Social Media: A New Way To Play Politics?
Over lockdown, both Twitter and Facebook have seen a growth in user numbers. People who would otherwise be busy with work and education spent their hours indoors surfing the web and creating new social media accounts. It’s become the new way to stay informed with the news — to experience what is happening, while it is happening. According to Forbes, 49% of the planet is now on social media, so it is no wonder that politicians and activists are taking to digital platforms to reach the masses.
Empty Stadiums…
‘The internet makes it easier to organise social movements today’.
This year has seen many social movements — the most notably being the Black Lives Matter movement. Omar Wasow, a professor at Princeton University and co-founder of social media network BlackPlanet, told the New York Times that ‘the internet was making it easier to organise social movements today.’ Dates and times for protests around the world were shared thousands of times, resulting in large crowds gathering across the globe.
According to MSN news, one Twitter user allegedly relayed LA Police Department activity onto the platform — warning thousands that the police were trying to lure protesters to a certain area in order to make arrests. It was shared over 120,000 times, and liked over 240,000 times.
Not only has social media helped organise protests on the streets, but it has also allowed people to make a stand without leaving the comfort of their home. People who were vulnerable, shielding, or otherwise wouldn’t be able to take part in a protest due to a disability or a condition, were still able to fight on the front lines online, sharing information, making donations and expressing solidarity.
Social media had also pressured celebrities and brands to show support where they may have otherwise stayed silent: making posts of solidarity, spreading awareness and pledging to make donations to bail funds and charities. This pressure from the public made resources available to thousands more people.
In June this year, Donald Trump boasted that almost a million people requested tickets to his rally in Oklahoma (Source: BBC News). When the day came, however, he failed to fill a 19,000 seat venue. A social media campaign claimed credit for the low attendance: thousands of users had requested tickets, but did not turn up as a form of protest against Trump’s campaign and his reaction to the BLM movement. It was a stark symbol of how support and trust in the President has dwindled since the 2016 election.
…And Overfilled Chatrooms
On the flip-side, in October, online streaming platform, Twitch, had seen over 439,000 users tune in to the platform to watch Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), the representative of New Yorks 14th Congressional District, and fellow congresswoman Ilhan Omar, play a video game with other popular Twitch Streamers. Her stream now has over 5.4 million views. She took a creative approach in order to get young people to vote, playing a popular video game, Among Us - where voting is a key part of the game - in a bid to get young people to vote in the upcoming U.S. election.
Though she faced criticism from congress for having ‘better things to do’, and people feared she was making light of politics, her stream broke records to become the third most-viewed stream on the platform. She used social media to go where the young people were.
“I’m voting early,” she would say every time she cast a vote against a fellow teammate, a catchphrase she says frequently on social media to get people to vote early to avoid missing any deadlines.
Other influencers and celebrities have also taken to social media to get people to vote. For the UK General Election in 2019, the likes of Stormzy, Danny Devito and Lily Allen told people to register to vote. According to the Metro, 2019 saw the biggest spike in registrations to vote in young people (under the age of 25) since 2017.
For the U.S. Election this year, celebrities like Lizzo, Ariana Grande and Jennifer Aniston have also taken the same approach: urging people to vote on social media. So far, the US election has seen a record-breaking number of people going out to vote early: figures in Texas and Florida of young people voting early have doubled compared to four years ago.
This year, when people can barely open their social media profiles without someone telling you to vote — even if you don’t live in the States — it is clear that social media plays a part in the growing numbers of voting turnouts today, and will most likely do so for many years to come.
SOURCES:
Donald Trump: Social Media Campaign Takes Credit For Low Attendance, BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-53126617
How Social Media Has Changed Civil Rights Protests, New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/technology/social-media-protests.html
Social Media Becomes Battleground for Street Protests, MSN. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/social-media-becomes-battleground-for-street-protests/ar-BB14SJGs
Trump’s Ralley Fizzles As Attendance Falls Short of Campaign’s Expectations, New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/20/us/politics/tulsa-trump-rally.html
AOC Played Among Us and Achieved What Most Politicians Fail At: Acting Normal, The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/oct/22/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-ilhan-omar-among-us-twitch-stream-aoc
Why 2020 Is A Critical Global Tipping Point for Social Media, Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/02/18/why-2020-is-a-critical-global-tipping-point-for-social-media/?sh=1023198b2fa5
Huge Spike In Young People Registered to Vote Thanks To Stormzy, Metro. https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/26/huge-spike-young-people-registering-vote-thanks-stormzy-11220357/
