Social media and Political engagement
Social media and political engagement in this day and age go hand and hand.
One of my favourite examples of political engagement is the fabulous Chrissy Teigen. Chrissy Teigen is a model, host, writer and mum (and married to John Ledged). Chrissy is also an avid twitter user with 63.3k twitter followers. She’s well known for her candour, humour and for calling out The President of the United States of America. Chrissy periodically retweeted Donald Trump’s tweets with responses such as “You are 71 fucking years old. Grow. The. Fuck. Up” or “you are so insane that I pray ever day I am a Sim being played by aliens”. Chrissy delivered these gems but it was “Lol no one likes you” that got Trump to block her. The fact that a someone, all be it a celebrity, was able to push the buttons of the President enough for him to block her is radical. This back and fourth between politicians and citizens plays into the notion of amateurishness versus professionalism. Gunn Enli compared the social media campaigns of Trump and Clinton during the 2016 election, Clinton chose to steer towards a more traditional, professional approach where as Trump (obviously) went for the Amateur. Now, I don’t think Enli means amateurism directly corresponds to rudeness and the dissemination of incorrect information, but rather a style of communication more readily accessible to the average joe. And sadly, Trumps every man approach (all be it full of lies and misleading information) won over enough Americans to put him into office. But that’s enough about America, lets look a bit closer to home.
Social media has become integral in the political engagement of the Australian Public. Young people are able to educate themselves on the goings on in Australian politics, find like minded people and engage with a community. The hashtag #auspol used on predominately on twitter is a useful tool in engaging in political debate and keeping up to date with political news (of which there is a lot) and hey, if you want you can also look at memes of Tony Abbot eating an onion like an apple. That was weird. Following Q&A using #quanda allows young people to actually get their voices heard by the Australian public. Many people live tweet the show and get their tweets up on the screen for viewers to see. Something like this would’ve been truly unthinkable just 12 years ago.
Social media can be such a useful tool for political engagement. Imagine, you’ve got a super right wing uncle coming to dinner and you know he’s going to talk to you about politics, you know his opinions make you angry but you’re not entirely sure why. Head over to twitter, look up #auspol, find yourself a great article, engage with the community, ask questions and BOOM! Bob’s your uncle! (pun intended) Now you know exactly why you disagree with uncle Bob and are armed with the very best defence, information.
