How the White House hopes to use new media to bypass traditional media

The only hint of difference was the presence of a lone government official: Paulette Aniskoff, head of the White House Office of Public Engagement. Aniskoff had journeyed from Washington to the offices of the entertainment company Live Nation for a strategy session on how YouTube and Vine stars could use their digital celebrity to promote some of the Obama administration’s key policies.

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The meeting, which ran twice as long as the hour allotted, in many ways exemplifies how central digital media and audience engagement have become to the functioning of the Obama White House…

The new strategy offers benefits as well as risks. The White House can reach more people without the filter of the traditional media, target its audience with precision and receive almost immediate feedback. But the approach raises the prospect of fostering further political polarization if the president opts to communicate mostly with parts of the electorate that identify with him ideologically or can be helpful politically.

Critics worry that governance by social media will cheapen the power of the presidency by substituting hashtag activism for serious policymaking. And in these exceptionally partisan times, some see the president’s prodigious use of social media as just another example of the cozy political relationship between the political left and Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

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