Social Media and Political Communication

followers in Twitter while Romney had 1.2 million (Hwang, 2016). For this campaign, Obama incorporated experienced Silicon Valley engineers who came up with a software that made it easier for the voters to engage with him. During this election campaign period, 30% of the online users were urged to participate in the voting process through social media request on those within their social network connection (Hwang, 2016).

2016 presidential election

During this period, most aspirants had learnt from Obama’s success story with social media as tools of political communication and thus all hopeful candidates were pegged to the social media sites to engage the more wired American voters. Use of social media had earned its respect in terms of its abilities to expand their reach and the at the same time leap full benefits of their campaign message. During this period, most social media users were found to rely to social media platforms as a source of political information. Digital announcements of the 2016 presidential was enough evidence of how social media influenced the electoral system. Ben Carson announced his presidency bid on a social media campaign on Facebook. Ted Cruz announced his presidential bid in Twitter. Hillary Clinton used a video shared on YouTube and her campaign website and a twitter announcement that had 3 million views within an hour after tweeting. Donald took it to the social media to provoke his critics and challengers. It was noted that Trump’s extensive social media usage, that included bombastic, controversial and pithy nature of his posts, put him in the limelight of the social media attention (Hwang, 2016).

How social media in political communication differs from legacy (traditional) media political communication

The traditional communication setting in the society that allow the circulation of information, ideas, debates and in an unfettered format. The traditional media was critical in the formation of the political will or public opinion. The mass media, like the traditional media aimed at facilitating communicative links between citizens and the power holders of the society. The public spheres that the mass media targets is normally comprised of three dimensions being structures, representation and interaction (Dahlgren, 2005).

Traditional media refers to the time-honored, conventional means of mass communication. These are practices amongst the global communities and cultures or embodied win the local way of life. In the traditional mass media communication that included use of television, radio and print media, there is adherence to the principle of nonpartisan ship and gatekeeper role. However, the profession of journalism that articulated issues for political communication where the journalist acted as gatekeepers to the news being relied is now under threat from the new technologies, competitors and even the target audience. Unlike the traditional media platform, the participants in the new social media communication are equipped with easy-to-use Web publishing tools, have ready connections and advanced mobile devices. This creates the distinction between the traditional media audience that was passive and only acted as receivers of the information. In this new social media communication, the online audience is actively engaged in the creation and dissemination of news and information. 

The traditional media for communication had journalists claim the gatekeeper role charged with the responsibility of being determiner and provider of the information considered as important enough to be transmitted. In the new era, social media has caused a shift in the journalism from one that is loyal to the political class dealing with public interest and putting first the obligation to citizens. With social media, anyone can transmit the news and views around the world. The new media environment has unlimited sources of information. This has broken the urge and need of having people act as gatekeeper which has worked to allow for instant publication of news in a manner that ensures a continuous news cycle. (Singer, 2005). In the traditional media, the gatekeepers would filter the news items in a biased manner. This has however been overcome by the new media where issues are indicated in line with their actual importance to the high number of users and news producers.

In the new media promoted by the social media, there is a greater diversity of attention as compared to traditional media. This can be associated to the limited numbers of source of information in the traditional media. The source of news item in the former media was predicted unlike the social media where a trending and viral news item may originate from any source. 

The traditional media streams were rigid and would take time before shifting to most recent issues which sometime affected the obsoleteness of the news item. In the social media, attention shifts overtime in response to most current and trending issues from around the globe. 

The media in some areas have been predominantly owned by the government and therefore has been reporting news in a skewed manner. With the social media communication, there has been a noticeable change in the media scene from one controlled by political actors to a more liberalized media. The traditional media failed to grant the citizens a room to discuss different issued facing them.

Under the traditional media, the vast quantity of data produced is left as raw data. The social media beats this challenges by use of social media analytics that facilitates the process of analyzing the large volumes of data to generate meaningful insights that can guide the political communication in dealing with the real issues affecting the citizens (Stieglitz & Xuan, 2012).

Impacts of using social media by politicians

The proliferation of the usage of social media helps in the sharing of idea. The user on the social networking sites can equipped with a platform for exchanging ideas, activities, events and other matter of interest within the network. The use of web based social networking helps to connect people with similar interests from across the political, economic and geographic borders. This means that the audience of political communication will get specific issues related to their point of interest.

The use of social media platforms offers a tool of communication. This helps the political players engage with the citizens and voters directly. Under the traditional media, before an individual could access a politician and pass they issue affecting them, it involved a lot of process and adherence to a status quo. However under the social media, one need not be ‘somebody’ to engage the politicians into a conversation. As a tool of communication, the social media offers to bridge the gap between among different groups. The presence of social media technologies and services, content sharing and interaction of uses has become more easy and efficient. 

The use of social media as a tool for political communication has proved to be cost effective. It is cheaper to use online social networking as most of the services are free and does involve broadcasting airtime for the message to be passed or published. This has seen political players reduce their budget needs or channels the extra money saved to other areas

The use of social media as a method of political communication tends to be less time consuming. Social media allows one to post a statement or search for information at the click of a button. This is unlike the traditional media such as television or print media, social media offers a chance of getting impromptu information. It also connects one to people and network that matters most thereby no time lost going through news item that are not of importance to some audience.

Social media may present some disadvantages through intrusion into privacy. With social media, it has become a norm to use these platforms to keep in touch with friends and family. Having accounts in the social media platforms implies that one puts their details online and people with unauthorized access my gain access to such access and use it for blackmail. 

With some of these social media platforms, users have become addicted to the new trend. This has created tensions and even breakdown of family ties. One gets hooked into these sites and may tend to abandon their roles within the family as they engage with the online crowd. This reduces the bond between the family members as they do not spend time together (Baruah, 2012).

Conclusion

Social media offers important tools for political communication where participants control the content of the communication process without it being filtered by the press. This has seen the new media adopted in political campaigns including that of presidential candidates. Social media offers an online forum for engaging in a political conversation on different matter of interest.

The social media is effective in passing the political campaign message to greater audience and also provides means of offering message directed to a specific group of the population with relevant advertisements (Hwang, 2016). This customization of a political message for a targeted audience has more effects on the effectiveness. This is because the specifically targeted group are better placed to respond positively to a communication that addresses their issues of interest