Barack Obama + iPhone = Win the hearts of citizens?

On January the 20th 2009, was the day to remember, as it was the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States of America. The story of his success is very simple; he had incorporated various forms of new media ranging from social networking websites (facebook) to video sharing networks (You Tube), as a political tool to gain supporters. One of said new media used by him to net in supporters, is the latest (and still the most sophisticated) iPhone.



Source: responsiblemarketing.com


Shiels (2008) state, that Obama had used the phone with a built in free application, which basically helps getting the vote out. The applications "Call Friends" function organizes the iPhone user's personal phonebook by swing states, so that Obama's fans can quickly "nudge" their friends to cast a vote (Telegraph.com, 2008). Walsh's (2006) reasons that reading in a multimodal environment, requires words, pictures and images, and also through movement and sounds (for digital or electronic screens). This is indeed plausible asObama also made full use of the iPhone, in the sense that, he posted videos, audio recordings and such to win the hearts of the American citizen.

In conclusion, Obama's application is basically designed to grab the attention of the reader. Based on the applications created for the iPhone, it uses technological differences (hyperlinks, navigation bars, etc.) to assist and attract the reader (Walsh, 2006). All in all, it is amazing to see what technology is capable of doing, especially in the context of politics!


References:

Shiels, M 2008, 'Obama uses iPhone to win support', BBC News, 3 October, viewed 16 June 2009.
< http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7649753.stm>

Barack Obama brings election campaign to Apple iPhone 2008, Telegraph.com.uk, viewed 16 June 2009, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/3358721/Barack-obama-brings-election-campaign-to-Apple-iphone.html>

Walsh, M 2006, 'The textual shift: examining the reading process with print, visual, and multimodal texts', Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29. no. 1, pp. 24-37.