Collaborating Inside the Election.

 As Election Day approaches, I can confidently say that the internet is a votes best friend. Depending on which party you are voting for I can guarantee that there are sites that have supporting “facts” and negative “facts” about the other candidates.  It stuns me to see how different groups of people will come and work together to support a candidate, the collaborative process is always at works in a presidential race. Traditionally it would have to do with the “foot work” of going door to door, calling for donations, or getting volunteers to attend rallies to raise awareness for the platform a candidate is running on. President Obama changed this scope of this conversation though, he has been deemed as the first social media President. The Washington post has labeled him as a new media president, an Engadget.com has called Obama the White House’s first “Social Media Ninja”. 

https://evolllution.com/opinions/audio-collaboration-key-strengthening-workforce/

All of this together we see how President Obama has used his reaches with media to connect to people and when he was just a nominee he used this power to add votes. Now that was more than 16 years ago that Obama took YouTube by storm to collaborate with the “common person” however in 2016 the field has changed again. This Political race I would deem as the Race of the Meme, to me it seems that every political event that is going on where it be debate, speech, rally, donor dinner, or press events all leave with a meme of what a candidate did.  Over the last 3 or 4 elections I can confidently say that the number of young votes has been growing, and I believe that collaborating is that key. In past elections to understand what a candidate stood for you had to watch the broadcast news or physically attend a rally. However, in 2016 you simply must pick up your phone you have access to virtually every aspect of a candidates’ life. You also get a more robust image of a candidate because with a few clicks on your phone you can see all sides of an argument collaborated with news, social media, and others a person can fully invoke their right to vote. It is so exciting that in this day and age more and more people are getting out and being motivated to vote, also that the notion of voting is becoming “cool” again. As technology first started to advance I feel like we were programed to believe that this was for work purposely only (whether that be school or in the professional world) there has been a slow shift recently that is enabling society to use technology collaboratively and better the world.