New Media and the Obama Administration

After record fund raising and unprecedented organization via the internet during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, it only makes sense that he continues using this successful tool as the president. President Obama has dedicated his administration to the use of new media by appointing the first ever Director of New Media, Macon Phillips. New media technology will allow for what Obama calls “the most transparent presidential administration ever.” Moving into the White House, the new administration found the computer equipment to be quite outdated. Obama’s spokesman Bill Burton said, “It’s kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari.” Obama himself gets to keep a Blackberry throughout his presidency, except this one has been built by the NSA to have advanced security from hackers. Obama also wants to spend a significant portion of the proposed stimulus package to renovate/modernize 10,000 schools and expand the access of broadband internet to more Americans and American businesses.

As someone who advocates the use of New Media, the Obama administration is building and maintaining the new Whitehouse.gov site. There are fun things to do on the site, such as the presidential slideshow and the White House quiz. However, there are also aspects which are built to meet the three goals of the administration: communication, transparency, and participation. There is an aim to keep communication consistent and up to date. The webpage includes presidential blogs and the weekly presidential address (which can be uploaded as a podcast). Using the internet as a tool, transparency is more accessible than ever. All executive orders, proclamations, and intended spending can be viewed on the whitehouse.gov website. When (or if) the presidents economic stimulus package has passed, all spending will be posted to recovery.gov for public scrutiny, a website set up solely for that purpose. If one prefers all updates (proclamations, executive orders) can be had through the emailing service. The general American public is encouraged to participate as well. Participation can be had through the educating of oneself through linking to various cabinet sites or brushing up on our history. It can be had through usaservice.org, a website where people our locally linked to volunteer projects near to them. Another easy way to be involved is through the email suggestion/questions option on the site. For instance I suggested periodically featuring polls on the website as a way to increase the interaction of the American people with the Executive branch.

The unprecedented availability of this information could be used in various aspects of a Language Arts classroom (not to mention it is a virtual goldmine for our coworkers in the Social Studies realm). For editorial writing the students can have direct access to the administration or the administration’s documents for citing noteworthy information. I often do current events that could now use actual documents instead of the secondary news sources, while also paying close attention to the careful wording of the document. In a New Media unit you could use this as an example of how the internet allows mass and fairly intimate communication. Perhaps the students could even debate of how communication could be improved and then submit it as a suggestion to the administration. It is exciting to see a president who is not only going to be using these tools to increase his own communication, but those of the American people as well.

www.whitehouse.gov
www.recovery.gov
www.usaservice.org
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/change_has_come_to_whitehouse-gov/