It is highly inevitable that today’s
youth spend a large amount of their daily time on social media. Social
networking websites like Facebook and Twitter are an important part in their
lives. Newspapers are read more on websites than their hardcopy counterparts.
Political parties have seen this change of landscape and have resorted to
tactics to change the minds of the youth by publicizing and advertising over
the internet.
Social media and political influence can
have both positive and negative impacts. Social media tools including Facebook, Twitter and Youtube allow politicians to speak directly to
voters without spending a dime. Using those social media allows politicians to
circumvent the traditional method of reaching voters through paid advertising
or earned media. It has become fairly common for political campaigns to produce
commercials and publish
them for free on YouTube instead
of, or in addition to, paying for time on television or the radio. Often times,
journalists covering campaigns will write about those YouTube ads, essentially
broadcasting their message to a wider audience at no cost to the politicians.
Twitter and Facebook have become
instrumental in organizing campaigns. They allow like-minded voters and
activists to easily share news and information such as campaign events with
each other. That's what the "Share" function on Facebook and
"retweet" feature of Twitter are for. Some campaigns have used
so-called money bombs to raise large amounts of cash in short period of time.
Money bombs are typically 24-hour periods in which candidates press their supporters
to donate money. They use social media such as Twitter and Facebook to get the
word out, and often tie these money bombs to specific controversies that emerge
during campaigns.
Direct access to voters also has its
down sides. Handlers and public-relations professionals often manage a
candidate’s image, and for good reason: Allowing a politician to send out
unfiltered tweets or Facebook posts has landed many a candidate in hot water or
in embarrassing situations.
Arvind Kejriwal: Social media will become a key
channel for citizen interaction, organization & action. We are already
seeing people come together on social media to influence policy making.
This will only grow in coming times. Social media provides a convenient,
“always on” channel for people of similar ideology to come together &
interact. We believe Social media going forward will not be about “influencing” but “shaping” opinion, policies further.
I completely agree with your views on this topic. In today’s Indian political scenario it is already evident with political parties and leaders creating profiles and pages on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to interact with people and to share their agenda to influence voters. For instance, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi used Google Hangouts for group video chats and became the first Indian politician to do so. The Hangouts session was watched live by 82,000 people across 116 countries on YouTube. Additionally, 70,000 tweets and about 166,000 hits on Modi's website were generated through this video chat session. The session was also broadcasted on TV channels and catered to millions more.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, social media can have a positive as well as a negative impact on today’s youth regarding the election campaign. Now a days where media plays a very important role in building a positive image of a political party by promoting their good deeds or they can even destroy them by exposing them in front of the public. For example the news channels which proved very beneficial for Delhi’s ex Chief Minister Mr. Arvind Kejriwal in promoting his views and winning him the Delhi elections. Those same channels also criticised him for resigning from the post and accused him for being incompetent to take responsibilities.
“For social media to become more meaningful as an election tool in the context of a country like India, it needs to become more broad-based and engage all socioeconomic and age groups with more or less equal effectiveness”. – Deepak Kumar Founder analyst at BusinessandMarket.net.