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.