WILL YOU VOTE WITH ME?

The U.S. elections are just around the corner (just kidding they are in November) and news channels are overflowing with information and coverage on the different candidates and their campaigns. As it usually goes with presidential elections, people are expressing different opinions about every step of the process which will eventually determine the final result. That is why many official and mainstream sources are pushing forward different points of interest through media campaigns and other initiatives. These campaigns appear both in offline and online environments and play different roles in agenda setting.

AGENDA SETTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA

The agenda-setting theory talks about the creation of awareness about important events and issues for the public through news media. Media concentration on certain subjects discriminates them as more significant than other issues. Today, in the era blooming with a new social platform almost every day there is a major shift from agenda setting through traditional to new media.

This can be done in many way for instance through blogs, Facebook posts, Tweets and hashtags. Even traditional media nowadays cite blogs and use Tweets as a legitimate source of information so social media are definitely becoming an influential part of agenda setting by creating discussion and sharing content among users. Especially the hashtag has gained a certain social power and relevance in public affairs.

VOTING IS SEXY

According to Yang et al. social media can be used for setting different types of agenda such as in political communication. Posts on various social channels can show people what is currently going on in the political world without them having to follow several news broadcasts. And that’s what everyone wants these days. That is also what happened with the latest campaign by Cosmopolitan which claims that 'Voting is Sexy'. The popular fashion magazine is trying to motivate their young Facebook fans to create ‘pollposals’ and invite their friends through social media to vote together on the upcoming U.S. elections.

The initiative started as a part of their bigger campaign called 'Cosmo Votes' and it is targeted at people aged from 18 to 35 years because statistics showed that this age group has the lowest election turnout rate. Their aim is to bring this matter to the attention of the public and to promote voting behaviour among the young population. They are using the hashtag #cosmovotes and numerous celebrity endorsers who publish funny videos of their pollposals on their Facebook page such as:

This campaign uses all the appropriate features of a media campaign targeted at a young audience. The placement of such campaign on a social platform, using a popular hashtags and celebrity figures sounds like a perfect equation for increasing the voting among the American youth. Setting political agenda for young people might be a difficult task since a lot of young adults are not that interested in politics but their votes are still important. Building a fun element into the elections and spreading it through social media makes voting indeed SEXY.

See you on November 8th.
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About the author:
Bianka is a first-time PR blogger studying at UvA. Her passions include travelling, fashion and also #socialmedia. She is currently trying to balance work & school and hopes that you liked her little blog post.