Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Obama & iPhone



Source: Wired.com

At the dawn of the 21st century, new media, technologies and gadgets are taking the world with storm. In 2008, politician, Barrack Obama who has now become the first African-American President of the United States of America, was reported using and iPhone to attract voters, and eventually won the campaign. In the article by Shiels, "Obama uses iPhone to win support", it is stated that President Barrack Obama used the iPhone to connect with his voters. The use of the mobile technology to get people involved directly is a way for the grass roots to really make an impact. Volunteers developes developed a free application, "Call Friends" that would generate thousands of additional personal contacts that would then be turned into votes. Even though, the application made wered marked, privacy of the users were strictly protected as no private information left the phone.


This is obviously a new innovation of how politicians are able to win votes; and it is enabled by the new wave of mobile technology. Shankland (2008), reports that the application also showed Obama statements to the news media and a guide to Obama's positions on various issues. Both Obama and McCain also turned to the web to raise money, YouTube to air adverts and Facebook to raise their profiles among the social networking set. This shows how important new media is as even politicians turn to it to raise their profile, as Gillmor (2004) states that new media is able to reach the global audience. Therefore, the iPhone had granted a faster and bigger spread of information to the nation.


However, recently, there are safety issues regarding the use of iPhone. According to Wauters (2009), a 15 year old Belgian by the name of Salvatore is the latest victim in the series of the mysterious iPhone explosions. While iPhone may be the new wave of mobile technology, the safety status is still researched due to several explosion cases.Chen (2009) reported that consumers have complained about the batteries overheating which may lead to explosions. The European Commission, has thus asked all 27 EU nations to keep iPhone issues as such informed of any problems under the community’s rapid alert system for dangerous consumer products, known as RAPEX (Wauters,2009)


References



Chen, BX 2009, Battery Issues Likely Cause of iPhone 3GS Overheating, Wired.com, viewed 14 November 2009, http://www.blogger.com/publish-confirmation.g?blogID=5192205619098688129&postID=8396101822856788697&timestamp=1258608641837&javascriptEnabled=true

Gillmor, D 2004, We the media: Grassroots Journalism by the People for the People, O’Reilly Media, United States of America.



Shiels, M 2008, Obama uses iPhone to win support, BBC News, viewed 14 November 2009,


Shankland, S 2008, Obama releases iPhone recruiting, campaign tool, Cnet.com, viewed 14 November 2009, < http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10056519-38.html>.

Wauters, R 2009, Belgian teenager latest victim of exploding iPhone phenomenon, Tech Crunch, viewed 14 November 2009, http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/08/28/belgian-teenager-latest-victim-of-exploding-iphone-phenomenon/
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