Influence of Social media on politics
The utilization of different social networking sites in politics which includes Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube has dramatically changed the entire procedure of conducting campaigns. The popularity and prevalence of social networking platforms in politics have brought various changes especially in the process of elected officials as well as the candidates for public office. The ability to publish different contents and at the same time broadcasting it and ensuring that it reaches out to the thousand and lakhs of people instantaneously permits campaigns to easily and carefully manage their candidate’s images based upon rich sets of analytics in the real-time and at almost negligible cost.
Here are a few ways how Twitter, Facebook, as well as YouTube channels have made an impact on politics.
Directly contacting the Voters
Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube channels permits politicians to speak directly to voters and interact with them without spending much time. Using all such social media lets the politicians circumvent the traditional way to reach out to the voters with the help of paid advertising or through earned media.
Advertising Without any charges for Advertisement
It has almost turned fairly common for conducting all political campaigns to produce commercials as well as publishing them for free on the YouTube channels instead of paying extra and additional charges for time on television or radio. Several times, journalists who cover campaigns tend to write about those YouTube advertisements, especially the ones broadcasting their message to a wider audience at no cost to the politicians.
The ways how Campaigns turn Viral
Twitter, as well as Facebook, have become instrumental in organizing campaigns these days. Both permits like-minded voters as well as activists to very easily share news and also the information like campaign events with one another. That is what the “Share” option on Facebook and “retweet” option on Twitter is used for.
The political campaigns can easily tap into a wealth of information analytics regarding the people who follow them on social networking sites, and they can customize their text messages based on the selected demographics. Precisely, a campaign might find one particular message appropriate for a voter under the age of 30 years which might not be as effective for an individual over 60 years of age.
Fundraising
Several campaigns use the so-called “money bombs” which is used to raise a huge amount of cash within a short time span. Money bombs are typically 24-hour periods within which all the candidates press their supporters in order to donate money. They utilize the social networking sites such as Twitter as well as Facebook for getting the word out they very often tie money bombs to any particular controversies that will emerge at the time of the campaigns.
Social media tools permitted people to easily join together with one another to petition the government as well as their elected officials, leveraging the numbers against all the influence of the powerful lobbyists as well as the monied special interests. It avoids mistakes yet the lobbyists and special interest have the upper hand, but with time and days, there will be one point when social media will allow all like-minded citizens to join with one another together in such a way that it will bring a change and become very powerful.
