Politics and civic culture
Behind any successful (election) campaign, there is always a huge effort to engage with target publics via many mediums. In such, social media is being increasingly used to raise awareness of causes, run campaigns and as a place where people from all walks of life can gather and discuss the issues that they care about (936 Drive, 2013).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vrczoLm7Es
That is such a new, very new and very interesting knowledge/ experience for people coming from âdifferent worldâ like me and it is the time to learning something new. In my very limit knowledge regarding politics, this post simply demonstrates a key point that I believe it is closely relate to my major.
It says that social media given publics a space to get involved in discussion and then forms public opinions. In other words, a dialogue has established between voters and candidates. But in what extent public opinion is really change or affect candidate election campaign which aims to gain more votes? In fact, different from traditional model of communication where people obtain information from one vital source, social media such as Facebook and Twitter has introduced a new model â two-way communication. Nevertheless, Grunig & Hunt (1984) had separated two different type of two-way communication: asymmetric and symmetric model. Looking further in definition and characteristic of two model, election campaign is more likely deployed two-way asymmetric communication which also known as âscientific pursuanceâ. Take a close look on what Tony Abbott promised during his election campaign and the cuts in health and education in federal budget 2014 recently, it is just a great example on how he sharped and tailored his message to persuade publics in short-term attitude change in order to (obviously) gain more supporters. Some would say that Tony had broken his promise, but he could argue that people just misunderstood his message.
http://www.afr.com/p/national/no_health_education_cuts_in_budget_rraVfCpwjHpJ9dOuXzbsCN
In the TEDTalks âHow social media can make historyâ of Clay Shirky, he mentioned quite amazing example about how Obama engaged with his supporters via social media platform as a two-way symmetric communication, especially through myBO.com.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASZJE15E0SY
Very clearly, Obama replied âI have considered the issue. I understand where you are coming from. But having considered it all, Iâm still going to vote the way Iâm going to vote. But I wanted to reach out to you and say, I understand that you disagree with me, and Iâm going to take my lumps on this one.â Clay mentioned that although the messaged did not please people, everyone in that group realized that Obama had never shut them down. Nobody in the Obama campaign had ever tried to hide the group or make it harder to join, to deny its existence, to delete it, to take to off the site. They had understood that their role with myBO.com was to convene their supporters but not to control their supporters.
It is no doubt to say that social media could allocate power to political parties. However, in order to gain the trust (as well as support) of publics in long-term basis, two way communication should adopt in appropriate way.











