Abdullah Abu Deif (Washington, Cairo)
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump resumed campaigning yesterday, with the Democratic presidential candidate hoping her strong debate performance against her Republican rival will boost her chances of winning the White House.
After a brief truce to honor the victims of the September 11 attacks, the former Republican president held a campaign rally in Arizona.
This western state was one of the most closely contested states in the 2020 presidential election (won by President Joe Biden) and looks set to be similar in the November 5 presidential election.
Meanwhile, his Democratic opponent was on the other side of the country, in North Carolina.
The vice president is counting on the votes of African Americans and young people, who her candidacy has re-energized, to defeat the Republican billionaire in this state.
As in the past two presidential elections, the 2024 election could be decided by a few thousand votes in a few strategic counties in six or seven swing states, thanks to the indirect universal suffrage system.
Therefore, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will focus their electoral efforts on these states, including Arizona and North Carolina.
The US presidential elections have entered a new area of advertising and electoral campaigns by candidates to take advantage of social media platforms as a pivotal tool for interacting with voters. This trend reflects the major shift in managing political campaigns in the digital age.
According to experts who spoke to Al-Ittihad, in light of the rapid development of technology and social media, “host rooms” on the “X” platform have become a major arena for presidential candidates to reach out to voters. As this trend continues, future election campaigns will be more interactive and engaging in the digital space, reflecting a radical shift in the American political landscape.
Donald Trump recently conducted a lengthy interview on the X platform with billionaire businessman Elon Musk, which lasted two hours and was interrupted by technical problems that delayed its start by more than 40 minutes, and was a clear example of how candidates use the hosting rooms to communicate directly with their audience.
Despite the delayed start, the conversation between Musk and Trump continued in a friendly manner, with Musk asking questions about key issues like immigration and inflation, without Trump confronting him in any way. This dynamic demonstrated how effective the guest rooms are in providing an unconventional platform for candidates to express their views without interruption.
The director of the Centre for Strategic Cyber and International Studies in Singapore, Anthony Lim, said the attack, known as a DDoS (denial of service attack), could be behind the problems.
“A DDoS attack sends a very large number of signals to a target across the Internet to disrupt it, and it is unlikely to affect just one service or feature on a website,” he explained. The large number of people trying to listen in caused the service to go down temporarily.
Hosting rooms on the X platform are one of the new tools that allow candidates to build digital communities and connect with a wide segment of voters, according to American political advertising expert, Nikki Robinson, and this allows women to reach a different audience than that found on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok.
Robinson explained to Al-Ittihad that X users are usually more interactive and able to spread ideas through word of mouth, which makes the platform a powerful tool for spreading political messages.
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