Saturday, April 9, 2011

Social Media And Politics

Politics has always been about giving speeches, addressing rallies and trying to become known face to every one, the objectives still remain the same but as we are moving ahead in the 21st century their mediums are changing. To advance and mobilize community support social media is becoming an essential part of any political campaign. Twitter, facebook and other social networking sites distribute political message and ignite discussion among community about their stand.
For a successful political campaign, the strategy for various networking sites should be different. Twitter is more reactive platform and it is used by most politician as a tool to collect links of all events and favorable news stories, where as for some it is used as a medium where they can react to different news and what they feel about any particular issue. Many politician have created their YouTube channel where they upload their video on a regular basis and they can talk to their audience. YouTube provides great opportunity to a politician as they can show what they want to show to their audience which in turn can alter or strengthen their belief.
Facebook is all about personal and face to face community interaction. If you search for most popular politician on facebook, the winner will be Barack Obama with more than 9 million followers. This figure is sufficient enough to judge true potential of this platform for politician. Every update from him receives on an average more than 800 comments. If you receive that number of comments then it gives you an option to show your loyalty to them.

Social media, if not all, should be the part of political campaign. It gives an real time communication within their constituency specially for younger generation at bare minimum cost as compare to the traditional communication tools for the politicians. Few of the social media sites has already been identified as a potential tool and are being used but there are many more sites that can be used for a successful political strategy.