mb374008@ohio.edu
What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about propaganda?
Most people probably think about how the United States used it during war times to drum up support for the battles.
But now, the battle is no longer a war. It's the presidential race between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.
Both candidates have their own Facebook pages, a sign that times truly are changing.
Obama, popular with the young voters has a sharp lead in page "likes", leading the Republican nominee by almost 21 million "likes".
But despite the huge lead in "likes", is there any difference between how the two candidates run their pages? Not much from what I have observed in last few days.
Both candidates love to use their pages to promote themselves with positive propaganda while using creative statistics and phrases to criticize each other as well.
As you can see on Mitt Romney's Facebook page, he absolutely loves using propaganda, using phrases that are meant to draw up emotion more than actually prove why he's the best man for the job.
During the short time I have been checking out both pages, it has jumped out to me that Obama uses more pictures of himself from his pre-political career to draw emphasis on him as a person and the values he brings to the White House.
Below to the left, you can see a picture posted recently on his Facebook page showing how his mother was an important figure in his life. Things like this draw emotion from voters and can be used as tactics to gain support. Both candidates use networks like Facebook to promote their brand in their own unique way that they can't ordinarily do with traditional forms of media.
So while propaganda appears to be the #1 tactic used on each candidates pages, its still a good thing because at worst, it provides one more tactic for candidates to connect with voters and show why they deserve to be in office.
In the video below, Obama answers questions in a Facebook town hall meeting. A true sign of the changing times.
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