User:Demberkeley/sandbox

Presidential election

The candidates were able to use social media to get free advertising from their supporters. Attendees of political rallies would take photos with the candidates that would then be shared on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. This generates more visibility for the candidate at no cost to them.

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Donald Trump campaign

Trump has become well-documented in his frequent Twitter posts and rants. Before the Republican National Convention where Trump was named the Republican candidate, he would relentlessly target his fellow Republican candidates when their poll numbers would rise.

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Hillary Clinton campaign

Clinton began using social media platform Snapchat to chronicle her campaign across America. One of her videos, where she proclaimed that she was, "Just chillin', in Cendar Rapids," quickly became a meme on video-sharing app Vine.

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Gary Johnson campaign

The advertisement shows the many negative aspects of both Hillary and Trump, and states that Johnson will protect our freedoms. Another video that made headlines shows the former New Mexico governor faking a heart attack during a debate on the legalization of marijuana. Johnson also received a 5,000 percent increase in Google searches when Ted Cruz dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. As a third party candidate, one of Johnson's main focuses is to convince dissatisfied Republicans and Democrats to vote for him. One way to attract more voters was to go to the Democratic National Convention to persuade disheartened Bernie Sanders supporters to vote for him. This method proved to be somewhat effective as Johnson had a surge in online interactions about the former Governor during the two days of the convention, July 26th and 27th.

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Jill Stein campaign

Jill Stein has made extensive use of Twitter for her presidential campaign. She used the social media platform to communicate with Americans before, during, and after the presidential debate at Hofstra University. Stein used her Twitter influence in hopes that it would demonstrate a "changing political landscape" where voters weren't only faced with two options for president. Stein was trending for the first time on Twitter the week of July 20, 2016 and gained 27,000 new followers. Stein also had the same idea as Gary Johnson to sway discouraged Bernie Sanders supporters to vote for her in the election. This led to a boost in online conversation about Stein during the DNC, just as it did with Johnson. Now that the election has reached its conclusion, Stein has requested a recount in Wisconsin. She is using her social media influence to raise millions of dollars for recounts in not only Wisconsin, but also Pennsylvania and Michigan. Stein states that the reason for the recount is to assure that no hacking of voting machines or voter results occurred.

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POPVOX

POPVOX is a platform that combines legislative data with personal reactions that delivers the users' opinions to governmental officials on policies. Formed in 2010 by Rachna Choudhry and Marci Harris, POPVOX was developed as a civic engagement resource to connect the citizens and the government, with the mission to "empower effective participation, and create a transparent record that influences policy-making and fosters accountable, responsive governing." As a source to convey the constituents' opinions on legislative measures, POPVOX is able to politically engage the citizens in a rather direct way. POPVOX is a civic engaging source that enables citizens to not only feel valuable in the political spectrum, but also gain a sense of representation in regards to the policymakers, demonstrating the use of technology in its governmental applications.

History

The two founders of POPVOX, Rachna Choudhry and Marci Harris, met in 2009. They realized that they both wanted to make their voices heard by lawmakers. The two bonded over how the system was broken. They began to communicate more in an effort to establish a solution to their shared problem, and eventually took their idea to Tim O’Reilly, who became their first angel investor. Afterwards, Choudhry and Harris raised additional funds from family and friends before quitting their jobs. After launching the first version of the platform, they saw just how much people wanted a "transparent advocacy platform" when military families used POPVOX to ask Congress to pass a bill that would continue to provide compensation regardless of a government shutdown.

Marci Harris

Marci Harris received her law degree from American University and spent years in public service working on health reform. She was working as a congressional staffer at the time she met Choudhry.

Rachna Choudhry

Rachna Choudhry first studied Political Science at UCLA and then went on to get her Masters in Public Policy at Georgetown University. She worked on political campaigns prior to becoming a lobbyist, where her personal frustration grew because of how difficult it was for people to have their voices heard by lawmakers.

Function

From its creation to its current state, POPVOX has grown immensely in usage and in performance. This platform "collects correspondence between constituents and their representatives on certain bills and issues, organizes the data by state, and packages the information in pie charts and maps so lawmakers can easily spot where voters stand on a proposed bill." The pie charts and maps facilitate the support and opposition of bills and assist in understanding where people side on certain issues. They enable the users of POPVOX to see where people around the country and on different sides of the spectrum vote on issues they are concerned about, in an effort to assist in their own perspectives on the issue and make their voices heard in the political realm.

POPVOX establishes communication between the lawmakers and their constituents for the sake of making the people's voices heard on bills concerning them. Through the tracing of real-time legislative action on Congress.gov, individuals and organizations can utilize POPVOX to follow bills and their progress in the Congress, while emphasizing their stake in the legislative processes through communicating with lawmakers in regards to these congressional processes.

As it was built around expressing support or opposition to Congressional bills, POPVOX makes the goal to improve civic participation within the political realm to influence policy-making towards transparent and more effective governing. Its functionality and accountability separate POPVOX from the other related transparent platforms, as it "verify constituent addresses, focus comments on specific bills pending before Congress, give our users an opportunity to simply “support” or “oppose” a bill if they don’t want to write a personal comment." These enable POPVOX to improve the transparency of Congress for the benefit of voters on issues concerning them, so that their concerns are communicated directly to their representatives on specific issues/bills. This becomes more personalized and more direct in regards to communication between constituents and their representatives through Congressional Web Forms, and improves the transparency of the legislative processes within the Congress.

Congressmen and women rely on their constituents' opinions that in one way or another have an effect on their policy-making and legislative strategies. It is stated that 88% of Congressional staffers have claimed that personal messages have influenced their decisions regarding policies and bills, researched in a survey by the Congressional Management Foundation. This provides the foundation for POPVOX and its intent on personalizing the concerns and opinions of voters/users for the sake of creating a more transparent governance system and legislative process in the Congress. POPVOX is progressing towards enhancing the usage by lawmakers and congressional staffers/members and it appears that time has come for POPVOX to gain enough credibility for this to occur. House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) announced that House Democrats would start to use POPVOX "to feed into the official intranet for House Democratic staff." This is a sign of change towards increased transparency in the government and towards furthered communication between incumbents and their constituents, so that the people know what their representatives are voting for in the Congress.

Collaborations

POPVOX has teamed up with Politix to help readers share their viewpoints on pending legislation. After readers reach the bottom of certain Politix articles, they have the option to be directed to POPVOX to learn about bills and have the unique ability to "communicate their stance on the bill directly to their elected representatives."

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New media era: since 1990

Online presence is vital to the success of a presidential candidate's campaign. Social media presence lets candidates: have direct access to voters, advertise for free, and fundraise, among other benefits.

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Scholarly Articles

PEER REVIEW FOR SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE UNITED STATES PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2016:

So far, it provides a lot of quotes that are expected to support your published material in the near future. You provide a lot of material on several candidates from the 2016 presidential election cycle. Be prepared to organize your material into each candidate's section on the site of the Wikipedia article. You just need to add more content and material to your article, so that it has a basis for where the quotes will be brought up and supportive of your writing. Also, provide links to each candidate's Wikipedia article that can be utilized as transitions for readers curious about the candidates this year.

PEER REVIEW FOR POPVOX:

Your quotes for the PopVox articles are ready to be put into context of the article. Your creation of a section of the PopVox article will be very relevant and seems prepared for publishing. Just be careful of phrasing in the beginning of your article. Also, add Wikipedia links for the personnel you bring up in the last paragraph. Possibly establish an outline for the PopVox article, as it has not been created yet. I look forward to seeing where this article heads in the future.

PEER REVIEW FOR MASS MEDIA AND AMERICAN POLITICS:

You have your quotes prepared for use in your article on this topic. Just be careful to make sure they are on topic and are relevant to the material at hand in this article. Otherwise, just add some more quotes that will support your writing of this topic. Once you bring up relevant material, provide Wikipedia links for stuff that have their own articles.

Jross35 (talk) 06:44, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

RESPONSE TO PEER REVIEW:

Thank you so much for your review Justin! Once I've drafted my sentences out I will reevaluate all of the sources to confirm that they are relevant to the topic. I'll also review the training modules so I know how to link other Wikipedia articles inside of my own article.