With the U.S. presidential election just a few weeks away, the respective campaigns of President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney are becoming fierce. The use of social media has never been more important in raising awareness of policies and targeting potential voters for this upcoming election. As of 2012, 82 percent of U.S. adults now use social media, and 88 percent of those are registered voters. With social media being such a huge impact on the majority of our country, both adults and teenagers, can it impact and predict the Presidential Debate? According to the info-graphic below, in the previous years the candidate (not presidential) with the most followers or Facebook fans ended up winning the most votes. With that being said, social media has proven in the recent years how much of an effect it has on people and their opinions. Currently on Twitter, President Barack Obama has 21.1 million followers and candidate Mitt Romney has 1.9 million followers. On Facebook President Barack Obama 30.9 million Facebook fans and Mitt Romney has Facebook fans. Yes President Obama might in fact have more influence because he is the current president. However, it has been shown that the more influence on social media, correlates with having more votes.
To read more about the influence of social media and how it correlates to the Presidential Debate please click the link below.
Assistant professor of education at Michigan State University Christine Greenhow, taught a class that required her students to use Twitter as an essential component of their participation. According to a study she conducted, her students were more engaged, more active, and actually got higher grades than students who did not use Twitter. When asked about this study Greenhow explained, “Tweeting can be thought of as a new literary practice. It’s changing the way we experience what we read and what we write.”
Since the number of US teens on Twitter have been doubling in the past two years, it is no surprise that this educator and many more have begun to research the implications on how students learn.
Greenhow’s small-scale study found many different benefits of using Twitter in a classroom, such as: fostering collaboration, brainstorming, the ability to write concisely, conducting real-time research and reaching out directly to leaders. She also found that students were more likely to participate on Twitter rather than in face-to-face meetings in the classroom. Greenhow stated that “The students get more engaged because they feel it is connected to something real, that it’s not just learning for the sake of learning. It feels authentic to them.”
Can Twitter really enhance your learning in the classroom? Allow your grades to excel? Well, professor Greenhow thinks so. What do you think?
To read more about professor Greenhow and her study click this link below.
Twenty-five year old Jarvis Britton has been expressing his hatred on twitter for President Obama since June 28th. Britton posted “Free speech? Really? Let’s test this! Let’s kill the president!” on his facebook page. However, this threat just wasn’t enough for Britton. He also tweeted ” I’m going to finish this, if they get me, they get me #ohwell. I think we could get the president with cyanide”. The next day Britton tweeted ” Barack Obama, I wish you were DEAD”. After seeing these threatening messages the Secret Service agent talked with Britton and informed him of the seriousness of the situation, but did not take any further action. A talk with the Secret Service agent clearly would not be a threat to this guy, because he continued to tweet threats about President Obama. Ignoring the comments from the Secret Service agent Britton did not hesitate to send another threatening tweet saying ” Let’s kill the President. F.E.A.R.”.
On August 28th, Britton wrote another angry tweet, mentioning Barack Obama’s twitter account, stating ” @Barack Obama Alabama will see my power in the next 36hours! Word to the secret service”. Gloating with the thoughts that no one could stop him he tweeted “Can the president stop it? He only has 36 hours”. With no surprise, Britton was arrested on September 21 and charged by criminal complaint for threatening the president.
The link below provides more details about the story and the video with much more details about this case and what Britton’s neighbors had to say about this situation.