Essay Example on Social Media's Impact on Politics: Making Leaders More Accessible

The use of social media has dramatically influenced the way politics across the entire globe are carried out. Beginning with how campings are done, social media has currently taken the modest part when it comes to creating a massive influence on how leaders made accessible to their voters. The pervasiveness of social media in political positions has made chosen authorities and the possibility for open office progressively responsible and available to voters. What's more, the capacity to distribute substance and communicate it to a great many individuals momentarily enables crusades to deliberately deal with their competitors' pictures dependent on rich arrangements of examination progressively and at no expense. However, social media can negatively affect the political wellbeing of a politician especially in the case whereby they face stiff opposition from various groups whose main intentions is to disenfranchise their current political status politically. So many people with the highest number being the youths, currently have access to so many forms of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and so many others. This paper shall hence seek to understand how politics has so far been influenced via the continuous use of social media besides other related ideologies.

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Unlike the use of traditional methods of reaching out to the voters, especially in the case whereby Televisions and radio stations remained to be the only way to pass out political advertisements, the use of social media has in a significant way replaced such forms due to the costs involved for the same task. Thus, social media has become a way that many politicians find cheap and more reliable since they can easily reach out to large numbers of people while spending almost nothing. Also, it is possible to get an immediate reaction from people and be able to gauge oneself especially on the areas that require impassive campaigning and various forms improvements. For instance, the current president of the United States of America, Mr Donald Trump, managed to scoop out miraculous votes due to the use of social media, which was a great surprise to his opponents who expected a clear and direct victory.

Politics and social media belongs to a particular genre identified as a social, cultural genre. This category includes educational tools that are used for drawing attention on the current political affairs, especially in the case whereby campaigns are involved. Social media entails segmenting various groups of people especially concerning age, sex and geographical locations gathered together for a common social purpose.

One quite clear example is the use of WhatsApp groups, whereby such groups are created based on a particular purpose, and thus, it becomes so easy to have political leaders create such groups purposely to serve their interests, since it is so simple to get people's phone numbers and add them to their groups of interest. For example, this form of political campaigning technique has become so prevalent within the tertiary institutions such as universities and colleges for students leaders to campaign effectively and have their followers confined within a particular group of influence (Wolfsfeld, Segev, & Sheafer, 2013). Thus, social media and politics belong entirely to the social-cultural and political genre, with a good example such a twitter, whereby a specific group of people based on a particular culture, geographical location, or age follow a confident leader and assist in making the campaigning process a success.

About what politics target by the end of the day, winning of the people's trust would hence serve as the ultimate goal that all the politicians would target to achieve. Therefore, the primary market for the social media and its embedded politics is rooted in the specified group of that the politics seem based at. Firstly, Social medal would entail people who have access to electronic gadgets that can manage to install such social platforms such as smartphones, tablets, and personal computers whose most users are the literate, semi-illiterate, and most probably the middle-class people, besides the youths.

The use of the new media environment has pulled in a dynamic way that tends to develop in a new form of a political novel that is anticipated to have different consequences on regarding democratic governance and the political environment. One of the major changes that the latest social media has brought to the field of politics has been evidenced by the way government institutions operate, the way most of the political leaders communicate, nature and the way elections have been contested besides the massive of engagement citizens (Trottier & Fuchs, 2014).

Precisely, the wake of political inclusion within the context of social media has so far created alertness for people to be able to air their voices about the contemporary issues affecting them while making sure that the targeted political leaders get the message. This is, however, one of the most reliable ways which enable people with no or little courage to face such leaders in one on one ground and hence manage to criticise theme where possible.

Social media has a significant implication when it comes to the societal perception of politics (Loader, & Mercea, 2011). Majorly the largest groups would receive both critics and compliments on various areas related to politics via social media. Generally, in most cases, it is easy to find about opinions formed on a particular political issue or leaders since it represents the sampling of the most significant societal setting. Although medial social platforms are not a formal way to communication, they have nowadays taken the way out to opt for the first-hand opinion of the political leaders or even the collective societal view. About this, a leader could be free to alter some of his feelings based on a certain issue other than saying it live on television or radio. Therefore, it becomes so easy for large groups of the society to get manipulated via social media since such people are almost available online, nearly every time, or even at particular timings.

Social media has contributed in a paramount way towards influencing how political games would be played in a smarter way. Firstly, it has become practically so easy to build algorithm codes which target reach out on particular voters especially those of certain interests to politicians (Loader, & Mercea, 2012). Besides, society has been relieved from certain obstacles towards equal participation of politics by various people in the community due to their economic, and political power within the organization. It has, therefore, become so easy to liberate such people from those buriers which have the impact of hindering their political carrier and hence leave it to those who have already stabilised and natured theirs.

In across the whole globe having different racial groups participate in an equally political opportunity has therefore been made easy due to the reduced racial attacks via social media. Hence racists have felt a feeling of liberation from such captivity radicalization moves (Bennett, 2012). Besides, the social media seems fair enough not favour one side while neglecting the other especially when it comes to debate usage since all the politicians can easily access it unlike the other forms of media whereby they may choose to take sides on particular political sides which object entirely the other.

However, politics that are generated via the use of social media may take a different channel and negatively affect the way politics are generally accepted. Social media has gone the ultimate power for manipulation and installation of incitement vices by ill-motived leaders whose intentions are not clean politics but to sabotage the goodwill of what should be termed as politics of standardised levels. It is therefore obviously possible to find that the society has been intoxicated to carry out numerous activities that do not deserve the weight since there would at times situations of lack of critical analysis of specific issues which do not make sense versus those which can make sense (Marshall, 2019). Thus, it becomes possible to have mushrooming groups notably those similar to terror, with the intentions of carrying out a particular harmful event as organised by various ill-motivated political leaders.

Similarly, although a different take, mobilisation of people through the use of social media has become quite comfortable, with various benefits especially for the political movements that target liberation of the society from certain captivity by the government in power, a good example can be fetched from the Arab Spring more so with the case that occurred in Tunisia in the year 210 to 2018. The government assassinated the leader of the opposition and so, the society became so angry and hence mobilised dynamic movements all over the country and chanted against poor governance of the government that was in power by then. The use of Facebook and Twitter contributed in a paramount way especially when it came to organising for demonstrations and expressing for people's opinions due to the way the government was mistreating them (Gainous & Wagner, 2013). It was hence through the use of social media that Tunisia and other Arab countries managed to liberate themselves from poor governance and intimidation.

Social media and politics have so far brought about a wide range of innovative ways that serve different purposes both based on the societal setup, and political. It has become so easy to draw fine lines between news, opinion and propaganda (Brown, 2019). Unlike in the mainstream print and broadcast media whereby information is edited, it becomes so hard to control the spread of unreliable news and those, the possibility of spreading falsehoods has gone high.

Critically, Gender-based issues have been so rampant over the use of social media. Some of the groups would openly discriminate the female gender and link it too weak leadership, a factor that leads to intimidation and degradation of such gender. Such factors would hence foster a challenge as to why social media can become gender biased and lack the aspect of controlling the political attacks which would have otherwise edited on other media platforms. In a perfect world, the media serve a few basic jobs in a popularity based society. Their primary role is to illuminate the general population, furnishing natives with the data expected to settle on mindful choices about administration and strategy. The media go about as guard dogs checking government activities. They set the plan for open dialogue of issues, and give a discussion to political articulation. They additionally encourage network working by helping individuals to discover natural causes, recognise local gatherings, and work toward answers for societal issues.

Conclusion

In conclusion, social media has brought about a significant change the current politics, and cultural. Most of the political driving forces have been vetted through eh use of social media, and thus, almost everyone is targeting to have some activity that is online based so as attract an intensified popularity and hence maintain or boost up popularity. Not only the politicians who embrace the use of social media as the source of their power but also the followers within the community and cultural groups who feel fit once associated with a certain political affair that is social media based.

References

Bennett, W. L. (2012). The personalisation of politics: Political identity, social media, and changing patterns of participation. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 644(1), 20-39. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716212451428

Wolfsfeld, G., Segev, E., & Sheafer, T. (20...