distribution of audio and visual storytelling, the way we interpret them has changed immensely. Instead of sitting down and just listening to a candidates speech, we now sit down, listen, and share our thoughts with others through social media platforms. This interaction switches the source of the campaign narrative from the formerly top-down story to a story built from those who are actively participating.
The fact that the campaign narrative comes from an interaction amongst voters is dangerous. Everyone has different opinions on different issues and how they share those opinions differs as well. Trying to establish a singular campaign narrative through what is now an endless amount of stories can lead to political extremes becoming the norm. The divisiveness that separates voters may come from the fact that the only stories that have any significance are those that are extreme in nature. It seems to me that the sharing of stories through active participation leads campaign narratives to have no common ground where common ground is all that people are looking for.
Himanee Gupta-Carlson opens her essay by stating that ever since the early nineteenth century, the presidential race has been closely tied to stories about the individual candidate’s road to the White House. While Anderson, a previous author she quotes, has a “top-down approach,” Gupta says that in the digital age, the entire nation builds a story around the presidential candidate about “all of us.” The Obama campaign used much of the same story-telling strategies used in prior elections. The most prominent example of this is television advertising, where Obama’s campaign spent $404 million in 2012. The advertisements gave us a view into Obama’s life, and tried to draw parallels between Obama’s life and the story of our nation.
Obama, however, did not merely stick to these traditional forms. His campaign capitalized on emerging forms of social media to change the entire structure of how the story of his campaign was told. Social media, unlike direct advertising, opens the door for a conversation between the hero in the story – in this case Obama – and the audience. By making the audience active members of the story-telling, the idea of nation-making could be seen as rooted in the American people’s will, rather than from a larger power. The difference between old and new storytelling is summed up with the quote “Clinton was asking his followers to listen and Obama was motivating his supporters to act.”
The reading discussed how these new storytelling tactics could have both positive an negative implications. Given that collective stories are powerful when channeling frustration with the status quo, white nationalist groups or others who oppose social justice can use them just as easily. This part of the reading reminded me of Trump’s 2016 campaign. Trump’s story focuses on a loss of power for white males in America, and goes against political correctness. It is clear that social media has allowed this sentiment to spread throughout America. His campaign is innately anti-establishment and anti-mass media, which the use of bottom-up story telling encapsulates. Nevertheless, at the same time, social media has been widely used in the 2016 presidential race to showcase the bigotry seen by Trump’s supporters. YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have been used to highlight videos of Trump supporters acting out violent and offensive acts against their opposition. In this sense, much of the election story revolves around reacting to other American’s digital story telling, something only possible with the advent of social media.
I think social media has the potential to have either a positive or negative effect on campaigns, depending on how the candidate uses it. As Edgerly writes, social media gives candidates the opportunity to connect with more voters, especially young voters that are not usually as active in politics. Similarly, social media increases the interactivity between voters and a campaign though online forums with open conversion. Micro-targeting can also be helpful for candidates looking to expand their net of voters through specifically supporting issues that represent a certain demographic.
Obama’s administration depicts the successful use of social media. Throughout his campaign and presidency Obama used social media to tell stories and increase personalization with his voters. Obama used social media to create a feeling of connectedness and to motivate action, the way a candidate should use social media.
Candidate Donald Trumps use of social media is a stark contrast to Obama’s successful use of social media. While social media enabled Trump to gain attention, his use of social media throughout his campaign has been disgusting. Through social media, Trump has shown he has no limits or censor to what he can and will say. Then again, perhaps this is a positive use of social media, because he was able to show his disgusting true self. During all of the debates, I think the use of social media has been helpful for fact checking.
The present digital age has completely changed the face of campaign narratives. With the recent technological developments, politicians have adapted their campaign strategies and stories to work better with the new capabilities they have with methods of communication. One of the biggest and most important changes that Gupta-Carlson discusses is the shift from a one-sided narrative to a campaign being about “us”. With the involvement of voters on social media, voters now feel like issues can be taken into their own hands rather than sitting back and waiting to see what a politician will do for them. Gupta-Carlson has attended the inauguration for both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. At Clinton’s inauguration, she observed that everyone around her was listening intently and had full attention on the President. However, at Obama’s inauguration, she noticed that the people around her were quickly posting their thoughts to social media from their cell phones, something that never would’ve happened twenty years ago. This change is certainly a positive one, as there is now a new dialogue amongst voters that makes them feel more powerful.
However, in this same scenario, we can also notice some negative aspects. The crowd at Obama’s inauguration was much less likely to remember every word he had to say, and much more likely to be distracted by what was going on on their phones, in practically another world. Along with the great power that technology possesses comes a great responsibility to not abuse it and remember where we are in the moment. Social media has connected people who would have never otherwise met face to face. This greater sharing of ideas has allowed our country to become more connected, but it is also important to keep in mind that the use of technology has a certain time and place that needs to be respected.
How Social Media Has Changed Our Society
Gupta-Carlson opens up her say with the idea that digital storytelling and the role of social media has transformed the national political campaign to embody ‘not only the candidate but also “all of us”’” (71). This revolves around a bottom-up process rather than top-down from the candidate himself. The most important aspect of a bottom-up process is that they allow for “catalysts for social change” (73). We have clearly seen through the increase of movements such as Black Lives Matter that allowing individuals to express their feelings about an issue that the president has created space for can indeed allow for social change and movement to take place. This public discourse can travel as far as the individual wishes, and creates a much larger difference than a speech made by one individual. Even further, individuals are allowed to patent and say what they truly believe through social media, regardless of the political pressure of the candidates. This is seen as a positive way to include individuals in the democracy and allows people to take part in the change that they want to see in their communities and their country as a whole.
While Gupta-Carlson mainly touches on the positive impact that social media can has on the cultivation of change within a democracy, she also touches on some negative aspects of social media. For one thing, the use of social media has brought to light the adverse parts of Obama’s presidency. By allowing individual’s to have a voice, they not only highlight the good qualities of their president, but more often than not, have created a divide throughout the country over political issues. Gupta-Carlson puts this well as she describes the changing of the narrative as merely evoking discussions and partitions rather than truly debating issues of a high standard (74).
Within the political campaigns of the 2016 election, the United States has seen a growth in social media like never before. Both Clinton and Trump have utilized social media in many forms. There ads targeting one another’s faults, hundreds of tweets arguing over issues. Their “imagined communities” differ, however, with who they include. While Trump has closed his community to many minorities within America, Clinton has attempted to embrace almost all facets and groups under the American umbrella. However, it is more important to see how “the people” have utilized social media in this year’s election. Over Facebook, Twitter, and other blog forms, individuals have attacked both the candidates, and other commentators on contrasting political views. Never before has there been so much uproar and disparaging of members of the opposite political party with such a public arena.
In “Re-Imagining the Nation: Storytelling and Social Media in the Obama Campaigns,” Himanee Gupta-Carlson praises the way in which the Obama campaign has used social media to its advantage. She argues that in contrast to the top-down approach that traditional candidates have used in the past in order to gain votes, the Obama campaign used social media to create a grassroots-like campaign where “feelings of ownership, intimacy, and belonging” (73) were cultivated and most importantly spread among Americans. Gupta-Carlson contrasts Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign and Obama’s campaigns in order to illustrate the shift in strategy: “Clinton was asking his followers to listen and Obama was motivating supporters to act.” (72). In other words, Gupta-Carlson believes that the Obama campaign was able to engage the public in an interactive way like never before that ultimately won Obama the vote and promoted social change.
Gupta-Carlson mainly focuses on the positive feelings of involvement that Obama’s social media campaign was able to generate, but she also touches upon the issues that is has brought to the surface. She writes that after the Obama campaigns, “the campaign story became a story marked less by the quality of its narrative and more by its ability to provoke a response.” (74-75). Social media provided an outlet to allow regular Americans to share information, but oftentimes the information that gets shared is simply the most shocking — as opposed to the most important — information. We see this issue playing out to a large degree in the 2016 presidential campaigns. While both Hillary and Trump have adopted Obama’s social media-focused approach, Trump has discovered that the more shocking statements he can say, the more attention he will get on social media: people will post about him, share articles and videos, etc. In other words, Trump realized that he can essentially use shock value to buy free advertising space, which is what social media serves as in the context of political campaigns. Every time I open Facebook, I see Trump’s name several times. The posts and articles tend to be about his latest shocking statement, not about his policy. The posts and articles about Hillary also focus on scandals surrounding her rather than her policy. While the social media based campaign gives Americans new power to share what they believe, lots of important information that isn’t seen as share worthy or retweet worthy goes unnoticed.
While Gupta-Carlson recognizes some of the dangers of the way social media is used in modern campaigns, she maintains the perspective that social media is a vehicle for positive change. She argues that social media allows stories to be shared, which is “a democratizing art that challenges the one-way authority of traditional narrative” (72) and allows people fighting for social change to feel empowered and become both mobilized and unified. She briefly mentions that the same strategies can be used by groups such as Tea-Party activists and white nationalist groups, but fails to acknowledge the dark implications of that fact. There is nothing wrong with focusing on the positive aspects of social media based campaigns, but it is important to also be aware of the power of social media can be used for both good and bad; We can cheer on Obama for engaging with his supporters online, but we must be aware that the same methods are used to recruit teenagers to join terrorist groups.
Overall, Gupta-Carlson argues that social media has given the public a new tool that that can be used to create positive social change, while acknowledging, though perhaps not to a sufficient degree, that it can be used to create negative change as well.
Gupta-Carlson believes that social media has changed the way campaign narratives are created and used during an election. She writes that when she saw Bill Clinton make speeches while running for President, everyone there was watching, solely focusing on the words that he said. However, Gupta-Carlson notes that, due to the rise of social media, when people were watching Obama’s speeches, not only were they listening, but posting reactions and quotes on different kinds of social media. Social media has allowed everyone listening to interact with the campaign, and help spread the message past only those who were there.
Due to the rise of social media and people’s usage to immediately comment on what they see and hear, candidates have been forced to change how they share their message, according to Gupta-Carlson. She writes, “Clinton was asking his followers to listen and Obama was motivating supporters to act” (72). Before there was social media, all Clinton did was ask people to listen to him, and hopefully vote for him in the election. However, Obama used social media to his advantage by involving others, and getting the everyday American involved in his campaign. He created a website around the same time that he announced his candidacy where supporters could not only donate money, but also talk with others who had similar opinions. This communication allowed Obama’s followers to create their own events, something that was impossible when Bill Clinton was running for President. These opportunities let anyone, not just those chosen to be part of the Obama campaign, the contribute to his election, and feel like they were making a difference. The importance of this cannot be overlooked, because Americans no longer just needed to be swayed to one candidate, they wanted to be a part of that candidate’s team. They wanted to feel a sort of ownership of the campaign.
In the current campaign, Hillary Clinton uses social media in a similar way to Obama. In all of the debates, Clinton started many of her answers with a story about someone that she met on the campaign trail. She uses these stories to help connect everyday Americans to her campaign. Not everyone hears a politician talk about policy and is persuaded to vote, but when someone hears a story about a little girl who is unsure if her parents will be allowed to stay in America or not, there is a personal connection between candidate and listener. No one wants a young child to be split for her parents, and that common feeling creates a bond that connects listeners. Just like Obama’s website allowed users to connect and be a part of the campaign, Clinton uses personal stories to connect individuals to her campaign, and creates a bond with listeners that will last.
In “Re-Imagining the Nation: Storytelling and Social Media in the Obama Campaigns” Gupta-Carlson describes that campaign narratives are different in the digital age, particularly as a result of the 2008 Obama campaign and the changed relationship between candidates and the public, by challenging “the one-way authority of traditional narrative” (72). Instead of speaking to an inactive audience, Obama expected and asked for individuals to take part, mobilize support, be active in the campaign and share their own stories. This is seen positively as a way to involve individuals and take advantage of democracy, to act and be a part of change, as well as bolster the idea of the nation as an “imagined community.” Alternatively, this change has been taken negatively, and has resulted in “Less about quality of its narrative and more about its ability to provoke a response” (75).
The negative results of campaigns in the digital age are demonstrated in the nature of Trump’s campaign. Trump’s impulsive, offensive and controversial opinions that he has openly shared throughout his campaign follow this new expectation, that his platform does not have to rely on quality but instead on provoking a response from his followers; his extreme opinions resonate with his followers and present a leader who embodies their political profile. Trump has however also used the “imagined community” of the US in his campaign, by targeting a small, white nationalist community.
On the other hand, Clinton’s campaign has closely followed what Obama initiated. Clinton has used story telling as a way to involve Americans and make the campaign about individuals, not just herself. For example, Clinton’s campaign advertisements such as “Role Models” and “Mirrors” make the election about individuals – families, children, parents, women and girls. Clinton uses shared stories to demonstrate a sense of belonging and inclusive nation under her presidency. Additionally, Clinton’s message “stronger together” furthers the narrative of an “imagined community” that binds us together.