Social Media in Political Campaigns

Social media is now a major tool in political campaigns. Many politicians and political parties are using new technologies to reach larger audiences and compete for the youth audience vote with richer and highly customised online content.

Politicians can, with the help of political marketing experts and advertising agencies, help voters deal with the local issues at the grassroots level by encouraging citizens to use the internet to bridge the distance between themselves and their elected representatives. In many ways the internet can be seen as an extension of direct response marketing (Marlow 1997), which allows politicians to localise and tailor their messages and identities directly to voters.

The internet’s ability to customise ideas, issues, and policies is a marketing tool that any politician can employ in their election campaign. Politicians can construct a local identity and convey several important messages to voters.

In Australia, the major parties are now spending large portions of their budgets on social media, and both parties' campaign bosses have recruited full-time staff dedicated to online campaigning. The information that voters can access is not only legitimate and credible but can also be creative and varied, linked to other networks and additional sources of information. Subscriber numbers can also be a good indication of voter support.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/political-heavyweights-are-online-upfront-and-in-your-face-20130807-2rgpc.html)

 

 

 

Hirst and Harrison describe a ‘metaphorical parting of the political sea so that voters and politicians are more directly interactive with each other and that governments at all tiers are much more directly accountable to us’ (2007, p. 346).

When Kevin Rudd's cat Jasper died there was an outpouring of grief on Twitter. Rudd had kept his 1.1 million followers informed and when the cat's kidneys finally failed, Rudd's Twitter followers mourned the pet as if it were their own (Swan & Visentin 2013).

(http://resources2.news.com.au/images/2011/07/29/1226104/294882-kevin-rudd-and-jasper.jpg)

References

Hirst, M and Harrison, J 2007, ‘Communication and new media: from broadcast to narrowcast’ Oxford University Press: South Melbourne, Australia.

Marlow, E 1997, ‘Web Visions’ Van Nostrand Reinhold: New York

Swan, J & Visentin, L 2013, 'Political heavyweights are online, upfront and in your face', 8 August, viewed 14 January 2014, <http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/political-heavyweights-are-online-upfront-and-in-your-face-20130807-2rgpc.html>.