Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Saul Anuzis on Hugh Hewitt discussing the importance of Tech

As you know by now our own Saul Anuzis is running for RNC chairman. Yesterday he was a guest on Townhall contributor, Hugh Hewitt's radio show discussing among other things, the role of technology in running campaigns AND winning elections.

Saul highlighted the importance of blogging, Twitter, FaceBook and YouTube as the new medium for grassroots organization, assimilating information and reaching voters. Saul himself is on the cutting edge in using this new technology, having his own blog, Twittering , Facebook and YouTube.

Saul noted that Barack Obama was very successful in using these new forms of media technology in his campaign and had over 60,000 people following him on Twitter.

On ScienceDaily Dr. Paul Haridakis, associate professor of Communication Studies at Kent State University and a long-time scholar in the area of the impact of media on the political landscape in the U.S. writes about the new social media in an article entitled "Social Media And Presidential Election: Impact Of YouTube, MySpace"

He states, "Many people will watch videos and use traditional media like TV to acquire political information about the candidates, but they also are going to the Internet and using social networking sites to see who people they know support. The information gleaned from their social networks may be the information they find most credible and persuasive.

They'll listen to their buddy on his MySpace page, not necessarily the traditional messengers that candidates employ to reach out to the voters, or even the candidates themselves.

That exploits the power of social media pretty well," Haridakis says. "The candidates in this election season have not fully harnessed the power of these tools."

Saul wants to "fully harness the power" of these tools into the Republican party and rightly so. As Dr.Haridakis notes, Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Internet TV are the new media and will become increasing important and utilized in all new campaigns and are becoming vital to winning.

Kudos to Saul for bringing this to the fore front for the Republican party and all you bloggers out there, keep doing what you do!

And if you haven't yet checked out or use some of the other methods of social media mentioned,I encourage you to do so.

2 comments:

RightMichigan.com said...

Great recap, Joan! Thanks for doing it.

I tweeted the link on Twitter, too!

--Nick
www.RightMichigan.com

apackof2 said...

I saw the Tweet, thanks!
I am inviting folks to Tweet like a mad woman! LOL
It can be a powerful tool