Manu Chao Political views and activism What was one of Chao's polital views? Chao's lyrics provoke his audience to think about immigration, love, living in ghettos, drugs, and often carry a left-wing message. What was his political view on drugs? I don't know. Was he an activist? Chao uses his Facebook and Twitter accounts to show support to many causes and current movements What causes or movements did he show support for? Anti Globalization, Indigenous Peoples' Rights, Sex Workers' Rights, Women's Rights, Environmental Justice, and more. Were his efforts successful? I don't know.
Did he have any activist efforts outside of Facebook and Twitter?
Did Manu Chao have any activist efforts outside of Facebook and Twitter?
Heavily influenced by the UK rock scene, particularly The Clash, The Jam and Dr. Feelgood, Chao and other musicians formed the Spanish/English rockabilly group Hot Pants in the mid-1980s. The group released a demo entitled "Mala Vida" in 1984, which received plenty of local critical praise but otherwise gained them little attention. By the time the group released their first album in 1986 the Parisian alternative music scene had taken flight, and Manu, his brother Antoine Chao, and friends such as Alain from Les Wampas formed Los Carayos to incorporate this sound with the rockabilly and punk styles of Hot Pants. Los Carayos remained a side project of the artists for eight years, releasing three albums in the first two years followed by a final album in 1994.  In 1987, the Chao brothers and their cousin Santiago Casariego founded the multiracial band Mano Negra. Manu Chao said in Alt.Latino in 2011, "Mano Negra started playing in a subway in Paris before the band started to be known and selling records. We started in a subway for a living. This is what made the musicians of Mano Negra. And so the people using the subway in Paris was very eclectic. There was people from a lot of different countries, different cultures. So we have to be able to play all kind of music to please all the people in a subway. So that was a perfect school to learn a lot of different styles of music." Starting on a smaller label, the group released a reworked version of the Hot Pants single "Mala Vida" in 1988, which quickly became a hit in France. The group soon moved to Virgin Records, and their first album Patchanka was released the following year. Though the group never gained much fame in the English-speaking market, popularity throughout the rest of the world soon followed, reaching the Top 5 in the Netherlands, Italy and Germany. The band achieved some fame in South America with 1992's Cargo Tour, where it played a series of shows in port cities, performing from a stage built into their tour ship's hold. Mano Negra also performed a tour through much of Colombia in a retired train, the "Ice Express". Still, rifts began to grow among band members during the port tour and the following year's train tour; many band members, including Manu's brother Antoine, had left the group by the end of 1994. Following that year's release of their final album, Casa Babylon, Manu Chao moved the band to Madrid, but legal problems with former band mates led Chao to disband the group in 1995.  Mano Negra's sound is mostly characterized by energetic, lively rhythms, symbolized by the title of their first album, Patchanka, derived from the word pachanga (which is a colloquial term for "party"), and a distinct informality which allows the audience to get involved and feel close to their sound. Mixed music genres are present throughout their albums. Manu Chao is friends with Gogol Bordello and that group has covered Mano Negra's song "Mala Vida" on their own and with Chao beginning in 2006.  In 2003 he approached Amadou & Mariam and later produced their 2004 album Dimanche a Bamako ("Sunday in Bamako"). His song "Me llaman Calle", written for the 2005 Spanish film Princesas, earned that film a Goya nomination for Best Original Song. It has been released in 2007's La Radiolina. Vocals from the song are included in the Go Lem System song "Calle Go Lem". Time magazine named "Me Llaman Calle" one of The 10 Best Songs of 2007, ranking it at No. 8. Writer Josh Tyrangiel observed,  Chao's warm singing over Jose Manuel Gamboa and Carlos Herrero's leaping Flamenco counter melody creates a direct emotional line to the core of this mid-tempo ballad. With its easy melody and universal rhythm Me Llaman Calle walks proudly in the shadow of Bob Marley, the last guy who made world music this disarmingly simple.  Manu Chao was featured on the album True Love by Toots and the Maytals, which won the Grammy Award in 2004 for Best Reggae Album, and showcased many notable musicians including Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Trey Anastasio, Gwen Stefani / No Doubt, Ben Harper, Bonnie Raitt, The Roots, Ryan Adams, Keith Richards, Toots Hibbert, Paul Douglas, Jackie Jackson, Ken Boothe, and The Skatalites.  His song "La Vida Tombola" was featured in the documentary film Maradona by Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica. The song "La Trampa", recorded with Tonino Carotone for the compilation album Fuerza! was used as the theme song for the short-lived improvisational comedy Drew Carey's Green Screen Show.  The songs "Bongo Bong" and "Je ne t'aime plus", which appear back-to-back on Clandestino, were covered by British singers Robbie Williams and Lily Allen, who recorded them as a single track, "Bongo Bong and Je Ne T'aime Plus" and released it as a single from the album Rudebox.  Chao believes that our world lacks spaces for "collective therapy" and describes his concerts as small temporary spaces where people of different backgrounds can come together  Chao's lyrics provoke his audience to think about immigration, love, living in ghettos, drugs, and often carry a left-wing message. This reflects Chao's own political leanings--he is very close to the Zapatistas and their public spokesman, Subcomandante Marcos. He has many followers among the European left, the Latin American left and the anti-globalisation and anti-free trade movements. Chao is a founding member of ATTAC. Punk and reggae historian Vivien Goldman commented of his work, "I was writing about Good Charlotte and The Police. They adopted the trappings of punk. They aren't bad groups, but the punk aspect is more manifested by somebody like Manu Chao. He's one of the punkiest artists out there I can think of. It's an inclusionary spirit that is punk."  Chao uses his Facebook and Twitter accounts to show support to many causes and current movements including Anti Globalization, Indigenous Peoples' Rights, Sex Workers' Rights, Women's Rights, Environmental Justice, and more. He also uses his personal website to provide news on events related to these causes and movements.  Since 1991, Chao has been working with La Colifata, which is an NGO made up of a group of patients and ex patients of Hospital Borda, a psychiatric hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Chao uses both a website and a Facebook account to show the work he does with these patients and ex patients. On their Facebook page he explains that the mission of this group is to diminish the stigma that people place on mental illness and to promote the use of services that are meant to help those with mental illnesses. CANNOTANSWER
He also uses his personal website to provide news on events related to these causes and movements.
Manu Chao (; born José-Manuel Thomas Arthur Chao, 21 June 1961) is a French-Spanish singer. He sings in French, Spanish, English, Italian, Arabic, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese, Greek and occasionally in other languages. Chao began his musical career in Paris, busking and playing with groups such as Hot Pants and Los Carayos, which combined a variety of languages and musical styles. With friends and his brother Antoine Chao, he founded the band Mano Negra in 1987, achieving considerable success, particularly in Europe. He became a solo artist after its breakup in 1995, and since then tours regularly with his live band, Radio Bemba.

Early life
Chao's mother, Felisa Ortega, is from Bilbao, Basque Country, and his father, writer and journalist Ramón Chao, is from Vilalba, Galicia. They emigrated to Paris to avoid Francisco Franco's dictatorship—Manu's grandfather had been sentenced to death. Shortly after Manu's birth, the Chao family moved to the outskirts of Paris, and Manu spent most of his childhood in Boulogne-Billancourt and Sèvres. As he grew up he was surrounded by many artists and intellectuals, most of whom were acquaintances of his father. Chao cites much of his childhood experience as inspiration for some songs. As a child, he was a big fan of Cuban singer-pianist Bola de Nieve.

Career

Early years and Mano Negra (1984-1995)
Heavily influenced by the UK rock scene, particularly The Clash, The Jam and Dr. Feelgood, Chao and other musicians formed the Spanish/English rockabilly group Hot Pants in the mid-1980s. The group released a demo entitled "Mala Vida" in 1984, which received plenty of local critical praise but otherwise gained them little attention. By the time the group released their first album in 1986 the Parisian alternative music scene had taken flight, and Manu, his brother Antoine Chao, and friends such as Alain from Les Wampas formed Los Carayos to incorporate this sound with the rockabilly and punk styles of Hot Pants. Los Carayos remained a side project of the artists for eight years, releasing three albums in the first two years followed by a final album in 1994.

In 1987, the Chao brothers and their cousin Santiago Casariego founded the band Mano Negra. Manu Chao said in Alt.Latino in 2011, "Mano Negra started playing in a subway in Paris before the band started to be known and selling records. We started in a subway for a living. This is what made the musicians of Mano Negra. And so the people using the subway in Paris was very eclectic. There was people from a lot of different countries, different cultures. So we have to be able to play all kind of music to please all the people in a subway. So that was a perfect school to learn a lot of different styles of music." Starting on a smaller label, the group released a reworked version of the Hot Pants single "Mala Vida" in 1988, which quickly became a hit in France. The group soon moved to Virgin Records, and their first album Patchanka was released the following year. Though the group never gained much fame in the English-speaking market, popularity throughout the rest of the world soon followed, reaching the Top 5 in the Netherlands, Italy and Germany. The band achieved some fame in South America with 1992's Cargo Tour, where it played a series of shows in port cities, performing from a stage built into their tour ship's hold. Mano Negra also performed a tour through much of Colombia in a retired train, the "Ice Express".  Still, rifts began to grow among band members during the port tour and the following year's train tour; many band members, including Manu's brother Antoine, had left the group by the end of 1994. Following that year's release of their final album, Casa Babylon, Manu Chao moved the band to Madrid, but legal problems with former bandmates led Chao to disband the group in 1995.

Mano Negra's sound is mostly characterized by energetic, lively rhythms, symbolized by the title of their first album, Patchanka, derived from the word pachanga (which is a colloquial term for "party"), and a distinct informality which allows the audience to get involved and feel close to their sound. Mixed music genres are present throughout their albums. Manu Chao is friends with Gogol Bordello and that group has covered Mano Negra's song "Mala Vida" on their own and with Chao beginning in 2006.

Solo years with Radio Bemba (1995-present)

After arriving in Madrid, Chao and other bandmates from Mano Negra formed a new group, Radio Bemba Sound System (named for the communication system used in the Sierra Maestra by the Castro-and-Guevara-led rebels in the Cuban Revolution), featuring groups from diverse backgrounds, such as Mexican Tijuana No!, Brazilian Skank, and Argentinian Todos Tus Muertos. The goal was to replicate the sound of street music and bar scenes from a variety of cultures; to that end, Chao and the group spent several years travelling throughout South and Central America, recording new music as they went. The resulting music differed drastically from Mano Negra; the songs were primarily sung in Spanish with far fewer French tracks and the musical style had shifted from punk and alternative styles to the street vibe Chao was aiming for. The songs were collectively released as Clandestino in 1998, under Manu Chao's own name. Though not an instant success, the album gained a steady following in France with hits such as "Bongo Bong" and "Clandestino", and the album eventually earned the Best World Music Album award in 1999's Victoires de la Musique awards. It sold in excess of 5 million copies.

Chao's second album with Radio Bemba Sound System, Próxima Estación: Esperanza, was released in 2001. This album, named after one of the Madrid metro station stops (the title translates to "next station: Hope"), features similar sounds to Clandestino but with heavier Caribbean influences than the previous album. The album was an instant hit, leading to a successful tour that resulted in the 2002 live album Radio Bemba Sound System. Two years later, Chao returned to his French roots with the French-only album Sibérie m'était contéee, which included a large book featuring lyrics to the album and illustrations by Jacek Woźniak.

Manu Chao's next album La Radiolina (literally "little radio" in Italian, but also "pocket radio") was released on 17 September 2007. This was the first international release since 2001's Próxima Estación: Esperanza.  "Rainin in Paradize" was the first single from the album, available for download on his website before the release of the album. Concert reviews indicate that music from La Radiolina was already being performed live as early as April 2007's Coachella show.

Other works
In 2003 he approached Amadou & Mariam and later produced their 2004 album Dimanche à Bamako ("Sunday in Bamako"). His song "Me llaman Calle", written for the 2005 Spanish film Princesas, earned that film a Goya nomination for Best Original Song. It has been released in 2007's La Radiolina. Vocals from the song are included in the Go Lem System song "Calle Go Lem". Time magazine named "Me Llaman Calle" one of The 10 Best Songs of 2007, ranking it at No. 8.  Writer Josh Tyrangiel observed, Chao's warm singing over José Manuel Gamboa and Carlos Herrero's leaping Flamenco counter melody creates a direct emotional line to the core of this mid-tempo ballad. With its easy melody and universal rhythm Me Llaman Calle walks proudly in the shadow of Bob Marley, the last guy who made world music this disarmingly simple.Manu Chao was featured on the album True Love by Toots and the Maytals, which won the Grammy Award in 2004 for Best Reggae Album, and showcased many notable musicians including Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Trey Anastasio, Gwen Stefani / No Doubt, Ben Harper, Bonnie Raitt, The Roots, Ryan Adams, Keith Richards, Toots Hibbert, Paul Douglas, Jackie Jackson, Ken Boothe, and The Skatalites.

His song "La Vida Tómbola" was featured in the documentary film Maradona by Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica. The song "La Trampa", recorded with Tonino Carotone for the compilation album Fuerza! was used as the theme song for the short-lived improvisational comedy Drew Carey's Green Screen Show.

The songs "Bongo Bong" and "Je ne t'aime plus", which appear back-to-back on Clandestino, were covered by British singers Robbie Williams and Lily Allen, who recorded them as a single track, "Bongo Bong and Je Ne T'aime Plus" and released it as a single from the album Rudebox.

Musical style and influences
Manu Chao sings in Spanish, French, English, Portuguese, Galician, Arabic and Wolof, often mixing several languages in the same song. His music has many influences, such as punk, rock, French chanson, Iberoamerican salsa, reggae, ska, and Algerian raï. These influences were obtained from immigrants in France, his Iberian connections, and foremost his travels in Mesoamerica as a nomad following the disbanding of Mano Negra. While Mano Negra called their style patchanka (literally "patchwork"), Manu Chao speaks of música mestiza (:de:Mestizo-Musik), a musical style which may also incorporate elements of rap, flamenco, Afro-Cuban music, samba and cumbia.

In many of his pieces he layers lyrics, music, and sound recordings over each other. In the short documentary film Infinita tristeza (essentially a video travelogue of Chao's 2001 tour of South America), included within the bonus section of his 2002 live DVD release Babylonia en Guagua, Chao explained that his only recording tool is a small IBM (later Lenovo) ThinkPad laptop computer, which he carries with him wherever he goes; he has occasionally used conventional recording studios, such as Europa Sonor in Paris, to overdub instruments such as drums, electric guitars and brass, but the vast majority of his material (including all sorts of spoken-word samples from radio stations, TV, films, old vinyl records and, on Próxima Estación: Esperanza, announcements from the Madrid Metro) has been recorded by Chao himself exclusively on his laptop. The Spanish credit Grabado en el Estudio Clandestino ("Recorded in Studio Clandestino/Clandestine Studio"), which appears on all of his solo album starting from 1998's Clandestino, actually refers to the laptop. 

Chao also has a tendency to reuse music or lyrics from previous songs to form new songs. The contemporary hit single in France "Bongo Bong", takes its lyrics from the earlier Mano Negra hit "King of Bongo", which bears a similar style to that of The Clash. The musical backdrop for "Bongo Bong", in turn, was used in several other Chao songs, including "Je Ne T'Aime Plus" from the same album and "Mr. Bobby" and "Homens" from Próxima Estación: Esperanza. (According to a statement by Chao himself in the Próxima Estación CD booklet, "Homens" is the song which the backdrop was originally written and recorded for, and all the others came later.) Also, the tune of "La Primavera", a track from that same album, is used in several other songs featured on the LP, while lyrics for a few songs on Sibérie m'était contéee are repeated several times with different music, leading the lyrics to be interpreted in various ways depending on the mood of the track. Several musical themes and clips from that album also appear on Amadou & Mariam's Chao-produced Dimanche à Bamako, which were being produced at approximately the same time.

Though Chao is quite well known in Europe and Latin America, he has not had the same success in the United States, England, or Australia. Tours in the United States with Mano Negra were not as successful as elsewhere and Chao seems inclined to focus his efforts in the places where his musical style finds its roots. Though his live performances in the U.S. are infrequent, Chao played a handful of dates there in 2006, including a headlining show at Lollapalooza 2006 in Chicago, IL.  His final appearance on his 2006 U.S. tour was a benefit concert in the Prospect Park bandshell in Brooklyn, New York on 7 August. He returned to that venue in the summer of 2007 for two concerts, part of the multicultural "Celebrate Brooklyn" concert series. The crowd was treated to a nearly two-hour performance, including two encores.  Manu Chao also appeared at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland to a sellout crowd on 23 June 2007. This was a semi-spontaneous endeavour between Thievery Corporation and Manu Chao facilitated by a new-found friendship developed during Lollapalooza 2006. He was one of the headlining acts at the 2008 Austin City Limits Music Festival and the Outside Lands Music Festival in Golden Gate Park. In January 2012 he was the headline act at the opening night of Sydney Festival, marking his first concert in Australia.

Political views and activism 

Chao believes that our world lacks spaces for "collective therapy" and describes his concerts as small temporary spaces where people of different backgrounds can come together.

Chao's lyrics provoke his audience to think about immigration, love, living in ghettos, drugs, and often carry a left-wing message. This reflects Chao's own political leanings—he is very close to the Zapatistas and their public spokesman, Subcomandante Marcos.  He has many followers among the European left, the Latin American left and the anti-globalisation and anti-capitalist movements. Chao is a founding member of ATTAC. Punk and reggae historian Vivien Goldman commented of his work, "I was writing about Good Charlotte and The Police. They adopted the trappings of punk. They aren’t bad groups, but the punk aspect is more manifested by somebody like Manu Chao. He's one of the punkiest artists out there I can think of. It's an inclusionary spirit that is punk."

Chao uses his Facebook and Twitter accounts to show support to many causes and current movements including Anti Globalization, Indigenous Peoples' Rights, Sex Workers' Rights, Women's Rights, Environmental Justice, and more. He also uses his personal website to provide news on events related to these causes and movements.

Since 1991, Chao has been working with La Colifata, which is an NGO made up of a group of patients and ex patients of Hospital Borda, a psychiatric hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Chao uses both a website and a Facebook account to show the work he does with these patients and ex patients. On their Facebook page he explains that the mission of this group is to diminish the stigma that people place on mental illness and to promote the use of services that are meant to help those with mental illnesses.

Interview with the University of Southern California (2010) 
In an interview with the School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California in 2010, Chao expressed his opinions about topics such as the effects of economic globalization on social inequality. He explained how he believes that the global market is causing social inequality, and how issues in education and immigration are connected to this. In this interview he expressed a worry that mafias are the greatest threat to democracy and that this is already evident in certain places, like Russia and Mexico. He stated that this is one reason that he is for the legalization of drugs such as marijuana - he explained that mafias are making capital off of the distribution of illegal drugs which gives them more economic power, thus making it easier for them to potentially overthrow governments.

In this interview he also expressed his belief that currently, the global market is the largest force shaping the lives of people throughout the world. For this reason, he believes that the most effective way to solve social problems in individual countries is to address them at a global level by changing the policies dictating the global market. He explained that since most people are not given the power to directly change these policies, the most effective way to bring about change would be to make a statement to those running the economy by becoming self-sufficient through boycotting corporations, growing one's own vegetables, and making one's own clothes.

He then added that he does not own a car or cell phone because he does not need either of these. He also talked about having weak leaders as a threat to democracy and explained that there are small movements in Spain that are fighting for blank votes to be recorded as legitimate votes. He explained this could be a solution because blank votes currently make up a majority of the votes in elections, which means that election results are inaccurate.

Another topic he discussed during this interview was education. He expressed his belief that education is important and should be free for everyone. He mentioned that Cuba is able to provide free education for all those living in Cuba despite being a small country and that he does not understand how the United States being such a powerful nation was not able to do the same. He then expressed frustration at the fact that one can enroll in the armed forces in the United States and "learn to kill" for free, but had to pay to learn to do anything else. He suggested that this is a sign that the United States is afraid of its future.

When asked about immigration during this interview, Chao mentioned that the West, particularly the United States, has a population with a lot of elderly people and that in order to excel in the future, the West needs the youth from "Third World" countries. He explains that providing legal status to immigrant young people would require the United States to honor the rights of these immigrants, and therefore it is cheaper and easier for the United States to deny so many young immigrants a legal status. He then said that the "Occident...needs to open the borders."

Mentioned in The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 
In an article published in 2010, Cornelia Gräbner mentioned Chao's lyrics in a discussion about how the work of four different authors who contribute to the alter-globalization movement. Gräbner discusses how Manu Chao, Eduardo Galeano, Subcomandante Marcos, and José Saramago present alternative practice of politics from different perspectives. Gräbner states that Chao's work emphasizes the connection of contemporary ‘contentious Europe’ with past struggles, particularly through his lyrics and combinations of musical styles. Gräbner believes that Chao's family history plays a crucial role in his political views and how that has shaped the way he creates his music. She explains that "Chao translates his family’s anti-fascist political tradition into a politicized embrace of cultural difference and into a clear anti-racist and anticapitalist stance." She also states that in the 1990s Mano Negra took an anticapitalist and anti-racist stance, and that Chao continues to use these messages in his music even after the dissolution of Mano Negra.

Discography

 Clandestino (1998)
 Próxima Estación: Esperanza (2001)
 Radio Bemba Sound System (2002)
 Sibérie m'était contéee (2004)
 La Radiolina (2007)
 Baionarena (2008)

References

Further reading
Chao, Ramón. Mano Negra en Colombia. Un tren de hielo y fuego (originally Un train de glace et de feu), 1994. A chronicle of Mano Negra's 1993 tour on Colombia's decrepit railway through small, rural villages, written by Manu's father, Ramón Chao. The name of the train, Expresso de Hielo, was inspired by the opening line of Gabriel García Márquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.
 Chao, Ramón. The Train of Ice and Fire – Mano Negra in Colombia – () Translated by Ann Wright, published in English by Route Route's Website

External links

 

 

1961 births
Living people
Arabic-language singers
Catalan-language singers
Musicians from Paris
French-language singers
20th-century French male singers
French people of Galician descent
French people of Basque descent
French socialists
Spanish-language singers of France
English-language singers from France
People from Galicia (Spain)
Galician-language singers
Italian-language singers
Portuguese-language singers
Rock en Español musicians
Latin Grammy Award winners
MTV Europe Music Award winners
Folk punk musicians
Anti-globalization activists
French buskers
Latin music songwriters
Nacional Records artists
Because Music artists
21st-century French male singers
Barack Obama won the 2008 United States presidential election on November 4, 2008. During campaign, by using social media and mobilizing the general public online, Obama was able to raise awareness and financial support of his campaign. Obama used over 15 social networking sites.

The topic of Barack Obama's usage of social media in his political campaigns, including podcasting, Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, and YouTube has been compared to the adoption of radio, television, MTV, and the Internet in slingshotting his presidential campaign to success and as thus has elicited much scholarly inquiry. In the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama had more "friends" on Facebook and Myspace and more "followers" on Twitter than his opponent John McCain.

Obama's usage of the wider Internet has often since been compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy's adoption of the radio and television media, respectively, in the history of communication between the White House and the American public.

Twitter

Barack Obama's Twitter account (@BarackObama) is the official account on social networking site Twitter for former President of the United States Barack Obama, and has been used for his election efforts. Obama also used the White House's Twitter account (@WhiteHouse) for his presidential activities. , Obama's account has 128,213,653 followers, making him the owner of the most followed Twitter account. Obama also follows 595,346 accounts, and has posted 15,685 tweets. Well into 2011, it was following the most people of any account on the network and was the third to achieve ten million followers. It is one of only two accounts in the world to be in the top ten in both followers and followees (Twitter friends). , the White House account is also among the two-hundred most followed with nearly three million followers. On May 18, 2015, Obama sent his first tweet from the first Twitter account dedicated exclusively to the U.S. President (@POTUS); his first reply to a tweet directed at him was a tongue-in-cheek exchange with former President Bill Clinton (@billclinton).

Obama has used Twitter to promote legislation and support for his policies.  Obama is also the subject of various debates on Twitter. He had also used his account to respond to the public regarding the economy and employment. Based on its rate of adoption, Twitter will have a complementary role to other communication efforts that is more significant in Obama's 2012 presidential campaign than in prior elections.

Statistics on Twitter usage

The account is among the top ten worldwide in both followers and followed. The account held the record for following the most people. On August 13, 2019 at 14:39 PDT Obama's account overtook Katy Perry and has the most number of followers with over 107 million followers, and followed 612,655 accounts.

During his 2008 campaign the account was intermittently the world's most followed. In May 2010 Obama's Twitter account ranked as the fourth most followed account with about 4 million followers. By May 16, 2011, @BarackObama was followed by 7.4 million people, including twenty-eight world leaders. His account became the third account to reach 10 million followers in September 2011.

Account usage history

@BarackObama was launched on March 5, 2007 at 16:08:25. It is his official account, although he also tweeted through @WhiteHouse which is usually used by the presidential administration, while @BarackObama was for his election campaign staff. @WhiteHouse predates the Presidency of Barack Obama, since it was created on April 21, 2007. Following the 2008 United States presidential election, the Democratic National Committee was believed to have taken over the account and in a speech in November 2009, Obama stated "I have never used Twitter", although he had over 2.6 million followers. The @BarackObama account is "run by #Obama2012 campaign staff. Tweets from the President are signed -bo." Although his staff does most of his tweeting, Obama became active on the account in June 2011, tweeting under his own initials, beginning with the father's day message "Being a father is sometimes my hardest but always my most rewarding job..."

Obama has at various times held public forums in which he fielded questions posted on Twitter. On July 6, 2011, he participated in what was billed as "Twitter Presents Townhall @ the White House". The event was held in the East Room of the White House and was streamed online. Only written questions on the site about the economy and jobs were accepted for oral response by Obama. His average responses were over 2000 characters and when Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John Boehner tweeted "Where are the jobs?" to the hashtag #AskObama, it took Obama 3111 characters to respond. The event was moderated by Twitter executive Jack Dorsey, and Obama started the session with a sample tweet to himself through @WhiteHouse that said "in order to reduce the deficit, what costs would you cut and what investments would you keep – bo". Dorsey said afterwards that Twitter received over 110,000 #AskObama-hashtagged tweets. Boehner was quite active with his questions from the outset. Some in the media proposed May 24, 2012, as the date when Obama became the first President to respond to questions on Twitter.

On July 29, 2011, during the United States debt-ceiling crisis, the account lost over 40,000 followers when the president asked "Americans Friday to call, email and tweet Congressional leaders to 'keep the pressure on' lawmakers in hopes of reaching a bipartisan deal to raise the nation's $14.3 trillion debt limit ahead of an August 2 deadline." During the day, he sent about 100 tweets that included the Twitter accounts of Congressional Republicans. Later in 2011, Obama used Twitter again to try to encourage the people to voice their opinion on legislation when he was attempting to pass the American Jobs Act.

Hacking
On January 5, 2009, Obama's campaign account @BarackObama was among several celebrity accounts that were hacked and domain hijacked. The hacker phished the password of a Twitter administrator's account, gaining access to other accounts to which he then changed the passwords, and subsequently offered access to accounts upon request at Digital Gangster. The case eventually led to a non-financial settlement with the Federal Trade Commission by Twitter.

On July 4, 2011, Obama was the subject of a death hoax on Twitter when Fox News' Politics Twitter account (@foxnewspolitics) was hacked. The hackers were unfamiliar with Twitter and started their hoax messages with @BarackObama, thus only making the message appear in the Twitter timelines of those who follow both Fox News and the Presidential account. Eventually the hackers switched to hashtag references, increasing the visibility of their activities. Fox News acknowledged the breach and apologized.

Significance of Twitter in campaigning

Although both Obama and his Republican adversary Mitt Romney were active on Twitter and Twitter has "become an essential tool for campaigns", the Pew Research Center has determined that only about 13% of American adults had joined the site. Thus, Twitter's impact on the election was only "one slice of an enormous communication effort". Its impact grew significantly that as many tweets are sent in 8 minutes as were sent on all of Election Day 2008. As of May 25, 2010, 48% of Obama's followers resided outside of the United States and 47% were female. At that time, the top five industries in which his followers were employed were
 Hospitality,
 Law,
 Marketing/Public Relations,
 Fashion and
 Education.
Measuring social influence has become a new consulting career opportunity. According to discussants on the PBS NewsHour, Obama has 5,000 times as much social media influence as Romney; however, according to The Hill, Obama only has 12 times as much social media influence.

Other social media platforms

barackobama.com
The official website of Barack Obama is barackobama.com. It is run by Chris Hughes, one of the three co-founders of Facebook, and has been described as a "sort of social network". Steve Spinner, a member of Obama's National Finance Committee, says that while previous campaigns have used the internet none had yet taken full advantage of social networking features. The website included online tools that allowed members to identify neighbors that the Obama campaign thought might be potential backers and then report back on any resulting conversations.

Members of the site could also create blogs, post photos, and form groups through the website, but each member must publish limited biographical profile and no more than one photo. According to Hughes, during the 2008 campaign, over two million accounts were created for the website to "organize their local communities on behalf of Barack Obama". He estimates that more than 200,000 events were organised through the website. Moreover, 400,000 articles were written in blogs. Four hundred thousand videos that supported Obama were posted into YouTube via the official website. Thirty-five thousand volunteer groups were created. Thirty million dollars were spent by 70,000 people into their own fundraising webpages. In the final four days of the 2008 campaign, three million phone calls were made through the website's internet virtual phone.

Reddit
President Barack Obama made a surprise half-hour visit to the social news website Reddit on August 29, 2012. Using an Ask Me Anything (AMA) format, the President garnered 3.8 million page views on the first page of his self-post. Users left 22,000 comments and questions for the President, 10 of which he answered. The answered questions' topics included more serious topics, from the most difficult decision made during his first term to a plan to end the corruption of money in politics. Some included a more lighthearted focus, like the recipe for the White House beer.

In response to Obama's use of Reddit, many noted the bypassing of generally established channels of mainstream media in use during the 2012 campaign in favor of less-filtered and closer forms of communication. When asked why Obama logged on to Reddit, one campaign official responded "Because a whole bunch of our turnout targets were on Reddit." By using a newer, underused media channel like Reddit, Obama's campaign acknowledged a largely unaddressed demographic of unlikely voters on social internet boards.

Facebook
The Barack Obama Facebook (@barackobama) is currently the official Facebook for the former president and was his Facebook during the campaign trail. Looking back onto the election, Obama was able to mobilize the public through social media, especially Facebook. In fact, by the peak of the Obama campaign, his Facebook has around 3 million friends. Marc Anderson, board member of Facebook and founder of Netscape, said “Other politicians I have met with are always impressed by the Web and surprised by what it could do, but their interest sort of ended in how much money you could raise. He was the first politician I dealt with who understood that the technology was a given and that it could be used in new ways.” The use of effective social media campaigns, especially on Facebook, were developed and used under the Obama campaign. The transformation of social media sites into capital gain can show how he was so effective in mobilizing voters and volunteers. “By converting everyday people into engaged and empowered volunteers, donors and advocates through social networks, email advocacy, text messaging and online video. The campaign’s proclivity to online advocacy is a major reason for his victory.” Through Facebook, Obama was able to create a sense of ethos between the voters and his personal campaign. This created a sense of trust, support and effective campaigning that made his campaign so successful.  

In March 2007, the Barack Obama team created an interconnection between a user's account in Obama's official website and Facebook account, so a user may publish activities via sending postings from one to another. In 2008, the Obama presidential campaign spent $643,000 out of its $16 million Internet budget to promote his Facebook account. On June 17, 2008, after Hillary Clinton ended her campaign, number of followers of Barack Obama's Facebook account increased to one million. Meanwhile, in addition to Facebook accounts of Barack and Michelle Obama and Joe Biden, the Obama team created ten more Facebook accounts for "specific demographics, such as Veterans for Obama, Women for Obama, and African Americans for Obama."

Controversy 
The topic of social media regarding presidential campaigns come with a bit of hesitation to the general public. The concept of micro-targeting is the use of personal information, garnered from online social media sources and public records, builds profiles for that of the voting demographic. Through Obama's successful online presence, his supports and online friends were able to build an incredible amount of information toward his campaign that helped micro-targeting and social media strategy. This received a lot of criticism under the Trump administration due to his policy use of Cambridge Analytica, which a Britain-based company who provides information and strategies for micro-targeting and other tactics along those lines. “Obama's 2008 campaign was famously data-driven, pioneered micro-targeting in 2012, talking to people specifically based on the issues they care about," Cambridge Analytica said on Twitter. The firm, under the Trump Campaign, gathered over 50 million profiles from Facebook to gain information about Facebook users. The Obama campaign team member Micheal Simon, responded to allegations of similar actions with “We didn't steal private Facebook profile data from voters under false pretenses. OFA (Obama's campaign) voluntarily solicited opinions of hundreds of thousands of voters. We didn't commit theft to do our groundbreaking work."

See also
 Donald Trump on social media
 Fireside chats
 Social media and political communication in the United States

Bibliography

References

External links

 Twitter Top 100 followers list @ Twitaholic.com
 Twitter Top 100 followers list @ Twittercounter.com

Social media
Obama, Barack
E-government in the United States The term Facebook diplomacy was coined sometime in October 2008 in casual notes exchanged on Twitter, in connection to U.S. President Barack Obama's electoral political campaign's keen use of Facebook and other social network websites. The term Facebook diplomacy was further introduced and elaborated to describe the potential 'soft power' that can be created with Internet social networking tools like Facebook to counter terrorism, and interfere with repressive governments and militant groups in a discussion at a social networking and technology conference in December 2008 in New York.

During the December conference in New York, the United States Undersecretary of Public Diplomacy, James Glassman said, "New technology gives the United States and other free nations a significant advantage over terrorists." In his presentation at New York's Columbia University Law School, he went on to illustrate how Facebook diplomacy and on-line activism created success through the use of Facebook groups and the use of the platform to create activism and cause global awareness relative to issues in Colombia against the infamous FARC rebels.

Social networking diplomacy
In general, Facebook diplomacy is a user created hybrid of public diplomacy and citizen diplomacy as applied in the Facebook social networking platform.  Other terms that have also evolved in this diplomacy category include Twitter diplomacy, Google diplomacy and digital diplomacy.

Facebook and Twitter ambassador
Facebook ambassador is a generic term representation as an idiom or neologism that can be attributed to individual users on Facebook who have developed a Facebook page presence and professional representation on Facebook as an 'ambassador' of 'networking' that promote their agendas in a general socially beneficial manner and ideally a cooperative way in their representative appearance to other Facebook users by following Facebook best practices, strictly adhering to Facebook's policies, and by following selective hybridized protocols conducive to the generation of compounded social networking activity as a virtual communitarian, and peacemaker to promote multiple social causes and other socially beneficial activities.

Alternatively, Facebook ambassador may also refer to Facebook Garage Ambassadors who are dedicated to the technical aspect of Facebook development. Research 'Facebook Developer Garage' and 'Garage-In-A-Box'.

See also
Twitter diplomacy
USC Center on Public Diplomacy
Globcal International

References

External links
 U.S. immigrant builds bridges with the 'Facebook of Peace'
 Facebook Diplomacy (comic)
 Facebook Diplomacy (Newsweek)
 Facebook Diplomacy: State 'friends' the World
 Ranking of Governments in Digital Diplomacy - MediaBadger

Social networks for social change
Facebook
Types of diplomacy
Diplomacy