After nearly
two years of tense and combative campaigning between current and future
president Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney, the race is (finally) over. However, the social media bipartisan battles
of Republican vs. Democrat and Romney vs. Obama has just begun. Starting around the time of the first two
presidential debates, Facebook users seemed to leave all their angry
inhibitions at the door. Resorting to a
literal bashing of their Facebook “friends” political posts, bitter Facebook
users did anything to make their political views heard and understood. There was not a Democratic or Republican post
that did not accompany dozens of comments that rebuked values or intelligence
and oftentimes resulted in schoolyard name calling. While I was eager to see
where my Facebook comrades stood on some of the hard hitting issues of this
election, I dreaded the inevitable viscous posts that would flood my newsfeed
on Election Day.
However,
on November 6th I was pleasantly surprised. It seemed as if all battles of Democrats vs.
Republicans and Liberal vs. Conservatives vanished. Instead the focus shifted towards “rocking
the vote” and advocating voting among Facebook users. Between the hours of eight in the morning and
seven at night, I did not see one status or post attempting to “one up” the
previous’ political views or standpoints.
If Democrat and Republican Facebook users could agree on one thing on
Election Day it would be the significance of voting and inspiring others to do
the same. Reaching out and inspiring others among the social media generation
where we have never had so much information available to us is groundbreaking
in itself.
I was blown
away by this technological bipartisan agreement that your vote really does count and your civic duty to vote is important and that you can make a difference!
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