From "Television President" To "Internet President"

Considered as the "the Fourth branch of government", mass media plays an im-portant role in American politics. Therefore, media study has been a crucial issue in American study. In order to find more details on how the media impact on American politics, the thesis chooses two cases to make analysis on this point:one is John F. Kennedy's using of the television in the presidential election of1960, the other is Obama's using the Internet in2008election.The thesis is composed of five parts—the Introduction, the three chapters con-stituting the bulk of the thesis, and the Conclusion. The introduction part is designed to elaborate on some background information of the thesis. And in Chapter one, it provides the general information about the mass media in America especially the situ-ation of television and Internet.The next two chapters are the key parts of the whole thesis and will focus on the above mentioned cases.Firstly, through the analysis on the first televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon in the presidential election of1964, the thesis tries to make a deep exploitation on the television's impact on the presidential election from the aspects of electoral candidates and voters. In essence, Kennedy's use of television has not only changed the ways candidates operate their electoral campaigns, but also altered the ways voters participate in election and politics.Then, the thesis will center on the use of Internet in the2008election by Obama and his "New Media" team, and to study on his successfully married the highly par-ticipatory sensibilities of the Internet with offline grass-roots organizing. From the study we can see that, the major impacts of Internet on this election can be concluded in three points:how Obama's campaign used new media and technology as an integral part of its strategy, to raise funds for campaign, and, more importantly, to "develop a groundswell of empowered volunteers who felt they could make a difference"(Aaker&Chang,2009), and these will be detailed in the following chapter.In the last part, a conclusion will be reached from the analysis of two mentioned cases:Mass media can help to shape the views of voters, which sometimes can deter-mine the outcome in close elections and change the course of political life. However, the victory of Kennedy and Obama cannot be merely attributed to their media using. Other factors such as the policies they issued in campaigns are also crucial to their success.