Micro blogging for politician
and the use of social media is still new, many higher ranking Politician do not
use twitter to is full advantage as shown by Larsson’s (2010) graph of top ten users
in the Swedish election of 2010. But twitter is still only used by a small
number of people 19% of American internet users but as low as 1-8% of Swedish
internet users a clear minority. (Larsson, p 747, 2010)
picture by susstudio_x
Like many of the great technological changes in history it
takes time to get use to and for it to become fully effective but once it does,
it will be so common place that it would be hard to image how elections were
ran before, for example how did politicians advertise their point of view
quickly and efficiently without the use of TV. Just like the use of TV within the political
arena, micro blogging will become common place in the next few years.
Because of how new the concept of micro blogging is not much
research have been done on micro blogging and the effect of how micro blogging
is not really understood for the moment, more study is needed to be able to
understand the full effect on how the micro blogging can affect the outcome and
peoples decisions at an election, for now it seem with examples of the Swedish election
that it has not played a major role yet, but as time goes on that may change
and we could see more politician using micro blogging to get tire points
across.
I agree Steven, like all good technological developments, micro blogging is certainly taking its time in integrating itself into society. I remember when Myspace first became the rage and my primary school brain struggled to understand how it could ever really be of use to anyone. Now, I can honestly – and slightly ashamedly – admit that I would not keep in contact with half the people I do without the use of Facebook. I am sure Twitter and micro blogging will soon become a permanent fixture in political campaigning – well, until the next fad comes along!
ReplyDeleteYour inclusion of statistics within your opening paragraphs is particularly useful in demonstrating how people are not using Twitter to its full potential in order to gain political popularity. Your opinion regarding the evolution of Twitter and how it will take time to be fully effective is an interesting point of view. However, I believe the contrary. If Twitter has not already succeeded as a marketing tactic for politicians now, I don’t think it will evolve much more. As technology changes, new means of communication may have developed and overtake current popular networking sites such as Twitter.
ReplyDeleteHey Steven, great post.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your main point that micro blogging will become the norm over the coming years and that, just like TV before it, it will become a platform that a majority of politicians will use. I’m surprised you didn’t include anything regarding the Australian politics given the recent election campaign. Still, good post, and great use of stats to support your argument.