Politics, Media, & the Internet
Political advertising
campaigns have, in one way or another, been a necessary part of politics in democratic nations for an extremely long time – one might even say since the very birth of democracy itself. Politicians would use various tactics to get their name out to the masses, and inform them of their beliefs and policies – these aforementioned tactics would often include things such as newspaper adverts, pamphlets, handed out on streets, during rallies, or even mailed directly to individuals, or posters, placed in locations where many would see them, from street lamps, to parks, and sometimes even large billboards. A great revolution occurred when television broadcasts started being used – from both pre-recorded and live interviews with politicians, to ads used by them to promote themselves, or slander their opponents. However, although this seemed like a major gamechanger, it was perhaps small news when compared to what began several decades later.
Starting in the late 90s
the growing popularity of The Internet and the World Wide Web, led to the beginning of Internet based political advertising and campaigns. Websites would be set up to promote various politicians, often by them or their campaign managers, but also occasionally by normal citizens who happened to be avid supporters. As the numbers of internet user increased drastically, it became clear to any who paid attention that the internet would become incredibly important when it came to political advertising and communication, and indeed these predictions would soon come to pass, with the advent of Social Media Websites. Although certain early political campaign websites (including the one created for Democrat Howard Dean in 2004) could technically be counted as ‘social media’, it was when the fully public and open websites began to gain mass popularity, that political advertising and communication began to really change. One of the earliest examples of this was the website Myspace (founded in 2003), which reached over 100 million monthly users between 2005 and 2008. The website is believed by some to have had a real influence on politics, as politicians were for the first time ever able to interact, almost directly and instantly, with massive numbers
of people, all of whom could also share their own political views. Despite the fact that Myspace would begin losing popularity and be overtaken by Facebook in, this effect would only strengthen and continue over not just the next few years, but the next decade, and beyond.
Facebook, which was founded in 2004, has had a profound influence on political advertising – ever since it allowed for the creation of pages, politicians were able to use to them to reach a wide audience, while also being able to directly interact with them in comment sections. This was utilized during Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, where Chris Hughes (a founding member of Facebook who had left the company) created a Facebook profile for Obama, and helped run it himself to ensure its success over the pages of other candidates. Other politicians began to utilize Facebook more, especially after Obama won the 2008 election. Additionally, well over 1000 Facebook groups were created by regular Facebook users in support of either Obama or his then rival, Mitt Romney. Use of the website became standard practice for politicians (and to an extent it remains so to this day) for many years after, while also being a platform that many regular people used to express their political views – having discussions, sharing articles, posting jokes and or memes, or even attempting to interact with the politicians also using the platform. Facebook would not remain the main social media website used by politicians, however, as a different platform, namely Twitter, was on the rise.
Twitter was created in 2006, with idea behind the name’s definition being “a short burst of inconsequential information”, the website launched with a very restrictive 140 character limit on all posts. While this limit would later be raised to 280 characters, the concept still
remained. One key difference that set Twitter apart from Facebook, was the fact that it was overall a lot more public – you did not need to be ‘friends’ with someone in order to see their posts, and as long as you were a registered user you could reply to anyone’s post. This made
it an ideal way for public figures to reach out to the public, and made the website popular among celebrities and politicians alike. In fact, Twitter became so widely used for political purposes, that the term ‘Twitter Diplomacy’ was created to refer to interactions between
various world governments and government organisations on the websites. A 2013 study found that the large majority of United Nations’ countries’ governments had official Twitter accounts (153 out of 193), showing just how much of a standard using the website for official
political and governmental purposes has become. Many politicians have used it to promote themselves and their campaigns, often ‘tweeting’ regularly about current events, and in some cases even engaging in discussions with other politicians, or even regular Twitter users.
number of false statements including a now well known one written on the side of a bus. Not only that, but certain users on various social media platforms (although primary Facebook and Twitter) began to intentionally spread existing or new false information in an attempt to either promote their political agenda or slander other political movements. This became a major issue as even when others attempted to spread the truth about such false statements, an explanation why a certain statement is false will never be shared as widely as the original statement it tries to disprove, if said statement was sensational or inflammatory. Some also chose to believe things they read on social media over what was said on mainstream news outlets, due to growing distrust in the mainstream media.
User generated content
on the internet, combined with the influences social media websites have on politics and public opinion, has (perhaps predictably) lead to the rise of much false and or misleading information – either unintentionally, or as premediated manipulation of the opinions of the masses. Known to most as ‘Fake News’, this phenomenon became most widely recognised during the 2016 USA presidential elections, during which both the campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump, as well as his supporters, were heavily criticized for spreading false information regarding many things, including borderline slander of his political opponents. This was cause for major controversy as some estimated that as many as 75% of statements made by Donald Trump himself were false, and with many of them spread across social media by his supporters, many claimed that the spread of false and misleading information was starting to get seriously out of hand. This phenomenon, however, was not just limited to the United States, as another good example of it was the Brexit campaign in the United Kingdom, which infamously featured a
Major controversies
involving the harvesting of users’ personal information from their social media profiles to use as data for targeted advertising, in sometimes very insidious or ‘personalised’ ways – situations where it is not made obvious or clear to the individual that they are being targeted by and advertising campaign. The most infamous example of this is perhaps Cambridge Analytica, a company known for gathering the information of millions of Facebook users without their knowledge or consent, to use for targeted advertising purposes.
Overall
it absolutely cannot be denied that the rise of social media has forever changed the way political communication and advertising works, and brought with itself a wide range of both advantages, and issues. Although the specific websites used for such communication may (and most likely will) change with time, as we see with the low popularity of Myspace, these online platforms shall remain the centre of discussion between extremely large groups of people, and therefore be ideal for political advertising campaigns, and other outreach programs. This new state of things has also led to an expectation of political figures to express their opinions on current events as they occur in real time, and also (at least to a certain extent), interact with the public in a more direct way. This has likely led to overall greater engagement in politics among the general public, as it is now easier than
ever to see exactly what politicians truly think. Though more traditional forms of advertising are also used on the internet, they are now not the only (or arguably even not the main) way for political figures and movements to get their word out to the masses. However, the fact that these platforms rely so much on user generated content, the spread of false information (whether it be intentional or otherwise), is perhaps inevitable, even so attempts by websites such as Twitter and Facebook to call out and sometimes even remove false information (or those who spread it) from their platforms are understandable, if perhaps somewhat futile without the use of what would arguably be mass censorship. As for the issues of gathering and using user data, while this is by no means solved laws have already been passed and proposed to at least limit such tactics.