Obama uses iPhone

"My first job is to say thank you to those who voted me. Those who didn't, I am going to get your vote next time".

- Barack Obama -

These days, politicians use the alternative media to try to win people's hearts to vote for them. One of the biggest examples is Barack Obama, the 44th and current President of the United States. He is also the first African-American to hold the oval office. According to Louie (2007), Obama managed to win the Presidential seat because he also made passionate speech in hopes of delivering equality between races and political lines.

iObama application

On the 2nd of October 2008, the then Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign launched an iPhone application that turned the vaunted device into a political recruiting tool (Cnet.com). The Obama election campaign team launched an application for the Apple iPhone with the intention of attracting more voters and turning its supporters to active campaigners via the feature of iPhone (Information Policy, 2008). The application, iObama, is a combination of interactive networking tools with the latest updates and information regarding the Obama’s election campaign. iObama also allow supporters to browse images, videos and propaganda from the Obama campaign, and scan their personal phonebooks for friends in states where Obama 'needs more support'.

The iObama campaign is aimed to targeted audience such as the young voters, the non-Whites and the American women. His success was proven by the National Election Poll when majority of his targeted audience (Schiffers, 2008) voted for him using the iPhone application.

As mentioned by Bear (2006), everything has its own function be it to sell, inform, educate, impress and entertain. Obama made use of the iPhone to ‘sell’ his ability of making progress and bringing changes to the United States. He also used the application to inform his supporters of his recent updates and ‘educate’ the Americans that the country needs a change. He ‘impress’ and ‘entertain’ his supporters with the features available in the iObama application which enables them to download stuff from the campaign.

Hence, the ability of Barack Obama to use the iPhone to win votes has definitely been a smart choice which made him the current President of the United States.

References:

Bear,JH 2006, Your Guide to Desktop Publishing, online, viewed on 13th June 2009, <http://desktoppub.about.com/mbiopage.htm>.

Information Policy: Obama Becomes Second Politician to Use iPhone 'App' 2008, online, viewed on 13th June 2009, <http://www.i-policy.org/2008/10/obama-becomes-second-politician-to-use-iphone-app.html>.

Schiffers, S 2008, Who Voted for Obama?, online, viewed on 13th June 2009, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7709852.stm>.