Last night President Obama gave his State of the Union Address to the American people. A vital component to the success of Obama’s address is and continues to be the Office of D
igital Strategies, according to a New York Times article by Michael Shear (Obama’s Social Media Team Tries to Widen Audience for State of the Union Address). Prior to the national address, the Digital Strategies team advertised the airing of the State of the Union by posting videos of Obama’s policy proposals that offered viewers an early taste of what was to come in the address. This media strategy also helped the communication team to get ahead of any potential leaks. However, their work isn’t done yet as they will be reposting the speech to different media outlets in order to reach citizens that were unable to catch the speech the first time around. It will be interesting to see how the social media strategy of the Obama Administration will play out in the days following the address.
Additionally, the article speaks toward the importance of technological communication through social media sites such as Twitter, Vine, Facebook, etc. In fact in the article, Dan Pfeiffer, a senior advisor, equated not having a strong social media presence in today’s age to not having a TV strategy in the 1950s. This stress on aggressive social media reminds me of some of the ideas from the Hakken article, specifically the study of technological communication. It seems to be that the communicative aspects of technology are creating a powerful social media culture in politics.