Social Media Impact on Political Ideas (Essay Sample)

Social Media Impact on Political Ideas
Name of Student:
Course Name:
Lecturer’s Name
Date
Executive Summary
Social media is a very important weapon for many a politicians. It is likened to double-edged sword to them. Politicians rely heavily on social media for enhanced communication. The concept of social media has indeed made real the issue of the world being a global village. People from different parts of the world are able meet in the different social media communities; here they are able to participate and interact freely with each other (Brewster, Lawrence and Genie 117). Opinions are shared, and people find a platform to advance their political ideologies to on another. President Obama’s 2008 election strategy is taken to be the pioneer political campaign to engage social media actively. The online campaign strategy attracted a multitude of followers who spread euphoria across the political divide in the American electorates. This saw Mr. Obama win the elections with a landslide.
Social networks have been found to have a significant role in political developments of many countries. Social media influences people’s views on political matters of a given region (Brewster, Lawrence and Genie 419).
Therefore, social media is portrayed as a tool of influence for political gain. A number of strategies are deployed in a bid to expand the audience beyond the classroom boundaries. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and recently Instagram have been utilized for various political strategies. Considering the content of this research paper, politicians are advised to pay keen attention to what people say on the different social and digital media. This is because social media is a center of influence (Brewster, Lawrence and Genie 361). If not handled with the seriousness it comes with, one may lose their political ambitions by failing to listen to and persuade the audience; who happen to be the electorate!
Introduction
Social media is defined as a platform or network for interactive communication among people using various search engines and blog spaces (Brewster, Lawrence and Genie 17). It is characterized by a degree of openness, collaboration between user groups and general users and also active participation. In the recent past, social media networks have had a significant impact on society ranging from social, economic and political influences (Agyeman, Julian 135).
Social media has in fact actualized the idea of global village. People in different parts of the world are able to participate and interact one on one in different social media. This nature of social interaction is a formidable tool for political developments across the world (Bryfonski, Dedria 247). Politics is about influence and therefore the more people get to interact and share views, the more their political ideologies are re-oriented. The internet, as the basis of most social media, has been found to have a bearing on most governance systems. Internet is a host for many social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook just to mention but two (Bryfonski, Dedria 693). This paper explores the impacts that social media has had in political developments with few case examples in world politics. The methods of extending the political audience beyond classroom level are also looked into.
Impact of Internet on Political Development
The internet has the largest bearing on political developments across the world today. It forms the host for both digital and social media (Dahlberg, Lincoln, and Sean Phelan 519). Through these media, people interact and share their political ideologies with each other. This leads to political polarization especially if the people hail from the same country or region. Social media has quickly developed to become the most important way to influence people (Dahlberg, Lincoln, and Sean Phelan 274). This has been achieved through advanced information sharing and communication technology. Today in the world, many politicians have taken their campaign strategies to the internet (Partridge & Kenneth 121). The digital strategy was seen to work during the 2008 & 2012 US elections where President Barrack Obama went online with his campaigns. There was a massive wave and euphoria across the US and people voted for Mr. Obama in an overwhelming manner.
Advancement in mobile technologies is one of the factors that have had a remarkable impact on political developments across the world (Price, Hannah 103). In today’s world, there are sophisticate smartphones that are pocket-sized. The phones are quite affordable and thus many people are able to own them. These phones are internet enabled and people are able to meet in various social and digital communities online (Price, Hannah 223). The example given above about the 2008 US elections is said to be the first campaign strategy that which greatly utilized social media.
There has been experienced social media fragmentation and stratification. Group loyalties have declined tremendously and this has resulted in personalization of politics (Straubhaar, Joseph and Robert LaRose 302). In this respect, personal action replaces collective action in the political arena. This trend has also given rise to rapid formation of political participatory aims of certain targets, inclusive of candidates and political parties, corporations and coalitions, brands and organizations (Straubhaar, Joseph and Robert LaRose 109).
Recent studies have shown that social media posts reveal surprising political views among friends. Long-time friends have been found to have totally different opinions and beliefs politically (Straubhaar, Joseph and Robert LaRose 207). This was partly attributed to the various social media groups that each had been spending most of their time. In the event somebody does not like another person’s views, they either blocked, hid or unfriended the person from their timeline. Studies have also shown that 75% of social media users reveal that most of the content posted on social networks has political overtones.
Researchers from the recent past also undertook studies to examine the political polarization that comes as a result of social platforms like Twitter and Facebook. As at 2011, twitter had in excess of 250,000 tweets in less than six weeks in the run up to the 2010 US congressional elections (Napoli, Philip 118). A combination of network clusters and manual annotations of data is used to demonstrate the nature of political retweets; the retweets are quite segregational with a partisan structure. The long and short of all these is that political polarization is experienced among the populous. Some spread hate messages with abandon and if not tamed in good time, regional political polarization may further lead to political instability in a country (Napoli, Philip 641).
There have been claims that the internet is slowly going through segregation over the years. Researchers have demystified and theorized this notion. Online and offline consumption of information, one-on-one social interaction and segregation are used to idealize the each domain of internet participation and interaction (Miller, Debra 336). This study revealed that the internet has very remote chances of promoting segregation. Platforms such as offline consumption of information, one-on-one interactions with neighbors, family members and co-workers were found to be having the highest contributors to political intolerance.
It is noteworthy to mention that blog users affiliate themselves with bogs that are aligned to their political ideologies. However, there are those who read blogs that are in line with their political beliefs and those that are not (Miller, Debra 210). They critique the ideological spectrum in matters politics in a bid to understand the environment. The wing one reads, (leftwing or rightwing), has a bearing on the political ideologies they attest. Those who use the left wing and those who read the right wing differ greatly in their political ideologies. The more frequent one reads the blogs, the more polarized they become over time (Mandiberg, Michael 317). It was established by researchers that individuals who read blogs regularly participate more in political affairs of a country than those who do not read blogs. If one reads blogs from both wings, they are likely to participate more in political matters developments of a country. This scenario bring out the significant role that bloggers play in the political developments in different parts of the world (Agyeman, Julian 317).
When the national audience is fragmented, chances of changing attitude are reduced. The framing and persuasion paradigms should be drawn based on the observed attitude changes in a bid to respond to various media stimuli. If media audiences go through some devolution process, giving rise to subsets of like-minded people, reinforcement of prior predispositions is enhanced (Bryfonski, Dedria 26). Various media consider preference congruence in the sense that they have a tendency towards self-selection of messages to persuade their audience (Loader, Brian 19). These findings have been concretized by earlier findings which came up with a number of strategies to expand their audience beyond classroom boundaries. The previous strategies that have been employed to take the audience beyond classroom boundaries are explicitly covered here as follows.
Connect via Website
In the context of political developments, influential figures in society design websites where they update their information. Interactions are achieved by just browsing and checking all the information about somebody from the comfort of one’s home (Bryfonski, Dedria 237). Face to face discourse is minimal but information sharing is rapid and real time. Social and digital media pages such as Facebook pages and twitter handles have also accel...