Analysis Of New Media On The 2008 U.s. Presidential Election

New media is rapidly becoming an important part of a presidential candidate's media strategy. The use of the new media by most of the candidates had been unprecedentedly frequent and overwhelming in 2008 American president election cycle. It is most believed that U.S President Barack Obama, who had massively used new media as one of his campaign strategies, not only won the election, but also drawn the world's attention and gained himself the reputation as a "Internet President". This paper angles from the perspective on the political function of the mass media and picks the relation movement between new media and the 2008 American election as a baseline to discuss how new media was giving impact on the whole election campaign process by examining the candidates' new media usage, such as campaign strategies, way of practicing election, voters participation and attitude etc. This paper aims to grasp the biggest feature of the election—the comprehensive use of new media, which can not only help us to have better understandings on the American media politics and media culture as well as the formation of a democratic system of the United States, bus also give references and suggestions on the development of our own country's new media development, thus help our new media to play a positive role on our democratic political process.