The Use of Digital and Social Media in Politics
The new media environment spearheaded by digital and social platforms presents drastic consequences for politics and governance. So far, digital and social media has proved to be dynamic to the point that it is difficult to predict the future of political communication. Social media has been the main trigger in the transformation of how institutions of government and political leaders communicate. At the same, the media spaces have also transformed the contest of the elections and the engagement of citizens. Social media has become a form of communication that facilitates production, exchange, and the dissemination of political content within the networks that accommodate interaction.
The use of digital and social media has wide implications for political practices and governance. Already, there is a radical altercation in the modus operandi of institutions of governance and the communication strategies of political leaders (Fenton, 2016). The political media system is different and the role of political journalism is morphing by the day. Additionally, the engagement of the citizenry and the contest in election is also changing by the day. Therefore, the rise of the new media practice is complicating the political media space extensively.
The conventional media spaces that predate the internet like newspapers and radio shows have had to coexist with the new platforms to maintain relevance. The legacy media platforms continue to maintain the stable formats of disseminating information but the media platforms continue to grow expand through websites, vlogs, blogs, digital applications and many more (Gil de Zúñiga, Weeks, & Ardèvol-Abreu, 2017). The framework of mass media intends to deliver news to broad audiences after a thorough scrutiny of sources to ensure accuracy. On the other hand, digital and social media platforms just relay information directly to individuals. Therefore, there are no editorial interventions or gatekeepers. To that extent, the new platforms have led to a rise in the level of unpredictability or instability in political communication.
The coexistence between conventional and the new media platforms is largely symbiotic. The conventional media have brought on board the social and digital media reporting strategies (Kahne & Bowyer, 2018). The social and digital media fulfils the ever-increasing demand for content from the conventional media audiences. Despite the competition between the old and new media forms, the audiences of the conventional media remain as formidable as ever. Network and cable news remain the main source of political information for people aged above thirty years. Therefore, the new media forms also rely on the conventional practices to relay and legitimize their content.
In an ideal situation, the media has a focal role in the sustenance and development of society. The primary purpose of the media should be to inform the citizenry (Fuchs, 2017). The public deserves information to enable them to make insightful decisions about the leadership they deserve and the preferred policy direction. The media should also act as a watchdog on government actions. Additionally, the media sets the agenda for public discourse and it provides an avenue for political expression. The media should also facilitate and enable community building by rallying people to common causes. By identifying civic groups with imperative grievances, the media Helps in working toward solutions to the societal problems.
The digital and social media platforms have the ability to satisfy the political functions of media. First, the platforms provide an opportunity to gather information from vast engagements (Kahne & Bowyer, 2018). Additionally, the content in the platforms is able to reach even the disinterested members of the society through the peer channels and the personalized messaging avenue such as Facebook. Through social media, all members of the society are now able to join the conventional media practitioners as watchdogs of public interests. Consequently, the public officials are under much more scrutiny. Further, through the social and digital media, issues outside the purview of the conventional media but of great public interest also get prominence. The social media can also foster community building through the extensive networking capabilities that are able to scale physical boundaries. Although the conventional media covers political activities extensively, the journalists are not supposed to encourage members to participate in the processes. On the other hand, the social and digital platforms explicitly direct and encourage the public to participate in activities such as protests, voting, and voluntary works.
The digital and social media use has also undercut democracy in some instances. The platforms disseminate vast amounts of political content. However, a huge chunk of the content is polarizing, unreliable and trivial (Kahne & Bowyer, 2018). An ethical watchdog role requires an engagement by journalists trained in uncovering facts and political transgressions. For instance, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward inspired journalists to play the watchdog role effectively by uncovering the Watergate Hotel scandal perpetrated the regime of President Richard Nixon. The news item in the Washington Post forced the President to resign from office. Most of the news items on social media are sensational and exaggerated fabrications. Therefore, it is difficult to set a course of accountability for political office holders.
Indeed, the social media has provided an opportunity for diversity and the dissemination of new forms of content. However, the quality of the information raises serious concerns for the growth and expansion of democratic discourse (Kahne & Bowyer, 2018). Today, shrewd politicians have turned their attention to social media with an aim of circumventing the control of the conventional media platforms. Scholars state that the new media platforms have led to some form of populism in political engagement. Therefore, there is more opportunity to engage citizens who appear disenfranchised and inactive in the political scene. Nevertheless, the lack of guiding principles and goals overwhelms the opportunity for positive populism. Political social and digital media engagements are an avenue for commercial interests and those already holding privileged positions can manipulate the discourses.
The diversity of the content available in the social and digital spaces also adds on to its complexity on the ability to influence political discourse. The information distributed on the platforms varies from fact-based works of journalism to fabrications and alternative facts (Kahne & Bowyer, 2018). Today, a thin line exists between what is factual and what is true. Ethical editors with the ability to regulate the information to ensure maintenance of the public good have declined. Instead, they has been a steady rise of social media analytic editors with the sole intention and purpose of drawing audience to content without regard for its news worthiness. The audience has to bear with the hard part of separating fact from fiction. In most cases, the audiences do not have the ability to verify the news items. Therefore, they have to rely on the sway of political interest to decide on what to believe.
A number of factors can offer explanation on the shift in the quality and quantity of political information. First, the technological advances of the digital and social media allow content to propagate seamlessly without limits. Secondly, social media platforms have structures that are significantly different from the social media platforms. The content can move to third parties instantly without any form of editorial judgment or fact checking. Individuals who lack any form of journalism training have the ability to reach millions of content consumers in an instant. Further, messages on social media platforms multiply because of the sharing across different platforms.
Social media platforms are also sending out a lot of political content due to economic incentives. Facebook, google and twitter seek to draw advertising revenue from the content published on the platforms (Fuchs, 2017). At the same time, the political content published on the platforms also draws in more users. Therefore, it is an opportunity for the social media companies to target them for more advertising. Digital search engines also direct users to limited selection sponsored sites. Therefore, the user does not the will to choose a preferred site.
In the last decade, the polarity of the political environment is increasing by the day. Digital and social media spaces grant people more avenue to engage and discuss the political happening. On one hand, the spaces can achieve great strides for the development of the political space it utilized well. However, the digital spaces are also a haven for political deceit and propaganda. The lack of an established means of regulating discourse on the platforms makes it an unreliable space for positive engagement. Attempts to regulate the spaces appear authoritative. Therefore, it is for the audience to decide what is credible. Nevertheless, the conventional media outlets should maintain their role and provide the public with verified information to guide their political outlook.
References
Fenton, N. (2016). Left out? Digital media, radical politics and social change. Information, Communication & Society, 19(3), 346-361.
Fuchs, C. (2017). From digital positivism and administrative big data analytics towards critical digital and social media research!. European Journal of Communication, 32(1), 37-49.
Gil de Zúñiga, H., Weeks, B., & Ardèvol-Abreu, A. (2017). Effects of the news-finds-me perception in communication: Social media use implications for news seeking and learning about politics. Journal of computer-mediated communication, 22(3), 105-123.
Kahne, J., & Bowyer, B. (2018). The political significance of social media activity and social networks. Political Communication, 35(3), 470-493.
