Why has social media affected political campaigns

Social media are interactive platforms that make it easier to create and share content through online communities and networks, including information, interests, ideas, and other forms of expression. Social media has been proven to have harmful outcomes for users. If you make music on Spotify use spotifystorm to grow your channel and earn money. Several tricks have also been used by people to become viral on social media platforms. It has been reported that political parties are using social media platforms to reach out to the public. Let’s try to figure out why has social media affected political campaigns. 

Why has social media affected political campaigns?

Social media has the ability to quickly and easily reach everyone at once. Through this politician, every one of the people can receive their message at once. The final straw for a lot of Facebook users was learning that the company had altered its advertising guidelines to permit politicians and political parties to lie blatantly in their advertisements. users’ complaints about Facebook’s policies. They include the fact that during the 2016 election, the company could not stop Russian disinformation from being widely disseminated on its platform, and that Russian targeting of African-American voters may have decreased African-American turnout. Human rights violations and incitement to violence are also concerning. “In Myanmar and India, Facebook’s failure to recognize its role in supporting the incitement of hate-fueled violence has meant life and death,” reads the call to action for the Save Our Democracy: Protest Facebook event. The fabric of our society in the United States is being threatened by its callous disdain for its part in supporting the disintegration of our democratic ideals, norms, and values.

How have politicians benefited from social media campaigns?

Social media have changed the political scene. The global rise of populism is a direct effect of this transition. Social media’s ability to engage the public in an active way has made it feasible for populist actors to promote their political views or agendas. Populism has long been spread through the media. However, political content on new social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Weibo reaches a greater audience. Now, this audience can be reached more quickly and in a shorter amount of time.

Michael Bloomberg, a businessman and former mayor of New York City, had a brief presidential campaign and spent more than $1 billion of his own money before withdrawing in March. Over 70% of that spending was allocated to advertising. The extravagant expenditure serves as a reminder of how expensive it is to run for office in the United States and why it is so challenging for political outsiders to get traction at the polls without links to powerful donors (or, in Bloomberg’s case, his own vast money). Up to 90% of incumbents are reelected in what research refers to as “the incumbency advantage” since the issue persists over election cycles. However, social media has changed the game, enabling both established politicians and up-and-comers to interact directly with voters on issues ranging from policy to what they had for dinner. Donald Trump uses Twitter almost daily to express himself without the censorship of traditional media, and Barack Obama was the first candidate to do so when he ran for president in 2008. The platform was still in its infancy at the time of his 2008 campaign.

Conclusion

Hope you’ve gained some insight into how politicians use social media platforms to influence voters. The researchers contend that more study is needed on the relationship between social media and politics, and their publication significantly advances the area. The conclusion shows that social media might eliminate the incumbency advantage and return politics to the grassroots with adequate preparation. Social media will likely to play a bigger part in shaping electoral outcomes as it gives young politicians a platform and as political campaigns become more expensive and crucial to reaching out to constituencies.