How new media shook up the 2008 election

At Ragan’s Corporate Communicators Conference, Kathleen Hall Jamieson speaks about today’s political landscape

“How do we ensure we’re using social media and it’s not using us?”

Communications professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson posed the probing question in her keynote address at Ragan’s Corporate Communicators Conference on Thursday morning.

Her speech — “How new media changed the political landscape: Lessons you can apply to your communications plans” — ranged from the breadth of new media that the Obama campaign used in winning the White House to the potential pitfalls of individual media streams, such as Twitter.

The professor at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication said social media can be productive, but it can also be a distraction. She urged communicators to think about how constant tweeting and other social media activities might alter one’s memory structure. Then she conducted a mini-survey: Several hands shot up when she asked how many people were tweeting about her speech.