Cyber-Activism and Democracy - Essay Example

Both Republicans and Democrats agreed that majority of these young voters voted for Obama because of the contact campaign made to reach out the young voters through email and social networking sites. In fact it was as early as in February 2007 that President Nomination hopeful, Barak Obama launched his own social networking site (O'Hear, 2007). Therefore, it will be worthwhile to find out the kind of influence the cyber-activism had on the US democracy. Carr (2008) pointed out that the Obama campaign did not do anything innovative during the run up to the presidency.

What it did was to tap the power of the social networking applications in the form of a mass movement and was successful in raising money, organize locally and fight out the smear campaign. Such ventures proved to be a historic milestone for the Obama campaigns, as it first ensured his win over the fellow democrat Hillary Clinton and subsequently over the Republican rival John McCain. Even after getting elected to the office Obama sought to continue the trend and argued his case to bring his Blackberry to the Oval office.

The arguments from the administration about security concerns and a tradition of e-mail-free presidents did not help and Obama was successful in finding a secure way to hold on the communicator, his dependable ally during the run up to the presidency (Heussner, 2009).President Obama started off his tenure amidst uncertainty and gloom in the economy. People expected something concrete from him on this front. After 100 days in office, a survey carried out by Wall Street Journal/NBC News came out with the finding that 61 percent people approved the job Obama has done as the President (WSJ, 2009).

Obama administration has been active on many fronts. The top five agendas taken up by the admin include;i. Economic Stimulus Plan: President Obama was able to convince the Congress to pass the $787 billion economic stimulus plan. Impact of the discussion taking place on social networking sites is certainly there on the steps being taken to control the damage on account of recessionary trends. While general public certainly wants that the corporate world requires a helping hand, but at the same time, it desires that the sanctity of public money should be maintained.

Owing to such pressures, President Obama, blasted off the 165 million dollars largesse being offered by American International Group (AIG) to its executives in the form of bonuses. He instructed the Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to make sure that the bailout money is not misused (BBC, 2009).ii. Setting up of Green Team: The damage being done to the environment by the rising levels of industrial pollution and some of the policies of the corporate world have been a topic of discussion at almost all SNS.

Besides the individuals, a number of NGOs like AVAAZ took up the matter and sent across messages to the US administration (Avaaz, 2008). This seems to have an impact on the decision making and Barak Obama came out with a team of specialists to suggest remedial measures towards protecting the environment. Obama issued strict environmental directives calling on the EPA to1 'revisit a request from California and 13