For these few hours of my project, I decided to explore the "get connected" section of the DNC website considering the most important thing is their out reach to American citizens. I started last week by looking at the facebook page. I am already familiar with facebook, so this week I looked at the twitter section and the youtube section. I had to create a twitter account and a youtube account. I only use the twitter account to follow "The Democrats." What I've found from twitter so far, is that the tweets are news related. A lot of the tweets are meant to truly inform people of what Democrats think about certainissues. For example: WH's Brian Bond: "There’s a lot we still need to do. I believe in this president, and we will get it done." #DNC11 #LGBTcaucus . Twitter, from what I've seen so far, is meant to be more a more personal thing. It's meant to give the followers the idea that Democrats aren't just politicians, they are real people facing the same real problems as everyone else. Also the Democrats are definitely using twitter to cast themselves in a positive light an to antagonize republicans. For example: DNC's @donnabrazile: As the #WomenCaucus, we're going to fight to make sure the Republicans don't turn us around and set us back.#DNC11 What the DNC chooses to tweet is an intenentional construction of how they want their followers to see them. They construct a strong and courageous character while mentioning the republicans as people who are going to set back the country. The way the DNC constructs their image is important to maintaining their following.
When I looked at youtube, it was a very different way to "get connected" with the democrats. Most of the videos are political videos of Obama giving speeches or things that famous democrats have done in the past. I looked at several different Obama videos and paid attention to the comments. Considering anyone can be a member of the channel on youtube, a lot of the commenting back and forth was people arguing and telling at each other. Youtube seemed to be more of a place where Democratic supporters could go and comment on videos and have conversations but it was also a place for supporters to shut down people who posted negative comments about the videos and about democrats.
Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are really active as far as participation on these sites and following the DNC. The DNC facebook page seems to be really active but it's kind of hard to follow sometimes. Facebook serves to post news and significant videos. Even people here, who are all democrats, are arguing about stuff. The longest comment section I have seen so far is over the whole deal going on here in Madison. I posted a comment last week but no one responded directly to my comment. There are definitely people who are the "established" commenters. I like the Facebook page the least so far and I don't think it is really doing much. It seems to be that most of the people who like the page aren't active on the page.
Next time I'm going to look at the blog and flickr in addition to looking at the tabs at the top that say things like "who we are", "our party" etc. The screen shot is of the DNC twitter page.
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