Tweeting your way into Politics
Twitter, which was founded in March 21, 2006 in San Francisco, has become a huge social media power house. According to statista.com, there were over 321 million monthly active users in 2018. This means two things, that Twitter is one of the most used social media platforms, and that social media itself is now one of the most used/looked at things in people’s lives.
It is not surprising that this means many people use Twitter as a news source. According to journalism.org, “ about two-thirds of American adults (68%) say they at least occasionally get news on social media.” Twitter and politics have become so intertwined that there is a Wikipedia page dedicated to people (often celebrities) using Twitter as a political platform.
This creates a new political era where politicians are using Twitter to target the millennial generation. Twitter is opening the opportunity for politicians to be open and unfiltered compared to campaign speeches and set up environments that normally the people see.
In an article by the Washington Post, they talk about how, “twitter has enabled direct communication between politicians and, well, the rest of the world. It’s an immediate — and often unfiltered — mode of communication, which the last seven years have shown can be dangerous for (politicians) who otherwise live under a shroud of privacy, handlers, and carefully selected talking points.” Twitter has had the opportunity to create a new political culture, and is in the process of doing so. The current most followed politician on Twitter is former President Barack Obama with 105, 680, 616 followers.
This also creates a platform where politicians can easily put their foot in their mouths. Anthony Weiner resigned in 2011 because it leaked online that he was sending inappropriate photos of himself to women. A single tweet brought down his whole career and ended his role as a congressman. People were dubbing this “Weinergate” online and in news stories.
Stories like this continue on, like Senator Kevin Parker tweeting “kill yourself” to a Republican spokeswoman, thus getting big backlash, and having to delete the tweet and apologize. Idaho Fish and Game Commissioner Blake Fischer resigned because of photos he shared online about his latest African hunting trip. Many called him disrespectful to not only the animals, but to the general people for posting them online. The list continues, and has gained even more traction with the current President, Donald Trump, being known for tweeting.
Twitter being considered a blogging platform is debatable depending on who you ask. There is no denying though that while not blogging in the traditional sense, twitter offers blog like qualities and people do not hesitate to use Twitter as such.
Medium itself is often used as a political platform, and there is even a Politics tab on the opening screen of the website. The difference though between Medium and Twitter is the amount of people viewing it. Most bloggers have both, a traditional blog, and then a Twitter connected to the blog. This allows the high traffic from Twitter to click back to their traditional blogging platform. The two platforms rely on each other.
The growth in having Twitter becoming a new political platform grows all other social media around it as well. Traditional blogging, and other social media apps like Snapchat and Instagram all have grown into these new political platforms to be used by people running for any type of office. Politicians continue to close the gap between what they want us to hear and what we hear via these new platforms, and I think it will going continue to grow from here.
The new generations of people will continue on to make social media, especially Twitter, and driving force in the political market, even if not everyone believe the news they read on those platforms.
