New media are mainstream

Welcome to the world of social media and its impact on public policy, political decision-making and politics. When David Cameron became Britain’s PM, he wanted a few tips from someone who could tell him how it felt to be responsible for and accountable to many millions of people who expected things from him, even though in most cases he would never shake their hands. He turned not to a fellow head of government but to Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook. ¹ Assigned to be Barack Obama’s campaign manager for the 2012 presidential elections, Jim Messina spoke to all the technology leaders for over six months, including Steve Jobs, who told him that mobile technology has to be central to the campaign’s effort and that he has to programme content to a much wider variety of channels – Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube, Google – because people are segmented in very different ways than they were four years ago. ²