#MDA2009 Week5
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Week 5 Digital Citizenship 1: political engagement
Well, just being honest that I am not really interested in politics. In China, we are not really using social media platforms to engage with politics or for election. So, I will more focus on talking about the social media engagement in the USA.
The relationship between social media and political engagement
According to (Jericho, G. 2012, p.305-306), in September 201, Dr Axel Bruns of the University of Queensland estimated that the total number of Australian Twitter users was around 550,000. However, he determined that only 150,000 of those accounts had more than five followers (and thus were more likely to be real or active accounts). Such numbers aren’t large enough to suggest that an election is going to be won or lost on the Twitter streams. As the number of the active users, there is always large impact in the social media, but as the user amount bigger, the larger influence can be, so we cannot deny that social media really imperceptibly influence people to make the decision of election.
Jericho, G. (2012, p.297) mentioned that “the Obama team’s use of social media during the 2008 election campaign was major focus of its strategy.” It is precisely because Obama understood his disadvantages at the beginning, he did not have strong background, either recognition of large consortia, the only way he can win is to create popularity. So, his team mainly focus on Internet, using grassroots as main battlefield to appeal people. The way Obama did really affect later campaign, more and more candidates used social media.
We all know that Trump is very obsessed with Twitter, according to The New York Times (2 Nov 2019),his more than 66 million Twitter followers have becomes his private polling service, offering what he sees as validation for his performance in office, according to a Times analysis of Pew Research national surveys of adults who use Twitter. That means there is a large amount of people using Twitter is under the age of voting, but it is actually increasing the number of people reading his Twitter to get more and more attention. And just because of the most followers are under the age of voting, he can easily influence teenager’s thoughts and make it as weapon.
So, does candidates still need to use social media for campaign in the future?
My thought on the mater is yes, the analysis of Trump’s followers mostly are teenagers, in the future, more and more people using social media, people in our age is becoming the main part to change the voting and world, so social media is a powerful weapon, and most efficiency to get the attention and audience.
Reference:
Shear, M.D., Haberman, M., Confessore, N., Yourish, K., Buchanan, L. & Collins, K. 2019, "How Trump reshaped the presidency in over 11, 000 tweets (Links to an external site.)," The New York Times, 2 Nov 2019, viewed on 2 April.
Jericho, G. 2012 'How many votes are there on Twitter? download' in The rise of the Fifth Estate: social media and blogging in Australian politics, Scribe Publications Pty Ltd, pp 254 - 278, viewed on 1 April.
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W5 - What does Social Media have to do with Politics?
Who doesn't use social media now on a daily basis? People now use social media every time, every day. It is because social media contains lots of information and it keeps us updated on the latest news all the time. I believe many youngsters now do not spare their time for reading newspapers. What an old fashion way yikes. #justkidding
What Impact Has Social Media Had On Political Campaigns?
While rallies, peaceful protests, and fundraisers are still common, social media has surpassed them in terms of generating interest and action for various causes, particularly among the youth(The Graduate School of Political Management 2021). Now, social media has served as a focal point for political participation.
I remember the time when Donald Trump was up for election, many celebrities were using social media to share their opinions and voice themselves out. Most of the celebrities did share their opinions on "why vote for Joe Biden". Fans were encouraged to vote for the Biden-Harris ticket by John Legend, Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lopez, and Cardi B, while 50 Cent and Kid Rock backed Trump until the end (Burney 2020).
Donald Trump being Donald Trump himself had too much impact and influence during the time of election. In the end, Donald Trump had won the election and became the president of the United States during the year 2017.
Conclusion
Social media can be used for many purposes. Social media does influence our political behavior. Therefore, one should use social media carefully and not spread false news towards one and another. Celebrities and influencers really do play a very important role models for their fellow fans.
References
Burney, O 2020, 'Which celebrities voted for Donald Trump vs Joe Biden? 13 Hollywood and music stars who made their pick for president known in the 2020 US election', South China Morning Post, viewed 6 October 2021,<https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/news-trends/article/3109079/which-celebrities-voted-donald-trump-vs-joe-biden-13>.
'How Social Media Has Affected Political Campaigns', The Graduate Scool of Political Managment 2021, viewed 6 October, <https://gspm.online.gwu.edu/blog/how-social-media-has-affected-political-campaigns/>.
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Political Engagement
Conflicts in different eras, Politics everywhere ~ Well, look at the bright side at least it’s not the end of the world.
The political topics could be very sensitive towards one another where an individual could have different perspectives and opinions on certain topics or people. These topics are easy to get accessed through media, and in fact, they might even appear when you don’t even look for them. Now, I’m not a very political guy, but I have to know what’s going on in the world, and I do say this, not everything is true until there are certain proof and evidence. You never know what going on there, they might appear like a beautiful flower upfront when deep down there are truth uncovered.
So be prepared and let’s get on to the topic ~ 😉
What is Political Engagement?
Political Engagement has the meaning of participation of citizens by selecting the leaders or figures that they satisfied or prefer that have the power in government. Entering themselves as a contender for leadership in the country or president of the state is also included. The voted leaders will be entrusted and responsible to public officials and therefore provide services to the public.
How Political Used in Social Media?
Politicians had been tackled on social media since 2009, and it’s not easy since technologies are getting more advance now and our politicians are not like us who could master Instagram's features in a day, they have to master every popular communicator to get into public. Platforms that are the most popular like Facebook, Twitter, Facebook.
So here are a few methods how politician uses the social media platform.
Engage with Short Video or Short Clips
Since it’s still in the midst of a pandemic, this is one of the most effective ways to engage with the public. I assume a lot of politicians and in fact that every politician is doing short videos to promote and to increase the public’s trust, videos that are encouraging and engaging. Or messages that promise the public certain things if they win the campaign. People tend to be more attracted to watch short videos more with few seconds or 1 - 2 minutes than whole 5 minutes videos. I don’t know why and guess I’ll never understand the mystery 🤔
Video Link: https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FPOTUS%2Fstatus%2F1353015529410334726&widget=Tweet
Video Link: https://www.instagram.com/p/CGztAMfj07_/
Engage with Media’s Post
People from all around the world are checking media for news sources even multiple times a day to keep up-to-date, as some of the pages are updated within hours. And news now is faster than the bullet train.
However, a lot of controversies have been sparked by the posts or tweets made by politicians. For example, President Donald Trump made a controversial tweet directly pointing at CNN. Now sadly, Trump’s Twitter has been permanently banned for life I suppose due to some reasons because I couldn’t find his account.
Hey, like I say I’m not a very political guy ~ 😉
Once again a little reminder, there’s no hate here but I’m just giving some examples here, social media are very powerful. So whatever we do in the media, we ought to be careful about it, because you never know what’s going to happen and which flames will be ignited.
And that’s all for this week's blog, I hope you like it if you don’t I don’t blame you 🙂 Hopefully I’ll see you next week. 😎
PS: Here a little of Mikasa ( I like her better with longer hair)
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Digital Citizenship 1: political engagement
How social media helped Pakatan win GE14
In this day of age, social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, has become an important factor in our daily lives and has impacted us to a point of no return, but not just us mere individuals, even important figures such as the likes of former president of the united states Barack Obama as well as the current president Donald Trump both have an outlet of social media of their own that they use to reach out towards their followers, changing how politics works and how politicians interact with their voters and supporters (Murse 2018).
Official Twitter of Donald Trump @realDonaldTrump
How does social media change how we engage with politics?
Back then, we would never have thought that we would be able to engage directly with such important figures but now, with the power of social media we are able to do, from commenting on facebook post to tweeting on their personal tweeter’s, social media has brought us closer towards our respected politicians. Likewise, politicians can now be more open and direct their supporters as sometimes the media can censor out some topics or some journalist can change the context of an interview to get a big headline in their newspaper. Besides that, social media is fast as it can be used to dispel any false rumours that people have spread in an instant as compared to traditional media outlets (Murse 2018).
How social media helped Pakatan Harapan win GE14
It is no surprise that this story would be mentioned, as a Malaysian, we witnessed earlier this year, during our 14th general election (GE14) we witnessed a great moment in history on how the opposing party Pakatan Harapan dethrone the reigning party that has been in power for more than 60 years in hopes of creating a new Malaysia. It was revealed that an important factor that lead in helping Pakatan Harapan was with the help of social media as compared to the reigning party that was focusing on just making their chairman, Datuk Seri Najib Razak look good in front. They posted messages and tweets and keywords that there were about 155,615 searches and tweets between March 1 and 5 that words such as “bendera, ROS, diturunkan” (flag, Registrar of Societies (RoS), down) had appeared for BN, while “undi (vote), change, pledged, Negaraku’’ (Ruban 2018).
How social media kept everyone informed
During the time of GE14, it was through social media, everyone was constantly being able to keep up and informed with what was going on during the elections. Even through Dr. Mahathir bin Mohomad’s own facebook, he used it to communicate with everyone on what was ongoing and even went on Live to show everyone what was going on during those times that was even faster than the television media. With social media, no longer could the reigning party used any tricks that they have been using as everything was circulating on social media and almost every fake news was dispelled as the main politicians of Pakatan Harapan with the use of social media dispelled them all. Besides that, as on the tally itself, while the results were being delayed on purpose, Dr Mahathir with the use of his own facebook went live and posted the results telling the people that they have won.
Best of all
The memes that came with GE14
And with that I would like to thank you for reading my post thank you.
References
Murse, T, 2018, ‘How social Media has changed politics’, ThoughtCo, viewed 5th October 2018, <https://www.thoughtco.com/how-social-media-has-changed-politics-3367534>
Ruban, A, 2018, ‘How social media helped Pakatan win GE14′, malaymail, viewed 5th October 2018, <https://www.malaymail.com/s/1631921/how-social-media-helped-pakatan-win-ge14>
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