Essay Sample on Social Media's Impact on Politics & Elections: A Positive Force

Introduction

Today's life without social media is boring. Social media helps its users to create and share their information and involve themselves in social networking programs. On the other hand, politics uses Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to affect how campaigns and elections are conducted nowadays dramatically. The platform has changed politics in both positive and negative ways in America. However, the media has impacted the politics and elections positively rather than negatively. Social media affects politics, politicians, and Voters in general.

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Historically, the Internet was firstly used for political benefits by Howard Dean in 2004 when he was running for president. He organized a campaign website, which was virtual headquarters for recruiting volunteers and fundraising. The sites had online metrics such as for weblogs, homepage, house parties, campaign sign-up, and meetups. The website leads to face to face meet up of citizens with the same interests where Dean encouraged them to use the Meetup website. Through the website, Dean's campaign raised forty- million dollars in 2004 (Garrett,2019).

Politicians and voters direct contact. Tools of social networking programs like Twitter YouTube and Facebook enable communication between politicians and voters without a dime directly. Hence, allowing candid conversations of politicians and voters which creates a platform for both parties to exchange ideas. More so, voters can point out keys issues affecting their society to politicians (Garrett, 2019), enabling the elected officials to implement those ideas once they get elected. For instance, through the "like" button Facebook and "follow" on twitter, citizens, and politicians can contact directly.

Social media enables campaigns to go viral to the public. Facebook and Twitter are emerging instruments when it comes to campaign organizing. They allow activists and celebrities to share information and news, for instance, campaign events with the other voters. They use a "retweet" feature on Twitter and "share" functions on Facebook. For example, Donald Trump Twitted heavily during the 2016 presidential election (Garrett,2019).

The benefit of network platforms is its immediacy. Politicians usually wait first for impacts of policy statements they deliver to voters. Facebook and Twitter allow politicians to gauge public opinion and controversy. Hence, they can make appropriate adjustments in their campaigns in time with minimum consultant prices. Also, politicians can know people who re following them on social media from the controversy they create on the network platforms (Diehl, Weeks, & Gil Zuniga, 2016)

Social media is useful as it engages young voters. Mostly older Americans citizens usually have the highest voter turn up in the polling stations. But Facebook and Twitter have energized youth to vote; hence, impacting elections. For instance, President Barack Obama tapped into the younger voters through the use of social media. This strategy enabled him to win two consecutive campaigns successfully (Diehl et al., 2016).

There is power in many citizens coming together. Americans can join and connect easily to each other through social media tools. The platform enables them to petition about the government and elected officials. Citizens can discuss among themselves about the interests and government policies politicians promised to implement during their campaigns (Garrett,2019). If the benefits are not fulfilled, social media helps citizens to come together and impeach the elected officials.

Social networking tools allow politicians to receive feedback from voters. Politicians receiving feedback from constituents and voters can be a better thing for their campaigns. However, it can be a worse thing, too, according to the politicians' response. Politicians usually employ personnel to observe channels of their Internet platforms for any negative comments and scrub unflattering responses. Thus, it enables the campaign to be defensive from the public's bad image. Politics in modern-day will involve either positive or negative feedback from the public (Klinger, & Svensson 2015)

Politicians use social media for fundraising for their campaigns. Politicians use a fundraising strategy known as "money bombs" to come up with cash within a short period. Typically, "money bombs" a one- day period is whereby the candidates encourage monetary donations from their supporters. Facebook and Twitter help the politicians to reach out to the citizens by sending them information about fundraising. For example, Ron Paul, on his campaign for the presidency in 2008, made a successful campaign from "money- bomb" fundraising. Also, President Obama, in 2012, his campaign raised around a billion dollars (Garrett, 2019).

Social media plays a role in disclosing political scandals to the public. This event captures attention and intensive communication by citizens. Scandals have rapidly increased in recent years, mostly related to social media. For instance, in 2011, a political scandal evolved to the internet where Anthony Weiner, a Congressman, uploaded a provocative photograph in his Twitter account to a lady. The picture and tweet were sent to a blogger known as Andrew Breitbart, who later on his website posted them before Weiner took down the tweet.

Media platforms enable fake news and rumors. Recently it has become harder to differentiate genuine fake news from good news on the websites. Consistently streaming of gossips, connections, and photos of political leaders is a mixture of untruths and truths. Hence, many countries, including America, are not trusting news from the media. The National Intelligence of America alleged Russia to have generated fake news to influence the 2016 presidential elections. President Donald provoked the trust of the public after referring to journalists as the dishonest people on earth (Diehl et al., 2016).

Social media enables scripts, polarization, and bias of America. Different research shows that many social outlets influence partisan audiences, which portrait political preferences. Through an internet search, citizens can get facts enabling many publications to shift to analysis and context from certain news. However, the media-political schisms polarize the population as well. Besides ideological bias, journalists across the country also portrait' biased views through the distillation of complex issues and campaigns into simple scripts. The narratives about Trump being an outsider, racist, and Clinton, a corrupt politician, dominated the coverage of the election.

Conclusion

Over the previous decade, American citizens, through the use of social media, have transformed positively on how they conduct politics and political news. Also, it contributes to the country's democracy - the collaboration of voters through meetup websites, hence, affective on political stability. However, due to social media's high profile, these platforms have enhanced the spread of misinformation among citizens. Eventually, the internet has positive and negative impacts on today's politics. Hence, social media has effects on democracy

References

Garrett, R. K. (2019). Social media's contribution to political misperceptions in US Presidential elections. PloS one, 14(3), e0213500. Retrieved from https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0213500

Klinger, U., & Svensson, J. (2015). The emergence of network media logic in political communication: A theoretical approach. New media & society, 17(8), 1241-1257. Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444814522952

Diehl, T., Weeks, B. E., & Gil de Zuniga, H. (2016). Political persuasion on social media: Tracing direct and indirect effects of news use and social interaction. new media & society, 18(9), 1875-1895. Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444815616224

Bode, L. (2016). Political news in the news feed: Learning politics from social media. Mass Communication and Society, 19(1), 24-48. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15205436.2015.1045149