Should Politicians Use Social Media?

By Christopher Waldeck on July 27, 2014

Should politicians use social media in order to promote their causes?  Someone asked me that once and I believe that this is generally a necessity in order to get one’s message out into the public.  However, social media does provide ways for politician to interact with their constituents.  It also has given them another important rule to be more responsible on the internet.

For example, politicians use sites like Twitter, in order to get their message out before the new media can get to it.  Twitter is a great equalizer in terms of making or breaking political careers.  For instance, irresponsibility destroyed the career of Anthony Weiner, and oftentimes offensive tweets can lead to various retweets or negative feedback from constituents when it is wrong.  This has happened to numerous political pundits such as those on MSNBC and Fox News.  Politicans can get their messages across by linking tweets to their Facebook pages or websites in order to get people to subscribe to their information.

Ann Coulter, a popular Fox News correspondent, making fun of Michelle Obama’s #bringbackourgirls hashtag campaign. Coulter faced quite a bit of backlash for the Twitter photo

Since people are so connected online, Facebook pages can link to groups on Facebook that allow for people to join up and discuss ways to assist the politicians that they support.  It leads to more people who are participating in causes, and allows for others to recruit others with similar beliefs.  This is good for rallying people and allowing participatory understanding of issues that are effecting the community.  Facebook’s connections can allow more people to see the group and request to join from the outside.  This is also useful for those on the opposite end of the candidate and are trying to conduct opposition research in order to plan around where an opponent is going to be or surprise an opponent at one of their own rallies.

Social media is really a two way window.  It provides limitless opportunities to showcase a message to constituent.  It also provides a window of responsibility for what content is on the channel that the representative is using.  Politicians need to use it because of how interconnected the media is today and they need to accept it as a check on what they can post and should post.  The negative comments towards their message are okay as long as their message is out and people can see it.  There are always going to be supporters and haters.

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