Networking the vote

By Sarah Reedy

As sources like MySpace and YouTube overtake other traditional outlets of political information to the youth voters, candidates are not the only ones taking notice.
Millennial voters turn to mobile social networks for political persuasion

By the presidential election this year in November, one-third of the millennial generation, those born between 1982 and 2003, will be eligible to vote. In the following election in 2012, the entire cohort – the largest generation in United States history – will be legal and able to exercise their political prowess. To reach this sizable demographic, candidates, companies and carriers are increasingly looking to combining youth’s most ubiquitous platform, the mobile phone, with their favorite pastime, social networking......

....Authors Michael Hais and Morley Winograd this month published a book entitled Millennial Makeover, MySpace, YouTube & the Future of American Politics, about the intersection of technology and politics in this year’s election and how it has given the millennial generation new power to shape American politics with social networks.

According to the authors, there' are a million more millennials than boomers and the generation is made up of 40% African-American, Asian, Latino or mixed race with one in five having an immigrant parent. With more immigrating to the U.S., the generation keeps getting bigger. This generation also has more self-identified liberals than the past four generations. Where social networks come into play is in this generation’s consensus-oriented attitude.

“As Millennials become the target demographic for all types of media, this approach to creating as well as absorbing content and information without filtering by experts will soon become the way all of America prefers to get its information,” the book’s introduction reads. “The presidential campaign of 2008 is the first real test of the willingness of candidates to embrace social networking technologies, and the generation that uses them, as Millennials become a significant portion of the electorate.” READ MORE