The Making of Barack Obama: A Glance at the Persuasive Power of Media

Barack Obama, an African-American from a middle-class family, surprisingly won the U.S. presidential election last November 4, 2008 and swore to presidency on January 20, 2009. As the U.S. is one of the racist countries in the world, he surprised the world by becoming the first Black President.Most political critics argued that media agenda setting and Obama’s social media strategies significantly aided in his campaigns. Aside from traditional media (print and broadcast media), Obama used the Internet media to win the attention and the voting power of most of the U.S. citizens.Although Obama has been into politics and has served the public for almost half of his life, it has been identified that Obama’s publicity in those popular media contributed a lot for his success in presidential election.During presidential campaign, it has been observed that Obama is in every media. From news in print media such as newspaper and magazine to radio interviews and television shows. Most noticeably, Obama also invaded the Internet with â€Å"www.barackobama.com† and the YouTube, to name a few. His e-mail advocacy, on-line video, and text messaging strategy also caught the attention of the sensitive audience and consumers. As Monte Lutz put it:Barack Obama won the presidency in a landslide victory (by a margin of nearly 200 electoral votes and 8.5 million popular votes) by converting everyday people into engaged and empowered volunteers, donors and advocates through social networks, e-mail advocacy, text messaging and online video. The campaign’s proclivity to online advocacy is a major reason for his victory. (2)The Persuasive Power of Media and the PoliticiansMass media is known as the most powerful propaganda and persuasive tool. At first, media was only used in business to influence the buying behavior of most consumers. Most newspapers and magazines carry colorful and catchy advertisements, challenging the readers to try the product or service to see the difference.Radio and television commercials also continuously clog the audience while listening or viewing their favorite program, and before they know it, they are already heading their way to the grocery or department store to buy the product that has been advertised. Brand recall was found to be an effect of product and service advertisements. Even if the audience did not pay enough attention, part of their cognitive system is able to recall the name of the product or service being advertised.Seeing the effectiveness of media in influencing the buying behavior of consumers, this trend has been adapted to politics – from setting political agenda, creating public policy, advocating political issues, to packaging the political candidate buying for any electoral position.Politicians believe that if the media could influence the buying behavior of the consumers, then it could also influence the voting behavior of the public. The advantage of most politicians lies on the fact that the Internet is now accessible everywhere. Most households nowadays own a computer with Internet access; if not, they can access it at a nearby computer shop.