Social Media and Politics

Now that Facebook has over 1,000,000,000  and there are 554,750,000 active twitter users. It is a no brainer that the use of social media and politics has increased. There is no doubt that social media had a huge impact on the recent elections. In 2008, there were about 1.5 million election-related tweets. In 2012, there were 31 million. The population of people using social media has changed since that time as well. In 2008, much of social media was dominated by younger demographics. Now it reflects the population as a whole. More than half this population engaged in some sort of election-related social media behaviour. 

But it’s not enough to look at these changes and talk about social media as just a new platform. Social media is not a change in technology, it is a change in how people communicate. This change has to be reflected in how candidates behave, not just online but everywhere. If a politician makes a mistake during the election that mistake so quickly becomes viral. Because someone somewhere would've been able to record it on their smartphone then post it up on to youtube and before you know it it has had over 1000 hits. 
So here is a question for you. Is social media offering us new ways to interact with, influence and keep watch over our politicians? Or is online ‘slacktivism’ replacing physical campaigning and political activism?









References:
http://www.statisticbrain.com/twitter-statistics/
businessweekly.com