Earlier today, my father forwarded me an interesting email he received from Nico Probst, a “Director of Special Projects” for the Obama Administration, that had something to do with the President asking fellow Democrats to tweet at Republicans and pressure them to end the government shutdown. Here’s what the message said:
It’s the fourth day of the government shutdown, and House Speaker John Boehner is still letting the same group of House Republicans who drove us here run the show.
Today, we’re asking everyone who’s fed up to say “Enough already!” We’re taking to Twitter, and I hope you’ll join in.
Speaker Boehner can end the shutdown right now — tweet at him to make sure he knows we’re going to be holding him accountable for trying to sabotage the economy. TWEET NOW <https://my.barackobama.com/page/m/55c1b1cb/6bd97b05/3c0f2dd3a/19fabf51/3089849219/VEsH/>
If you’re not on Twitter, it’s easy to start. It’s a place where many members of Congress and their staffers try to drive the narrative of the day — right now, some members of Congress think they can get away with blaming this shutdown on President Obama.
It’s Congress’ job to fund the government. It’s Congress’ job to make sure they pay their bills. Anything less is failure.
What makes this worse is that some of these Republicans are arguing that they’re listening to their constituents — that Americans actually wanted a shutdown.
You and I know that’s not true — it’s time to call them on it.
Tell John Boehner this is economic sabotage, and it’s got to stop now:
http://my.barackobama.com/End-The-Shutdown-TW<https://my.barackobama.com/page/m/55c1b1cb/6bd97b05/3c0f2dd3a/19fabf62/3089849219/VEsF/>
Thanks,
Nico
Now, to be honest, I know absolutely nothing about this current government shutdown. I do not follow politics whatsoever and am as uninformed as it gets. My parents are both Democratic, and I go to a very liberal school, but I literally could not begin to tell you the first thing about what this whole episode is about. What I can tell you about, though, is how new media has fundamentally changed the way human beings operate on a daily basis.
Let’s look at Twitter, for instance. Launched in July of 2006, the so-called “SMS of the Internet” is a free social networking and micro-blogging platform that allows its users to broadcast (and read other users’) updates – “tweets” – of up to 140 characters. 500 million individuals registered for the site by the end of the year. It’s now one of the most ten visited sites on the world-wide-web.
So why wouldn’t it be used by the most powerful man on the planet as a political tool?
The fact that the President has, on more than one occasion, leveraged social media to spread a message that will reach a massive, global audience is – in a word – remarkable. Some would even argue that social media is a primary reason why Obama won his first election in the first place. But it’s not extraordinary simply because it’s surreal to imagine Barack Obama tweeting from an iPhone; rather, it’s the almost instantaneous, universal acceptance and adoption of new media as both important and beneficial that stands out to me.
When YouTube first surfaced in 2005, serious members of the film industry chalked it off. When Google purchased it in 2006, everyone thought it was an ignorant business decision. Yet it quickly became accepted as revolutionary within the next year. And similar patterns of short-lasting backlash occurred with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. People initially saw these social media outlets as useless and unsustainable but, ultimately, all doubts were forgotten as they infiltrated their way into our day-to-day lives.
Furthermore, it appears that each subsequent piece of new media that is released is more and more positively received. When Vine was purchased by Twitter this past year, the initial reaction was not one of skepticism or shock; it was more along the lines of: “Twitter bought this thing, it must be important, how can we use it to help our business/club/social presence grow?”
Interactive media has never been so quickly accepted on such a large scale as it is now. It took decades before the first motion pictures caught on. People still barely understand the Internet’s massive potential. But, because the twenty-first century has seen such drastic changes to the media landscape, we no longer resist new innovations (at least, relatively speaking).
Which brings me back to Twitter.
Twitter has only been around for just over seven years, yet its social, cultural and political importance cannot be overstated. It’s a place where all kinds of celebrities – from professional athletes to movie stars to pop singers to Jeff Probst – use it to give us a glimpse into their lives the lives we wish we had. It’s a place where comedians and rappers attempt to use it to promote their material, hoping to propel themselves into the spotlight. It’s a place where of ordinary people use it to follow up-to-the-second breaking news on topics that are relevant to their sense of self. “It’s a place where many members of Congress and their staffers try to drive the narrative of the day.” And, as of yesterday, it’s a place where the President asks people to “Tell John Boehner this is economic sabotage, and it’s got to stop now.”
No one could have imagined that.
