Politicians and Social Media

When I think of a relationship between politics and social media, it always comes around to Donald Trump. He has been one of the most active presidents on social media. But what does this do for him? I think that his plan is to draw as much attention to him as he can. All publicity that he can get is pretty beneficial for him. This is because he will always have supporters behind him. The more attention, the longer he is standing center stage and gaining supporters. 

Trump claims that he has a specific reason to be so active in social media. 

He says that he uses social media to fight against fake media. However, I don't think that this could be the best thing to do. I think addressing the media through social media seems unprofessional. This could possibly just be because it's something we haven't seen a lot of. Maybe it is the way society and social media is changing. Even if it isn't something to look down on (our president being very active on social media), there are some instances where his twitter activity seems unprofessional. 

It is pretty crazy to see the President of the United States calling out people and referring to another politician as "crooked". All while this seems pretty abnormal and kind of weird, I believe this is what makes him successful. He does this to gain popularity. Twitter consists of millions of users who see his tweets, which are then shared and circulated throughout the internet. People who would agree with what he is saying, would start to get behind his views and beliefs. 

There is another politician that I think of when I think of the relationship between politics and social media. Norm Kelly, the Councillor of Toronto, has some pretty funny tweets.

Here, Norm Kelly is doing the same kind of thing as Trump, just on a lower pedestal. He is drawing attention to himself by trying to relate with the young people of the generation. The millennial's are what makes up most of society at this point. By relating to them, he is able to get them behind his movements and beliefs. It is more strategic than just tweeting to entertain. Just as Donald Trump's tweets are strategic, and not just doing it to make himself seem cool on social media. But there is a difference between how the two go about their tweets. Norm Kelly's tweets seem more of an entertaining persuasion while Donald Trump's are more like "I'm badass" persuasion. Nevertheless, both strategies seem to be very effective. 

There is a strategy when it comes to politicians using social media. They use social media as a way to influence others and get them on their side, which is not too difficult because of how much influence social media has on society today. 

Social media and the Political Machine Blog Post 4

Social media has become a facet of the political machine in the twentieth century; it is the future of reaching out to the voters that are undecided during a election year. After reading Professor Vrooman’s post on how Hillary Clinton could have one the race, I do a little digging myself finding the many ways social media has changed the way we perceive things especially politics. A great example of this was another piece or outlet of media back in the 1960s where the first televised presidential debate was aired. The two candidates being John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, both in a first time heated debate on a black and white square box. This was cutting edge at the time, it meant that for the first time candidates could be seen actively speaking about topics and plans for their election. Though what needs to be taken from this is the way in which the debate was very one sided not because of the way John F. Kennedy swept Nixon off his feet in the debate but on the contrary if you compared the event televised to it being heard via radio Nixon was supposedly the clear winner. What makes this so interesting is the way John F. Kennedy went about the televised debate, he did everything in his power to use his looks to persuade the viewers to side with him while Richard Nixon was not prepared looking pale and sweaty. (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/1960-first-televised-presidential-debate/) An image can mean a lot especially from a media standpoint, it does not necessarily matter what kind of media it is as long as you know how to properly represent yourself on that platform of media. This brings me to the very important notion of how Trump basically won the election by understanding how to use social media and from the looks of it (him sitting in office) it worked. Though I want to focus more on this new phenomenon of using social media in the politics machine. Breaking down the way Trump did it is an easier way to understand that social media has a much larger impact on politics and a much larger one in the future. Following medium.com’s break down of the election you can grasp the reasoning behind Trumps victory, not by sheer rallies and news but controversy surrounding his social media, a good way to put it is “there is no such thing as bad publicity right?”

-Clintons Campaign had created 19% more messages than Trump’s but Trump’s had acquired more news coverage

-Trumps social media grew from 4.2 million to 12.35 compared to Clinton where she went from 1.7 million to 8.4 million on Facebook

-The use of the hashtag #MAGA compared to #Imwithher (https://medium.com/tow-center/a-final-data-driven-look-at-trump-v-clinton-on-social-media-7ea9bb747982)

-Trumps marketing ploy to have supporters buy his hats on Facebook

-Use of attacks on social media during Primaries (Trump’s increased)

Through the use of the data found on medium.com just like any other election revolving around a new form of media the one who used it better than the other one. Using my prior blog post on my personal blog for my literature review I had quoted Adam Alter’s Ted talk data on the three hours of personal time a day we have on average (3 hrs.), by calculating the amount of time we are online with media we use  around 2.7 hrs. of it online meaning we find ourselves in more online political trends and debates than we do anywhere else understanding how social media drives political action, creates greater accountability (39% of US adults engaging in politics/networks online), and legitimacy through an online presence (nearly 2/3 of us find ourselves online as a captive audience to online ads for campaigns as well as seeing an online presence of a candidate determining if they are real both offline and online in today’s society)

(https://globalriskinsights.com/2016/03/how-social-media-is-changing-political-campaigns/)

The future of the political machines lays in the hands of social media particularly in the form of psychographic profiling, hypermedia, and digital fortresses (Siva Vaidhyanathan) dragging in undecided voters to the campaign one donation or campaign purchase at a time. As everything begins to transition to being online so too will the debates and campaigns of the political machine, maybe in the future if you trend enough and come up with a catchy hashtag you might be able to pull off what Trump did through the use of Facebook.

The Power and Limits of Social Media in Social Movements

Social media allows for communication to span hundreds and thousands of miles including communication about important news and organizing protests. Facebook allowed for the otherwise news restricted populous of Egypt to not only report but respond to an Egyptian man being beaten to death by their police. Communication has always played an important role in organizing people for a cause and social media is no exception in being an important tool in this form of organization.
The medium of communication affects not only which issues get attention but how quick the response is to these issues. A modern example of the medium affecting attention is Facebook with its filter bubbles causing issues that mainly elicit a strong emotional response to get the most attention. The speed of response is not necessarily reliant on the medium of communication but the more easily accessible the medium, the more likely it is to accelerate the speed of an existing movement or relatable cause.
However, we must remember not to marvel too much at what these platforms allow us to do but maintain our attention on the issues they help become noticeable. An example of this unfortunate misplacement of attention is seen in June of 2009 when citizens of Iran risked their lives expressing opposition to their government over Twitter. The story became popular not in recognition of this bravery or outrage in support for change, but for the capability of Twitter to allow such voices to be heard. Important? Yes. Misplaced attention? Definitely.
Further criticism of how helpful social media is to political movements are contributed by Malcolm Gladwell. He argues that "strong ties" are the key to the success of a movement as opposed to the weak ties enabled by social media based on the analysis of past successful movements such as the civil rights movement. Clay Shirkley responded to this by stating that "The fact that barely committed actors cannot click their way to a better world does not mean that committed actors cannot use social media effectively." However, this view does not account for the media specificity caused by algorithms that run platforms like Facebook. Gladwell's position is correct to an extent but misses the fact that the general fight against oppressive states is not limited to the tactics of one movement.
Wael Ghonim summarized the main problems with social media after stating he was wrong about the sheer existence of the internet is all that is needed to organize society. He believes the main problems with social media to be: rumors confirming biases, echo chambers or filter bubbles, recognizing the humanity of other users, better coping with the speed of information to reach a deeper understanding, and stop favoring declaration over deliberation.

#AllLivesMatter

Black  Lives Matter is a movement aimed towards protecting the Black community from being directly targeted due to skin color. There have been many events, in our past and present, where the Black community has been racially profiled and been harmed due to something out of anyone’s control. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has been around for a while now and I believe it definitely has brought light to the situation. A hashtag has become a movement that has grown tremendously over the past couple of years. Chokshi states in her article, How #BlackLivesMatter Came to Define a Movement, “The hashtag had a small, but sustained increase in use in the summer of 2014, when Michael Brown and Eric Garner died in encounters with the police, focusing a national discussion on race and policing and elevating a phrase that would define a movement.” The numbers of this hashtag is constantly growing due to events that continue to happen, some in our control, some out. The director of internet, science and technology at Pew, Lee Rainie, states “This is a very powerful example of how a hashtag now is attached to a movement, and a movement, in some ways, has grown around a hashtag — and a series of really painful and really powerful conversations are taking place in a brand-new space.” Phrase or not, all lives do matter. I really do believe that no one has room to judge anyone. We are all humans, we all make mistakes, we are not perfect. So why do we try so hard to be superior over each other? Take away our hair color, our eye color, our height, our sexuality, our race, what do we have? At the end of the day, we are all comprised of bones and matter. There is no reason to go on judging people when everyone is never going to be the same. In the Bible, John 8:7 says “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” This is something very cliché to state but it does make sense. We ourselves are not perfect, so how can we expect anyone else to be? People talk about racism and how it needs to disappear. Racism stays because people talk about it. It stays because media make minorities look dirty, poor, and ghetto. Everyone just thinks all minorities are just what media portrays them to be. Which is very false majority of the time. Then when the white community does the same crime as minorities, the minorities are more likely to be punished much more cruelly because of their ethnicity. People think they are dangerous humans, which is very, very false because that is not always the case. Color of skin does not determine whether you are going to be deviant or good. We are all human beings trying to live our lives one day at a time. Some lives can be harder than others, but we all have our own paths to follow. Everyone’s life matters, no matter the color of their skin.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/us/how-blacklivesmatter-came-to-define-a-movement.html