BY KIDENDEI CEGERETI

In trying to determine the impact of new media on political campaigning and electioneering, the existing research has tried to examine whether new media supplants conventional media. Television is still the dominant news source, but new media's reach is growing. What is known is that: New media has had a significant impact on elections and what began in the 2008 presidential campaign established new standards for how campaigns would be run. Since then, campaigns also have their outreach methods by developing targeted messages for specific audiences that can be reached via different social media platforms. Both parties have specific digital media strategies designed for voter outreach. Additionally, their websites are socially connected, engaging voters before, during, and after elections. Email and text messages are also regularly sent to supporters encouraging them to donate and get involved.[45] Some existing research focuses on the ways that political campaigns, parties, and candidates have incorporated new media into their political strategizing. This is often a multi-faceted approach that combines new and old media forms to create highly specialized strategies. This allows them to reach wider audiences, but also to target very specific subsets of the electorate. They are able to tap into polling data and in some cases harness the analytics of the traffic and profiles on various social media outlets to get real-time data about the kinds of engagement that is needed and the kinds of messages that are successful or unsuccessful.[45] One body of existing research into the impact of new media on elections investigates the relationship between voters' use of new media and their level of political activity. They focus on areas such as "attentiveness, knowledge, attitudes, orientations, and engagement" (Owen, 2011). In references a vast body of research, Owen (2011) points out that older studies were mixed, while "newer research reveals more consistent evidence of information gain".[45]

Some of that research has shown that there is a connection between the amount and degree of voter engagement and turnout (Owen, 2011). However, new media may not have overwhelming effects on either of those. Other research is tending toward the idea that new media has reinforcing effect, that rather than completely altering, by increasing involvement, it "imitates the established pattern of political participation" (Nam, 2012). After analyzing the Citizenship Involvement Democracy survey, Nam (2012) found that "the internet plays a dual role in mobilizing political participation by people not normally politically involved, as well as reinforcing existing offline participation." These findings chart a middle ground between some research that optimistically holds new media up to be an extremely effective or extremely ineffective at fostering political participation [46]

Towner (2013) found, in his survey of college students, that attention to new media increases offline and online political participation particularly for young people. His research shows that the prevalence of online media boosts participation and engagement. His work suggests that "it seems that online sources that facilitate political involvement, communication, and mobilization, particularly campaign websites, social media, and blogs, are the most important for offline political participation among young people".[47] Deliberation When gauging effects and implications of new media on the political process, one means of doing so is to look at the deliberations that take place in these digital spaces (Halpern & Gibbs, 2013). In citing the work of several researchers, Halpern and Gibbs (2003) define deliberation to be "the performance of a set of communicative behaviors that promote thorough discussion. and the notion that in this process of communication the individuals involved weigh carefully the reasons for and against some of the propositions presented by others".