Week 10

Internet & Politics

The power and limitation of the internet for political campaigning

POWER

Politics is a sensitive topic to discuss but lets just get started :) It is easy to identify the main reason for the power of the internet as a tool used for political campaigning. The obvious answer being due to the amount of reach that internet can provide. As evident in the most recent political party campaign in singapore where the citizens of Singapore vote for the political party that they would like to run the country, possessing a social media account proved beneficial in helping people keep up with the news updates of that particular political party. As there will be new voters coming into the scene to vote(people are eligible to vote once they reach the age of 21), the bond between politics and the internet have to be even stronger as the new voters come from the younger generation who are mostly internet savvy and so, the internet is also where they tend to get most of their information from. With the great reach that the internet can provide, the internet is therefore influential in helping people make decisions on which political party to vote, based on what the people saw on social media.

In addition to this, as internet is everywhere, it is also more convenient for the public if political parties are active on social networking sites as just through a smartphone, one can easily get in touch with the updates and also the basic summaries of talks should they not be able to go to the talk in person.

LIMITATION

However, there are also limitations such as the possibility of a lack of credibility. There seems to be a kind of negative connotation in regards to things online as with the ease of editing, information on the internet tend to be rated as less credible in comparison to information that is being conveyed through face to face or traditional media. However this can be easily solved if the political parties are able to convince the public that it is official updates from them as well as maybe use a variety of media, both traditional and non traditional media to transmit information to the public.