Politics and Social Media





    Politics is an area where it is easy to see how much has changed in our world in regards to social media over just a few short decades. When we entered this century social media wasn’t even a thing and political campaigns were run through traditional media. The only real chance a politician had to make their thoughts on a subject heard was during debates and those were only for the people who bothered to tune in and weren’t distracted by whatever happened to be on the other television channels that night.
    There were both advantages and disadvantages to seeing politics in the old fashioned way. It’s true that we usually only saw the things about our politicians that their campaigns wanted us to see. Comments were usually prepared well in advance and it was rare to get a personal connection or even to see a politician as a person. There wasn’t much difference in news channels and most everyone saw the same news about both parties. Fake news was not a thing yet and journalists prized themselves on their ability to deliver the truth.
    Politics has changed a great deal over the last 20 years. We are now inundated by the thoughts and opinions of those running for office. It has become an aberration for a politician to not have accounts on multiple social media platforms and post at least daily. Algorithms on social media decide for you what you are going to see, this makes it far more likely for you to only be exposed to the opinions you agree with rather than having to face the facts from the opposing side. No one sees the exact same news as anyone else anymore and facts aren’t held to the same level of truth as they once were. For many people, facts and opinions have become interchangeable terms.
    No one quite imagined how much the world of politics was going to change when then president-elect Barack Obama built a new type of campaign using social media in an effort to bring the campaign to the people rather than the traditional method of bringing people to the campaign (Katz, Barris, & Jain, 2013). It was a beautiful idea, increase citizen engagement in politics and government through increasing accessibility via social media. Obama changed the political landscape and made campaigning less about billboards and television spots and more about digital media. For many people he was not just the first African American president, he was the first president that the world was able to see as a person rather than a position (Gerodimos & Justinussen, 2015).
    People’s ability to trust in the man in the White House as a result of his open and honest communication through social media ended up creating a world where social media eventually was the trusted news source, at times an even more trusted source than traditional news. The fact that social media provided things in real-time rather than waiting for the six o’clock news was also a big factor in its popularity. But people forgot that one of the greatest differences between social media and traditional media was that the instant nature of social media prevented important safeguards like proper fact-checking. People became so used to trusting Obama that they began to trust most things that came from social media. Too many people began to carry over that trust from the message to the medium.
    I am not sure anyone could imagine that Obama’s sincerity on Youtube (The Obama White House, 2017) could eventually lead to Trump’s impulsivity on Twitter (Ott, 2016). But regardless of whether you believe this has been a change for better or worse, this is a change that is here to stay. Social media is not going anywhere and those who expect to run the country have had to learn to embrace the changes. While I continue to hope for a future with more sincerity and less impulsivity I have learned to accept that social media is here to stay and is a huge factor in how politics happen both in our country and around the world. While I can understand the thought process of those who have chosen to disconnect from social media in these difficult times I have accepted that sticking my head in the sand will not accomplish anything. I choose to believe that there is a brighter future possible and that social media, if harnessed correctly, can be one of the tools to get us there.





Gerodimos, R, & Justinussen, J. 2015, Obama’s 2012 Facebook campaign: Political communication in the age of the like button. Journal Of Information Technology & Politics, 12(2), 113-132.
Katz, J., Barris, M., & Jain, A. 2013. The social media president: Barack Obama and the politics of digital engagement. Palgrave MacMillan: New York, NY.
The Obama White House. 2017. Weekly address: The honor of serving you as president [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbwlVwNWLzU
Ott, B. 2016. The age of Twitter: Donald J Trump and the politics of debasement. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 34(1), 59-68.





Location: Stayton, OR 97383, USA

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