Places and Forms of Power

Places and forms of power

Introduction

        I am going to introduce you the notion of Places and forms of power and to focus on the  Powers in the USA. This notion implies a basic division between those who have and exercise power and those who have none or little of it.

        In an article from the Washington Post which we studied in class, the narrator said that « Once the baby boomers rebelled against their parents. Now they’re trolling the grandkids by electing Donald Trump ». A big proportion of people doesn’t clearly understand how Donald Trump acceded to presidency.

        Thus it is worth wondering which factors can influence the outcome of an election in the USA. We will see that the Swing States can have a direct effect while the Fourth Estate has an indirect impact on presidential elections in the USA. Finally we will study how Wikileaks affects it.

1. The Swing States

        First of all, Swing states play an important part in the outcome of an election because these can bring about major changes at the last minute. Indeed in the USA, presidential elections are totally different from France. Each state elects presidential electors who will vote for a president. The majority of the states has a traditional support for the Democratic Party or the Republican party. However, in the Swing States neither party has traditional support. Also called battleground states or purple states, these are where candidates will have to convince citizens.

        For instance, we analyzed an article from Wise-geek in which we learnt that Florida and Ohio are ones of the most important swing states to the extent that if you win both states then there is a very big chance that you will win the Presidency.

II. The Fourth Estate

        Secondly, the outcome of the election can be altered by a more indirect factor : the fourth estate. The fourth estate refers to the news media, especially print journalism or the press. The networked Fourth Estate which is a non traditional journalistic media on the internet plays almost the same role. Both affect the election by giving readers different points of view on events. Thus according to the source of news they use people will have a different perspective about a fact.

        In class we studied an article in which we found a graphic that introduced ideological placement of each source’s audience. So The Blaze or Fox News are more considered as conservative sources while The Guardian, The New York Times and the Washington Post seem to be more liberal. Moreover this research shows that there is no source which doesn’t have an inclination towards a party. According to the survey, the most neutral source is Yahoo News.

III. Wikileaks

        Last but not least, Wikileaks is a website which is also able to alter the outcome of an election. This organization has been created by Julian Assange who wanted to leak all hidden informations. Thus you can anonymously leave what you know in a drop box on the Wikileaks website, then it will be checked and maybe published. This operator plays a big part in elections to the extent that if a scoop about a candidate is divulged it will influence many voters.

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