In recent years, social media, represented by Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, has become an integral part of people's daily lives. Social media is more collective, creative, and interactive than early online media, representing a major transformation of Internet media. On social media, huge amounts of text, video and audio content are concoced and spread on social networking sites by different interest groups. Whether for personal, commercial or political purposes, users can break through time and space restrictions and interact freely on social platforms. As far as Western political campaigns are concerned, social media has become deeply involved and played an important role, and its emergence has even upended the traditional political campaign model.

The English language for a political campaign is "campaign" Chinese should be translated as a campaign. The term "campaign" derives from military terms and refers to "military action for a special purpose" or "a military operation on the battlefield" (Dictionary.com, 2020). The term campaign is used because winning a campaign is like winning a campaign - a campaign that wins hearts and means (Thurber, 2010). Over the past few decades, the form and content of Western countries have changed dramatically as a result of the decline of political party groups, the increase in the influence of interest groups and the media, and the professionalization of political campaigns. What remains the same, however, is that in order to win the election, candidates still need to develop a clear and enforceable strategy. This strategy is not only a guide to action that candidates follow in the general direction, but also provides candidates with a range of necessary tactical tools to serve the operational guidance. In fact, political campaigning itself represents a major strategic decision,i.e. an orderly and attempt to influence the decision-making process of a particular individual or group (Hollihan, 2009). By positively influenceing the opinions, attitudes and behaviour of voters, political campaigns continue to intervene in the psychological, emotional and behavioural state of the population, ultimately enabling them to express their support for the Italian candidate in various ways.

Briefly speaking, western political campaigns consist of three dimensions - information, fund-raising, mobilization. These three dimensions are strategic issues that candidates need to consider in the face of supporters and competitors. Based on the past U.S. presidential campaigns, this paper attempts to explain the impact of new technology on these three dimensions. Particularly concerned about how candidates such as Barack Obama and Trump have strategically used social media to gain a resource-based advantage, dramatically increasing their chances of becoming president.

The location of the information. According to historian Yuval Hlali, the political and social order of mankind is essentially based on imagination. American democracy would not have lasted 250 years if most American presidents and members of Congress had not believed in human rights; And the so-called concepts of human rights and capitalism, if we want to study, it is difficult to find that there is objective correctness, they are only the concept of human invention, but also exist only in the human imagination. But this discourse system is conducive to maintaining the specific social and political order of western countries.

In political campaigns, campaigns package candidates in a variety of ways to meet voters' expectations, or to create a candidate that fits their imagination. In this packaging process, it is particularly important to convey what kind of information. In the 2008 U.S. election, for example, Democratic candidate Barack Obama and his campaign have been sending a message of "hope and change." This message is very demagogic to the vast majority of young voters, who have nothing but hope for change and hope for the future. So supporting Mr Obama is tantamount to supporting your own future. For Mr Obama, on the other hand, neither Hillary Clinton, the Democratic primary rival, nor John McCain, the Republican candidate for the general election, is an evergreen in politics, with extensive political experience and decades of deep-rooted political resources, and largely represents a vested interest in American politics. Against this background, the message of "hope and change" is not only in line with young people's imagination of the future, but also caters to the people's potential anti-existing institutions, anti-vested interests of the psychological appeal, so as to turn the so-called experience advantage of the opponent into a negative asset that they can not get rid of. In essence, all this transformation is actually the product of imagination, the Obama campaign with its superb information positioning, and voters to complete the image of Obama's transformation and Hillary, McCain conservative image of the imagination.

Mr. Trump, an atypical Republican who emerged as the stand-out in the 2016 presidential election, captured the change in American sentiment and intentions with his unique business sense of smell, duly proposing the "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan. Reagan, a Republican, used the slogan when he ran for president in the 1980s, which had to do with the relative underdrance of the U.S.-Soviet race for supremacy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States was the world's only superpower for a long time. Entering the 21st century, the events of September 11th, the 2008 financial crisis, the deterioration of the economic situation and the strong rise of China have shaken the confidence of the United States to lead the world for a long time. Mr. Trump's return to the slogan "Make America Great Again" is a keen capture of Americans' fears of a decline in national power and their desire to restore America's former status. This slogan is not only a campaign slogan, but also a trump campaign platform, with a core connotation of nationalism, disregard for international agendas and a focus on your own country and people. Under this banner, Mr. Trump's anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-free-trade and even anti-political and business-rich ideas appeal not only to visible or potential white supremacists, but also to Americans who feel their status is declining as others become stronger. Mr. Trump's ideas are seen as "new nationalism" with the potential to divide American society. That's what Trump's 2016 primary opponent, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, has put forward as a "Stronger Together" campaign slogan. The slogan is undoubtedly in line with American political correctness, but lacks the incendiary and impact of Trump's slogan. In 2020, Mr. Trump, who is seeking re-election, adjusted his slogan four years ago to "Keep America Strong" in an effort to show that he is keeping his campaign promises four years ago and continuing his political beliefs and policy ideas.

The transmission of information. In terms of information strategy in a political campaign, it's not just about what kind of message a candidate wants to send, it's about how to deliver it. Over the past century, the information strategy of political campaigns has been constantly adapting to new communication technologies. In the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt conducted the famous "fireside talk", using radio to promote a "community of imaginations" and successfully and efficiently delivering his campaign message to his audience. John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. presidential election by television. Republicans turned mail-in ads into a fundraising machine in the 1970s, helping to sustain party revenue for two decades. In 1992, Clinton's campaign bewritten the power of cable television as an advertising vehicle and bought cable ads across the country in one go. In 2004, George W. Bush's campaign began using micro-targeting technology to target his re-election campaign. By predicting and segmenting, its campaign team can gather thousands of swing voters and then give them what they want to hear (Hoffman, 2008). That same year, Howard Dean, the Democratic primary candidate, launched his first online campaign. However, the campaign is more information-sharing and customized, and does not fully implement the information control strategy needed for the campaign (Macnamara, 2008).

By 2008, social media such as Youtube, My Space, Facebook, Flickr was booming, and Obama moved with the times, using campaign website my.barackobama.com as the central kitchen for information, using these social platforms as important information distribution channels to form a "one center, multiple fulcums" information diffusion structure. Its characteristics are three: First, rely on word-of-mouth dissemination. Obama's pastor, Jerry Wright, for example, has made inflammatory, racially charged remarks publicly, prompting rebukes from opponents during the campaign. With that in mind, Obama gave a speech in Philadelphia called "A Better Union." The speech was viewed 1.2 million times on Youtube in 24 hours and nearly 4 million in four weeks, considered the most important event of the election (Ploufe, 2009). The second is to emphasize interaction with voters. Obama's campaign team and volunteers understand the importance of human communication, interacting one-on-one with voters every day and answering tens of thousands of questions that are achieved through campaign websites and social media (Lemon, 2009); The essence of social media is the user's own media. The Obama team took full advantage of this feature by providing numerous raw materials such as text and videos on its campaign website, encouraging users to create their own materials. In return, Obama supporters eventually uploaded 440,000 pro-Obama videos on Youtube and 400,000 blogs on his campaign website (Macnamara, 2008). In short, Mr Obama's messaging through social media, highly personal, interactive and heuristic, while being consistent with the main message on his campaign website, has succeeded in inspiring millions of young voters to follow his cause.

By 2016, Republican candidate Donald Trump was the king of the social media campaign. If you only look at the traditional media coverage, you think Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is more likely to ascend to the presidency. But the real battleground is social media, because most people now use social media to learn about the world. All the candidates are aware of this and are beginning to weaken the role of traditional media and even campaign websites, shifting their focus to social platforms (mainly Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc.), but Mr. Trump is certainly better. Although Clinton posts almost as much information on social media as Trump on Twitter, Facebook and others, the latter has far more attention and influence (including likes, retweets, comments, etc.) than the former (Mitchell et al., 2016). There are a number of reasons, such as Mrs. Clinton's moderate brand marketing path, and Mr. Trump's more personalized and even emotional approach; Mrs. Clinton's display to the public is mostly political, while Mr. Trump's personality is personal and social platform-appropriate; Mrs. Clinton's focus on information control, and Mr. Trump's emphasis on feedback from the public, such as his 25 percent of Twitter posts, 78 percent of which are retweeted, come from the general public. Clinton's numbers are 15 percent and 0 percent, respectively (Mitchell et al., 2016). Importantly, Mr. Trump has often been "unobstructed" and has occasionally made controversial statements, such as his public advocacy of building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, stopping the smuggling of migrants, and making Mexico pay for it ." Comments such as "politically incorrect" have prompted widespread coverage in both the old and the new media, and demeaningly, Mr. Trump has got what he wants(Free) exposure, and captured a large number of loyal fans who agreed with his political ideas.

In the 2020 presidential election, social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube remain the most important sources of information for candidates, and Trump remains the most influential candidate on social media. According to statistics, as of November 2019, all Democratic candidates (more than 10) had more than 58 million interactions (including likes, comments, and shares) on social media, but far fewer than the 181 million that Trump received (Rothschild, 2019). One of the key reasons Mr. Trump won the election in 2016 was his success in attracting voters' attention to controversial issues he set up, such as immigration, racial hatred, economic nationalism and so on. His Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is largely surrounded by personal negative news (e.g. email doors, healthgates, Wikileaks, The Bensiga hearings, etc.) and it's hard to spread her policy ideas strongly (Faris et al., 2017). In 2020, as Trump replicates this pattern of attention in a highly personalized way, Democratic candidates must find a way to counter Trump and push their ideas and ideas to the fore and center of media coverage and public discussion.

Alienation of information. The alienation of information refers here to fake news, that is, false and sensational information spread by means of news reports. Fake news is nothing new, it can be said that how long the history of political campaigns, the history of fake news has a long history, how long the history of the news industry, the history of fake news is how long. But by 2016, the proliferation of fake news appears to have reached a new level, closely related to the impact of artificial intelligence on social media. Social media has become a source of fake news due to a lack of professional news keepers and a variety of economic interests and ideological considerations. In the 2016 election, a lot of fake news about the candidate was produced and spread on social platforms like Facebook, most of it against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Robots on social media, in particular (automated accounts that mimic humans), can expand the spread of fake news by an order of magnitude by likes, sharing and searching for information. Between 9 and 15 percent of Twitter's active accounts are reported to be robots, with pro-Trump bots flowing at least four times as much as pro-Hillary ones. Facebook estimates that as many as 60 million robots have attacked its platform, which dominated much of the political content released during the 2016 U.S. election campaign.

Research shows that in the 2016 election, on average, every American saw and remembered at least one fake news story; in the weeks leading up to the election, 27 percent of the public visited fake news sites; and in the three months leading up to the election, fake news caused more attention on Facebook (including sharing, comments, emotional reactions, etc.) than authoritative news stories (Grinberg et al., 2019). As to whether fake news influenced the outcome of the election, the researchers came to different conclusions, with some finding that there was a substantial impact (Allcott and Gentzkow, 2017) and others saying that the effect was minimal (Grinberg et al., 2019). Many people point to the source of fake news production to the Russian government. The U.S. Senate has also set up a task force to investigate Russia's use of social media to interfere in the election. The report found that Russia was "massively and systematically" using social platforms to spread fake news against Mrs Clinton and in Mr Trump's favour, with the aim of preventing the former from being elected in order to maximise Russia's interests, and noted that Mr. Trump was not involved in Russia's "campaign" (Congress of the United States, 2019).

The 2016 fake news event is not over, and the 2020 election follows. There is growing concern that the problem of fake news will not only not be solved in the recent election, but will get worse and worse. To regain users' trust, three platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, have agreed to implement the Honest Ads Act, which requires political ads in the US and Europe to disclose their advertising backers. The three platforms have also removed a large number of accounts suspected of spreading fake news, but it is still controversial whether some accounts are really problematic. But even so, it is almost impossible to stamp out fake news. In particular, the development and refinement of deepfake technology, an artificial intelligence-based synthesis of human images, will make fake news more difficult to discern. Unsurprisingly, fake news will still play an important role in the 2020 presidential election.

Federal Election Campaign Act. In the United States, the ability of presidential candidates to raise money has become a prerequisite for their candidacy for office. However, even with all the money, a candidate may not be able to win an election; In addition, political campaigns in the United States have become increasingly expensive, from local to state to national level. Correspondingly, political campaign fundraising strategies are becoming increasingly important. On the other hand, in order to uphold the principle of "one person, one vote" of the nation, the United States Congress passed the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, which regulates the fund-raising practices of candidates. The bill and its subsequent amendments established a system of public funding for presidential primaries and elections, set legal limits on campaign contributions from individuals and institutions, prohibited direct contributions from businesses, labor organizations and national banks, required candidates to disclose the sources of campaign contributions and campaign expenses, and specifically required candidates to report the names, addresses and occupations of donors who had donated $200 or more. All of these provisions are designed to ensure that the election results reflect the will of the public, not the tendencies of large corporations or special interest groups. Because of these laws, running for president "suddenly" becomes a possibility for less well-off candidates. Moreover, presidential candidates can no longer rely on huge sponsorships from big conglomerates and unions, which have had to seek support from a large number of small donors. In this sense, the Federal Election Campaign Act and its amendments have had a clear and direct impact on the monetary dimension of the campaign.

The use of social media. George W. Bush's presidential campaign in 2000 and Dean's Democratic primary in 2004 were seen as two fundraising paths under the Federal Election Campaign Act. George W. Bush's fundraising style is still traditional in nature, relying heavily on the support of friends and family. He has built a network of more than 650 powerful friends, each of who has the ability to help him get more than 10 donations, each of which can reach the legal limit. In this way, George W. Bush raised $300 million, a record high, enough to give him a clear financial advantage against Democratic rival Al Gore (Edsall et al., 2004). In 2004, as George W. Bush continued to use his strong political and economic network to raise money for his re-election, Dean, the Democratic primary candidate, began using the Internet to raise money, the first time he had used it in a U.S. political campaign. Despite the small amount of donations per netizen, the vast majority of which is less than 200 yuan, Dean eventually raised more than $40 million because of his large population base, the most-funded candidate in the Democratic primary (Hindman, 2005).

In 2008, Obama used social media as a platform to creatively put George W. Bush's network of contacts and Dean's Internet thinking together, with surprising results. The first question involved in fund-raising is "who to raise money for". Mr Obama's answer is largely voter-dependent. On the night he won the Democratic primary, Obama said with emotion, "I've never been the one who could be elected president." We didn't have much money at the beginning, and we didn't have many people on the platform. Our campaign relies heavily on hard-working men and women who squeeze five bucks, 10 bucks and 20 dollars out of their meagre savings to support our cause. "These voters are mainly donating to Obama through online channels. The second question of fundraising is "who's going to raise money." Mr Obama's answer was to rely mainly on volunteers. Like George W. Bush in 2000, Mr. Obama formed a vast network of people, the difference being that the former was made up of his personal friends and the latter by volunteers online. Through his campaign website, Obama has given volunteers a variety of aids that allow them to raise money online and offline (Green, 2008). The third question of fundraising is "how to persuade people to donate". Mr. Obama's approach is to convince his supporters, through speeches and other means, that the campaign is not just about Mr. Obama's own political aspirations, but about his own cause. In other words, "You are fighting not only for me, but also for your own ideas and future." Through this strategy, Mr Obama raised a record $750m, of which $500m was raised online (Mosk, 2008).

"United Citizens Case". United Citizens v. Federal Election Commission ("United Citizens") is an important case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled in January 2010 that the Bipartisan Electoral Reform Act violated the constitutional principle of freedom of expression. The bill was co-sponsored in 2002 by Republican John McCain and Democrat Fain Gold. It prohibits any national political party from collecting or spending funds (i.e. soft money) that are not subject to the federal election campaign law, and prohibits businesses, trade unions, and other non-profit groups (i.e., 527 organizations) from funding any campaign-related or disguised denigration of candidates in the 30 days before the primaries or 60 days before the general election. United Citizens, a politically biased conservative nonprofit, had planned to air an ad promoting its film "Hillary: A Movie," a documentary aimed at criticizing then-Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, but was rejected by the Federal Election Commission. In January 2008, the District Court of Columbia ruled against United Citizens on the grounds that funding ads that denigrated candidates 30 days before the primaries violated the Bipartisan Electoral Reform Act. United Citizens appealed the verdict to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court's final decision was 5:4. A majority of them argued that the bipartisan electoral reform bill's funding restrictions were illegal and did not apply to campaign films in this case. In the Supreme Court's view, businesses, trade unions and consortia should enjoy the same freedom of expression as individual citizens, and their "independent spending" in election campaigns should not be restricted. The verdict immediately caused a great controversy. Proponents say it is in line with the principle of free speech, while opponents say the ruling will lead to deep involvement of interest groups in the campaign and corrupt democracy.

The follow-up impact of the United Citizens case. The immediate consequence of the United Citizens case is the "Super Political Action Committee"(Super PACs). Most of the super-committee's funding comes from unlimited political contributions from individuals, businesses, trade unions and consortia. The super-committee is nominally independent of the candidate, so it can run ads that denigrate competitors without fear of damaging the reputation of those it supports. In the 2012 presidential election, the committee played a major role in the Republican primaries, spending more on the campaign (mainly on advertising) than the candidates themselves. For example, a super-committee called "Reinventing Our Future" spent $40 million to help his preferred Romney out of the Republican primary, while another supercommittory called "Win Our Future" spent $16 million to help elect another Republican candidate, Eric gingrich (2012). The main donors to the Commission are not corporations, but the rich. According to statistics, 80 per cent of the super-committee's contributions came from 100 wealthy individuals (only 3.7 per cent of the total), while only 0.5 per cent came from listed companies (Riley, 2012).

In the 2016 election, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton raised $1.4 billion in campaign funds, while Republican candidate Donald Trump raised $900 million, more than $2.3 billion on both sides, including $390 million from large donors of more than $5,000 and $290 million from oversized donors of more than $100,000 (Narayanswamy et). al., 2016); In contrast to the 2008 election, donations of more than $5,000 totaled only $3.1 million, and donations of more than $100,000 were almost non-existent (Stigler Center, 2016). Social media continues to play an important role in attracting small donations, which still account for the largest percentage of the money raised by candidates, but the growing number of large donations from individuals or businesses reflects the growing weight of the super-committee in the 2016 election. Authoritative data suggest that this trend is likely to continue in the 2020 election (OpenSecrets.org, 2020). It's worth noting that in the 2016 election, Clinton lost the election despite raising far more money than Trump, largely because the latter was far more able to manipulate issues than the former, and thus received a lot of free media coverage.

The traditional mobilization path. Mobilization is an attempt to persuade someone to act in a particular way (Foot and Schneider, 2002). The key issue of political mobilization is the high cost of reaching the population. The more traditional way to mobilize supporters is lobbying, where campaign teams reach out directly to target groups. Campaigns go door-to-door according to the voter register, or record voters' voting intentions by phone. After lobbying, team members mail brochures and prints to voters who say they haven't thought about it yet. On Election Day, the campaign contacted potential supporters again to get them out to vote. The main problem with lobbying is that it is too inefficient, with unanswered calls, automatic answering machines, closed-door tickets and ineffective e-mails clearly wasting valuable lobbyist time and money (Straw and Anstead, 2008).

In fact, political candidates have tried a variety of ways to reduce these problems. Among them, George W. Bush's micro-targeting strategy in the 2004 election became a well-known strategy. By layering complex demographic and psychological data collected in previous election cycles, the Bush campaign was able to identify with near certainty who might vote for him. Those voters will be matched by people like them but from the campaign team, who will be persuaded to support Bush (Sanson, 2008). As a result, the campaign was able to move beyond lobbying to certain communities and calculate the voting intentions of clearly designated family members.

While Bush is busy improving the use of statistics on the campaign trail, Dean tries to reach voters from different angles, such as online mobilization. In the 2004 election, Dean's supporters used meetup.com to organize rallies and meetings, symbolizing the beginning of online organizing. The Internet has radically reduced the cost of political mobilization compared to traditional phone calls, direct mailings, door-to-door lobbying, because the cost of sending an e-mail is almost the same as sending 1,000 (Krueger, 2006). It can be seen that the Internet is particularly beneficial to candidates like Dean who do not have the resources to mobilize traditionally. But the problem is that Dean can't convert online organizations into real votes, which partly explains his defeat in the Democratic primary.

The power of social media. In 2008, Mr. Obama took online mobilization to a new level by strategically using social media. As they push the online grassroots movement, they make sure to learn from Dean's failure. "Obviously, an important lesson is that we need to translate grass-roots enthusiasm into real votes, which is a matter of great concern to us," Obama said in an interview with the New York Times (Cooper, 2007). At the strategic level, Mr. Obama's focus is on shifting online mobilization into offline operations, particularly to strengthen ground operations in key swing states. To that end, Mr. Obama decided to empower his thousands of supporters, including by giving up control of the text, information and campaign, so that the latter could campaign for him locally, according to his wishes and itinerary. Mr Obama understands the power of cyber empowerment and the power of mass movements, and uses and guides them in a timely and reasonable manner to gain much greater influence than his rivals (McGirt, 2009).

Specifically, Mr. Obama relies heavily on campaign websites and social networking sites to facilitate the shift from online mobilization to offline action. On the campaign website, the Obama team provides supporters with software tools and apps to organize their own events, such as creating fundraising pages on social platforms, starting campaign blogs, or sending prepared messages to voters. These software tools and applications have turned thousands of online supporters into grass-roots support staff and volunteers. An example is the Call Friends app developed by the Obama team. The app turns a supporter's phone into a personal campaign tool. Once downloaded from the campaign website, supporters can contact friends and family on their phones to encourage them to register and vote. In general, collecting phone messages from strangers is not as effective as traditional "door-to-door ticketing", but phone calls between friends and family can be as effective as ticket-pulling (Thurber, 2010). On election day, supporters won thousands of extra votes for Obama by using "call friends" and won two swing states , Colorado and Nebraska (Gibson, 2008).

In addition to online organizing tools, the Obama team has launched the Neighborhood Team Leaders program, a central part of Obama's ground operations. On the campaign website, supporters can register as members of the neighborhood team. Identify supporters with a good track record of participation and be invited to Obama's campaign training camp. After the training, he became the head of the neighborhood team, tasked with meeting face-to-face with undecided voters in his community, encouraging them to register and go out on election day to vote for Obama. Barack Obama.com, 2008). In the process, team leaders can access the Obama campaign's database and then build their own network of supporters for fund-raising and ticket-pulling activities. The project gives supporters so much power that they see Mr Obama's campaign as their own business. In the achievement of President Ma dream, but also the achievement of their own inner desire.

In the post-2008 election, candidates largely drew on Obama's social media strategy, with online mobilization, offline operations, online and offline interactions, and close coordination between campaign websites and social accounts. In the 2020 election, for example, Joe Biden, the Democratic primary candidate and former vice president of the United States, offers supporters the following ways to participate on his official website: looking for a nearby campaign, finding a local campaign office, contacting a local organizer, downloading Team Joe's app, getting an organizational kit, calling Joe, running a local campaign, becoming Joe's grass-roots fundraiser, and so on. Elizabeth Warren, another Democratic primary candidate and a former Harvard professor, also offers supporters a variety of easy-to-use toolkits, including how to connect voters, organize events, organize communities, make posters, and more. Mr. Trump, who is seeking re-election, and other candidates have provided similar tools and platforms to help supporters campaign for them, including fundraising and ticket-pulling.

The use of big data analytics. Targeting voters and then organizing mobilization have always been the focus of the campaign. Before the advent of the Internet, candidates had to rely on traditional demographics to find the target population, and in 2004 George W. Bush's micro-targeting was at its best. During the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, Mr. Obama and his rivals both noted the efficiency of using the Internet to collect voter data. On the campaign website, Obama has run channels for a variety of people, including nearly 20 for African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, the elderly, students, women, children, gays, environmentalists and more. Through such stratation and other data analysis, the Obama team was able to pinpoint voters in key constituencies and then pass on policy ideas based on issues of interest to gain more votes. By 2016 and 2020, candidates will no longer be strataging voters on their official websites, but will only offer online versions in English and Spanish to win over the growing Hispanic vote. But that's not to say that candidates no longer value targeting. On the contrary, as big data analytics technology improves, candidates such as Mr. Trump have increasingly relied on the services of big data analytics firms, such as the controversial Cambridge Analytics in 2016, including but not limited to monitoring the movement of public opinion, targeting undecided voters, identifying potential donors and voters, and then launching volunteers to encourage those voters to donate and vote online or offline (Lapowsky, 2017).

As shown above, social media is reshaping all key aspects of the U.S. presidential race, including messaging, fundraising and mobilization. With regard to messaging, social media enables candidates' messages to be word-of-mouth, multi-dimensional human interaction, and much of the content can be generated by supporters. In this way, candidates can save a lot of money on traditional advertising, bypass the traditional media information filtering, and more importantly, improve the efficiency of information transmission.

Social media also provides candidates with effective fundraising tools, changing fundraising questions such as "ask who," "who asks" and "how to." This shows that fund-raising is becoming increasingly fragmented and that small donations have played an important role in the campaign. The United Citizens decision has led to a growing number of large donations, but it has not changed the fact that small donations dominate. In terms of voter mobilization, social media has a natural advantage in empowering volunteers, giving candidates the opportunity to turn emerging online mobilization into efficient offline action. The candidates, represented by Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump, have taken advantage of these characteristics of social media to gain an incalculable resource advantage, paving the way for them to enter the White House.

Political campaigns will continue to adapt to the challenges posed by new communications technologies, and it may not be possible to predict with accuracy the structure and manner of future campaigns. But the successful campaigns of candidates such as Barack Obama and Mr. Trump have shown that political campaigns must make the Internet a central part of their campaigns, and that social media and related tools will continue to influence election campaigns and even change the size and direction of the campaign. More to the point, their success signals a substantial shift in the political campaign model from a top-down model in the traditional media era to a bottom-up paradigm in the social media age. By encouraging individuals to participate in all aspects of the campaign, social media can help increase people's political participation, effectiveness, and support for candidates and governments. In other words, social media plays a crucial role in empowering people, not only as a means of achieving democracy, but also as an end in itself. Of course, like all presidential campaigns of all ages, the image and competence of candidates in the social media age are largely carefully packaged by the campaign through a variety of propaganda tools, and the ultimate competence for the presidency will have to be tested by their governance practices.

Source Journal: People's Forum Academic Frontiers

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