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| Transmedia: Where it's all Heading; courtesy of sonofhowell.com |
A prime example of multimedia taking place occurred during Barack Obama's Presidential Election campaign in 2008. Five years ago, then Senator Obama of Illinois used a cross platform of social media to help carry out his message of hope and change for the United States. His approach of using multimedia through multiple social media devices such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Flickr, etc helped him to capture a broad and ultimately diverse amount of people.
What made Obama's strategy innovative was the fact that he was the first Presidential candidate to take advantage of promoting his brand and his political message using multimedia. The traditional method prior to Obama's use of promotion was to have your own website and utilize commercials in key battleground states. Using a new approach helped propel Obama into becoming the 44th President of the United States as he connected to the youth demographic that uses social media heavily.
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| President Obama & First Family on Election Night 2012 courtesy of rittenhoused.com |
Fast-forward to 2012 as President Obama used transmedia to help him defeat Mitt Romney in his re-election campaign. Obama's handlers urged him to once again carry a heavy presence using multimedia. The same social media platforms were present just as it was in 2008, but they made Obama's message more personal and delivered it in a storytelling format. This particular trait is what made his approach to people being classified as transmedia rather than just purely multimedia. If a voter was located in a swing state such as Ohio or if they classified themselves as a "moderate" such as myself, one that is not easily persuaded by a politicians message and doesn't identify with one political party more than the other, they would often receive an email that read in the form of a letter. The letter would start of with a "Hello Friend," in an effort to connect with you personally and talk about why that person's particular vote would be meaningful in the upcoming election. It would delve into the honest struggles of a middle-class, hard working family sharing their story with Obama and then he latter reiterating that message as a way to connect with you individually. The message being shared was not only a non-fictional story but one that took you on a personal journey.
It's important to note that Marsha Kinder, then professor of USC coined the term "transmedia." One particular description that she used for the word in her book, 'Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' was, "Transmedia intertextuality works to position consumers as powerful players while disavowing commercial manipulation,"(Kinder 39).
This quote demonstrates that the "consumers," or in this particular case voters had the power to decipher whether the message being relayed to them in a storytelling format was enough to cast their vote. In order for that vote to be garnered for President Obama, the consumer/voter needed to be able to see through possible manipulation. It's safe to say that this new-found approach once again benefited President Obama as he comfortably attained enough electoral votes as well as the popular vote to defeat Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 Presidential Election.
Bibliography:
Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Jenkins, H. 2008. Obama: The candidate for all platforms http://henryjenkins.org/2008/11/whew_i_am_still_trying.html [Accessed 6 November 2013].
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