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built called MyBarackobama.com (Walmsley 2008; Crow 2008; Talbot 2008). The Republican party used social networking sites during the 2008 to promote candidate John McCain, even at 71 years of age, which demonstrated their understanding of the importance of its use. Political parties are now actively engaging with social networking sites as part of their campaign strategies.

Political campaign strategies have successfully used social networking sites to increase campaign funding. Howard Dean, in 2004, was the first US politician to explore the financial value in using the Internet as part of his campaign strategy. He successfully used the Internet to facilitate small donations online instead of the traditional big fund-raising events. During this same year Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry raised $80 million in online donations. Within two months of creating a MySpace page during the US 2006 election cycle one Republican candidate raised donations by 20%Â The Barack Obama campaign during the 2008 US presidential election raised $55 million in one month - 80% were online donations and 90% of those were under $200 each. This was before he had run a single fund-raising event .

Social networking sites create an easily accessible medium for people to find, distribute and absorb political information. YouTube and other social media sites allows campaign strategies to easily target limitless voters with great communication power .According to a Pew Internet and American Life study, 46% of American voters have used the Internet, text messaging or email for political mobilisation, discussion and to access political news and information 35% of people in the US watched political videos on YouTube .This ease of access combined with new technologies enables campaigners to strategically target and customise their marketing approach.

Social networking sites enable a more targeted approach to election campaigning. The US Republican 2008 presidential campaign used an internal database, called the Voter Volt, matched with internet searches to advertise to potential voters using social networking sites .These new technologies combined with the use of social networking sites not only increases the accuracy of the campaign message through targeted advertising, it has also helped to increase the size of the audience. During the 2008 US Election new technologies

allowed The Republican National Committee to increase the number of potential voters on their database by 6-fold compared to their 2004 campaign .The use of these new tools have the added potential to increase mobilisation.

Benefits of Social Networking Sites usage in Political Campaigning: The biggest advantage that social networking sites provide in an election campaign is of mass coverage with sites such as Myspace, Twitter, Facebook , Youtube, Linkdein , orkut etc.Data table from i strategy labs generating no of users of facebook between age of 18 and 24 are as follows:

It can be seen youth between age 18 and 24 using facebook accounts for 40.8% and in middle age group constitute of 16.6%. So political parties targeting youth and middle age group can be benefited if campaigning through these sites.
Cost Effective :

Political campaigning through these sites is very cost effective methods as the cost involved is very low. And in past micro donations can be 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。