Puerile Pert Politicians on the World Wide Web

The Internet and politics share a rather curious relationship. Though it can be seen today that many, many politicians use the Web for a significant portion of their political platform, this was not always the case. Politicians tend to follow the people, and so as a result, moved onto the Internet comparatively later. According to MediaShift, the earliest known political site was the political forum FreeRepublic, established in 1997. Despite the late start, incumbent and opposition parties the world over have quickly utilised the Web for their own purposes: Mostly to reach out to their supporters and disseminate information (or to make promises to gain support), but in many cases, to promote political activism in what has been termed "Internet Activism". This was most prominently noted in the Arab Springs, where  social media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, helped people organize the political revolutions in Egypt where it helped certain classes of protesters organize protests, communicate grievances and disseminate information. As with all things, there are definitely pros and cons. I will talk about some of them below.

Pros

1. Wide Audience

The first and probably most obvious good point about the Internet is that it has the potential to reach a large number of people. In Singapore alone, for example, statistics in 2011 show that 75% of its population used the Internet, with a steadily increasing trend. What about the global trend? World Internet usage has grown by 566% between 2000-2012, with the greatest proportion of this growth hailing from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. However, continents with the greatest population of Internet users are also continents where politicians have routinely utilised social media to boost their reach. These places are North America, Europe and Australia. It makes sense, therefore, for politicians to set up websites promoting their message and garnering votes or even to use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, because they will be able to reach a significant proportion of their voters, especially if they are reaching out to a younger population. 

2. Free and Easy to Operate

Another feature to take into account is cost-effectivity. Where once political parties had to spend huge amounts of money on printing flyers and newsletters to distribute among their voters, they can now pay much less to have their message put online on a .com site. Starting from US$4.99/year, it is not free, but nonetheless saves candidates the cost of printing the old-fashioned way, and freeing up the budget for other things: Advertising, for one. 

With the advent of Facebook Pages, costs have gone down even more because setting up and maintaining a page is completely free. Furthermore, because an increasing number of people are now on Facebook, there is greater coverage. 

3. Interactive

With the advent of Web 2.0, generating content could now rest in the hands of anyone with a  computer, rather than simply a few huge corporations. Because of that, the Web became much more intaractive, which was an advantage for politicians and voters alike. Voters could now express their views, and politicians (from either the ruling or opposition party) could see what the general public felt about them, and modify their stance accordingly. 

4. Supplements Traditional Campaigning

Many political parties take the middle approach and supplement their old methods with social media. This is so they can have the best of both worlds: The easy access to large numbers of people via social media, and the personal touch of old media.

Cons

1. Unfiltered Content

The Web is generally unregulated. This leads to different kinds of people posting and commenting on all kinds of activities (including politics). Because people can generally say what they want on their blogs or post anything they want on social media platforms, they can cause quite a lot of harm to the political campaign if the sites are not regulated by moderators from time to time. This is a time-consuming and laborious process that may cost more than simply printing flyers, depending on the regularity. Alternatively, one may also use automated moderators, but there is a risk that they will be either too strict or too lenient with what is kept out.

2. "Liking" ≠ support

Everyone on Facebook will have come across this from time to time: "Like" a certain page/post, share it with other friends and/or leave a comment for a chance to win (insert wonderful object here). A recent example was the recent MacBook Giveaway scam. The point here is that for someone owning a Facebook page (politician or no), it is erroneous to assume that the number of "Likes" one gets on Facebook is a sign of one's popularity. Furthermore, followup is rather difficult to do if not taken offline. In this sense, having a person "Like" one's Facebook page is only the first step to one's political campaign gaining traction. 

3. Little Loyalty Fostered- Especially if Not Followed Up

This is especially true if politicians only reach out to their voters online. No matter what, what people value is face-to-face conversation or seeing one in person, rather than simply online. 

4. Risk of Backfiring

Attempts at adding a personal or informal touch to one's political posts can often backfire rather spectacularly. Perhaps none can explain this better than Tin Pei Ling of the PAP, when she came under intense fire because of some aspects of her lifestyle, as well as some others:

Another way social media can backfire on the politician is if what he says/does is taken out of context and used against them, sometimes disastrously so. The video above is an example of that, but a more common example is that of Singaporean political blogs such as The Real Singapore and The Online Citizen. 

Evaluation

At the end of the day, is the Internet and Social Media going to help or hurt politicians? My answer is both. There are people on both sides of the political fence who will work on supporting or criticising the political parties involved. It is because of this that very often, political analysts do not take what is said by politicians to determine election results, but rather on the number of hits that show up on a google search, or more recently, by simply checking how many people are talking about him on social media.