The Government Monitoring Social Media Conversations to Improve Benefits

When we think of social media, usually it is a way in which we keep in touch with our friends or to follow celebrities; however, social media's potential has not yet been reached. In this article, http://www.lgcplus.com/opinion/how-social-media-can-unlock-hidden-benefits/5064822.article?blocktitle=Latest-Comment-from-LGC's-Partners&contentID=13274 , it discusses the future of social media and government benefits. Citizens are constantly looking for assistance from the government, whether it be for passport services, healthcare questions, or how to register to vote, we look to the government on how to solve these issues.

Often times, however, citizens do not know where to begin to solve these problems. This is where the future of social media comes in. A digital monitoring center will monitor social media conversations and posts and will look for keywords to help solve problems before it gets too late or worse. The posts will be monitored by looking for key words or phrases. Once these key words or phrases are identified, the monitoring system will automatically send that person information on the topic they are looking for.

For example, if I send a tweet saying, "I need a passport but am not sure what I need to do," the monitoring system will pick up the key words "passport" and "what to do" and will instantly send me information and websites to look at. This is a great way to save taxpayers time and money, as well as the government officials' time. Any government program or assistance will automatically be monitored so that services and programs are improved.

The future of social media has a lot of potential, especially concerning the link between government services and citizens' needs.

Using Social Media and Celebrities to gain support

I was on Twitter a few weeks ago, and noticed the trending topic: #GetCovered. Wondering what it meant and where it started from, I came across a lot of articles that discussed how President Obama's staff met with celebrities to ask them to promote the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/312747-obama-asks-hollywood-celebs-to-help-pitch-obamacare

We are in the age of the digital revolution, so this idea of using social media to promote policies is very new. Previously, in order to promote a policy, president's and politicians had to wait for a news network to pick up the story and hope they would be on their side. Obama was the first Presidential candidate to fully implement a successful social media strategy in his election campaign. It comes as no surprise then that Obama received 60% of the vote from 18-29 year old's. Also, it comes as no surprise that Obama is implementing social media as a way of promoting policies.

In order for Obamacare to be successful, it needs healthy young people to sign up to pay for the costs of the unhealthy old people. So far, the numbers are low for healthy individuals who have signed up. Although I do not support parts of Obamacare, such as the individual mandate, I think Obama is brilliant in using celebrities to promote it via social networking sites. Since Obama is trying to appeal to young individuals, and they are almost all on social networking sites, it is a brilliant strategy to combine celebrities and social media. Obama is setting a precedent for future president's as to successfully implementing the power of the social media. 

Social Media and First Amendment Rights

It is known, or at least should be known, that when somebody posts something to a social media site, it becomes public, thus, it is no longer private. Yes, there are privacy settings, but there are ways for people to get around those settings. For example, a friend of the person posting can share it with other people or they can Retweet it for other people to see. I heard this story last year, and it is becoming more relevant today with the increased use of social media sites. Here is a link to the story: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304811304577366121551396072

Basically the story is about Gary Stein, a Sergeant in the U.S. Marines, who posted some criticisms about Obama on Facebook and was later discharged from the Marines because of doing so. The Facebook post said: "Screw Obama and I will not follow all orders from him." Stein later clarified the statement by saying he would not follow unlawful orders. The ACLU and many groups alike have joined Stein's side by saying he was talking in a hypothetical manner and was not referring to any current orders. Also, it is Stein's First Amendment Right to voice his opinion. David Loy of the ACLU said, "Service members do not lose their free-speech rights as private citizens to engage in political speech; they just don't." 

This brings up my point as to how social media sites are being used by the government to track people and their opinions and using it against them. In court cases today, the Court is accepting posts from social media sites as evidence. I guess the question becomes, do posts on social media sites fall under the protection of the First Amendment? My answer is yes. Therefore, Stein should not have been discharged.

On the counter-argument, military personnel said that Stein was undermining his chain of command. A former Army Colonel says that in order to understand and support the chain of command, members of the military need to recognize that their freedom of speech is limited. This new age of technology and use of social media makes everything we post become public. The average citizen will not be affected by posting their political beliefs, however, this is clearly a grey area for members of the military. 

Social Media as a way of influencing politicians

I came across this article about how social media is playing a role in the government shutdown http://kansan.com/news/2013/10/08/social-media-plays-role-in-response-to-government-shutdown/ It discusses the various strategies that politicians and people are taking in order to resolve the shutdown. For example, an Obama Action Committee sent out an e-mail to its subscribers to mass tweet Speaker John Boehner. If one person sends a tweet out to a politician, it is unlikely that it will have any effect on their decision making; however, if thousands of people send similar tweets to one politician, it is likely that they will consider a change of action. This is another way in which Obama's team is successfully implementing social media into their strategy.

Politicians also look at trending topics on social media sites as a way of making decisions; trending topics are recognized in the form of a hashtag, or #. Both parties are trying to create trending topics so that the other party will concede and finally resolve the shutdown. In this picture, you can see John Boehner next to a podium with a sign that says #Time4Solutions

Anyone who was watching the speech would tweet about it with the hashtag #Time4Solutions. This is a great way for starting trending topics. If you watch a TV show, most of the time you will now see a hashtag with either the name of the TV show or whatever that episode is about. When the last shutdown happened in the 90's, people did not have this method of communication to connect with politicians or other people. They either had to take time out of their day to make a personal visit, make a phone call, or write a letter to their Congressman. All in all, it was a lot of work and not many people took the time to do this. Now, it is easier than ever to communicate with members of Congress, especially in times of importance such as during a government shutdown. It's amazing how public support is now measured via social media sites in the form of trending topics or number of tweets a Congressman will get.

Social Media as a way of political involvement.

For those of us who have an account with Facebook or Twitter, we know how most everybody we follow has an opinion about the big political event at the time. I enjoy engaging in political discussions with my friends over social networking sites, but when their posts are ignorant and so far from the "truth" I usually get annoyed and unfriend them. Harsh, I know, but if they are going to take the time to write a post, I would expect them to do some research on their own first. One of the best and worst times to be on social media sites is during a Presidential election. I say best, because it shows me that people are somewhat concerned with politics. I say worst, because the posts I see are so ignorant and hateful that it cannot even be considered political dialogue. During the 2012 election, if my friend voted for or supported Obama, they would make some post about how happy they were, and then I would see a comment from a Romney supporter saying how stupid the Obama person was and then a fight would ensue, usually involving hateful words and personal attacks. The same goes for someone who makes a Romney post. For most people, it's not even about the candidate, it's about the party affiliation. If Romney was a Democrat and Obama a Republican, the person who voted for Obama when he was a Democrat would now vote for Romney. That is the problem with political parties, that people do not do their research on the candidate. With that said, I prefer the party system to a no party system. Most recently, I see a lot of discussion on Facebook and Twitter about the government shut down. My Democratic friends are blaming the Republicans and my Republican friends are blaming the Democrats. Rather than discussing what could be done by both sides in a compromise, it is full blame on one or the other. This same thing is happening in Congress.

What I am getting at is that people are so quick to suggest their opinion that they fail to do the research first. This results in viral fights filled with personal and unwarranted attacks. These kind of actions, although they may seem minuscule compared to the rest of the country, shows how party polarized Americans are. Republicans hate Democrats no matter what the issue and Democrats hate Republicans. If we can just act rationally and do our own research on issues, we may not be so polarized and could be able to compromise the extremes.