How Social Media has Effected Politics
As 2016 is an election year, I found it
best to discuss the effect social media has had on politics and political
campaigns. Social media plays a major role on the way people in the 21st
century go about life. Millennials are turning to social media outlets to find
news, interact with others, and most important for creating and maintaining
connections. Because of this, the political campaigns over the last 20 years
have changed drastically in their approach.
Today, candidates use social media as one
of their main platforms for campaign and managing their image. Not only is
publicizing/advertising on social media inexpensive, but it also provides real
time information to millions of users.
Politicians are now able to create a
direct relationship with voters. With the ability of filtering information and
the development of cookies, Facebook and other social media outlets are able to
directly target potential voters based on pages they have viewed, interest they
have selected, state in which they reside, and even place that they have
visited. The ability of data mining allows candidate’s campaign teams to create
and develop a relationship with the specific individuals in which the candidate
is targeting.
The large presence of politics on social
media creates more awareness, especially for younger voters, of the issues,
ideas, and views of each candidate. Users of sites are able to share posts and
view previously shared post constantly. Just out of curiosity I went down my
Facebook newsfeed and within a minute of scrolling I found there to be seven
posts about politics. Before social media, the only way I learned about
politics was through the news. Today, I learn at least one new thing about a
candidate just by signing onto one of my social media sites. I am not sure that
I like politics being in front of my face at all times, especially during the
election year, but it has with out a doubt made me more aware and
knowledgeable.
As well as Facebook, Twitter and other
popular social media sources, the mobile application Snapchat has become popular for movies, stores, events, and now politicians to advertise. During
the primaries, many of the candidates had a “snapchat story” which would
provide live video updates when the candidates were in certain states making
their speeches. This outlet for advertising has definitely reached a young
crowd and creates conversation amongst groups of younger people. On Friday of
this week, Bernie Sanders had a story featuring “Bernie: A Day in the Life.”
Candidates are trying to become more relatable, and social media is definitely
a way they are doing it. 18-29 year olds have consistently been the lowest
percent of voters. It will be interesting to see if this changes at all with
the amount of exposure their younger crowd has had of politics this year.
Although social media has provided
politics great changes, there are also some negative changes. There are
constant arguments over candidates through social outlets. Posting about a
specific controversial issue, or the candidate one supports has lead to cyber
bullying. Since you first learned to interact with others, we were told the
practices of bullying are wrong. Social media has created a new channel and way
of bullying. Bullying is caused by people being considered “different” or
having different views. One of the major ways people differ is through
political stances. Since social media is meant for people to share their
thoughts, much bullying is caused from it.
Take a look at the video below to see how social media effected the 2016 elections so far.
