Social Media and The Upcoming 2018 Elections
Lebanon is finally “expecting” to hold a parliamentary elections on May 6, 2018. Lebanon’s rival parties reached agreement on a new proportionality electoral law, staving off a political crisis and paving the way for a parliamentary election. However, the inability to agree on a new law has prevented it from holding parliamentary elections for years, and the parliament’s term has been extended twice since 2009. So, in which ways can media influence and intervene in this political process?
It’s true that the media have always played an important role in politics. Voters need information to make educated decisions, and it’s journalists’ job to give it to them, but can the media really alter the outcome of an election?
According to a research done by the School of Journalism and Communication in the University of Oregon, there are different ways for media to influence elections.
The first way journalists get involved in elections is by choosing which candidates to cover and how much (Lawrence,2016). Those choices alone can have a huge effect on voter perceptions.
Second, many citizens get their news via social media platforms. What they might not realize is that the news they see is heavily filtered. However, social media gives users more direct access to candidates than ever before; with social media, voters may believe they have an intimate relationship with a candidate they will probably never meet in person (Lawrence,2016). Besides, it allows candidates a direct means by which to communicate with the voting public, thereby by passing the news media as a gatekeeper.
And finally, for most people, visuals carry an even more powerful impact than words on a page. Visual communication research has shown that images, especially of political candidates, convey emotions, actions, realism and credibility (Lawrence,2016). These images form a lasting impression in the mind of the voting public.
An independent media is a vital feature of any liberal democracy. If the government was able to control all the information regarding its own actions then it could most certainly escape all accountability and even have an unacceptable level of influence over its citizen’s actions (Lynch, 2012). This is why the importance of a free press cannot be under-estimated.
References:
Lynch, M. (2012). Analyzing the Media’s Role in the Political Process. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-lynch-edd/analyzing-the-medias-role_b_1083914.html
Lawrence, R. (2016). Six ways the media influence elections. School of Journalism and Communication
