Your Favorite Politician Isn’t Using Twitter Right

or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Social Media

Social media has been the target of the public ire for a little while now. It’s not uncommon to see an article detailing how each social media giant is collecting your data. Or a piece talking about how one of these giants is being too friendly with certain foreign governments [9]. The point being that social media doesn’t have a loving reputation, yet so many people still use it [2]. The thing is, social media is the next big thing whether we like it or not. Rather than lamenting the rise of social media, I’d rather focus on the more interesting potential it has as a political tool. I’m not here to go to bat for mass data collection [14], but research has shown positive sides of internet use in the political world [6]. So I want to aim in on what’s holding social media back from improving politics and what your favorite political candidate ought to be doing to best enable social media to further their politics.

To tackle these questions, we need to have a firm understanding of what social media is and where it came from. That means examining the internet before social media. The internet is just the next evolution of media, just as television was to radio. But the problem, or selling point, that’s unique to the internet is how unregulated it was in its inception compared to platforms like television or radio. Anyone at any time can upload a video or podcast for all to consume. There’s no training or verification before content is sent out for the masses, meaning that there’s close to zero censorship on the internet. Of course, there were comparable facets of television and radio, such as public broadcast or shortwave radio, that got towards that same idea of individual expression. But none of these were at the scale of the internet. So while the internet had scale and accessibility when compared to mediums of the past. What the internet didn’t have was focused platforms to let users easily consume what’s being produced.

This gap is what became a breeding ground for the idea or the inevitability of social media. A compromise between the relative complete freedom the internet provides and the structured distribution models of something like television. danah boyd (stylized as lowercase) and Nicole Ellison are both researchers on social media platforms and the internet. In their 2007 article, they laid out criteria to define social media,

“We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.”

Using this definition we can see how platforms grew into this niche as technology evolved and user bases expanded. This progression can be observed through the birth and death of forums and imageboards. Whose demise led to the eventual inception of social media proper, which would include sites like Facebook and Twitter [12]. The biggest change that took place in this shift from forum to social media is personalization and interactivity. I’d argue that the more social media grew, the more personal it got. Probably the biggest platform to focus in on personalization is Myspace. But Facebook quickly took it to another level with an emphasis on real-life connections translating into a digital space. This step closer to real-life trickled down to the users of Facebook, who reported feeling more comfortable sharing their private information with the then-new social media platform [5]. As an aside, what a different time! People feeling comfortable with the amount of information Facebook had about them, how novel.

The important takeaways from this brief internet history lesson can be summed up in a couple of points.

1. The new social media giants of today were built on the foundation of increasingly personalized and interactive platforms that appealed to what people already knew. Starting with personally curating online friends lists. And ending up with a human-influenced algorithm that curates news feeds on a personalized individual level [4].
2. Even with all of this innovation in the social media field, the principal problem of the internet being very large and hard to regulate still exists on social media. This is because social media is dominated by a few large giants that have a majority of users on their platforms [15]. Regulating the platforms is an increasingly difficult task as the user base continues to grow.

So how does this tie back into politics? Well, politics is a machine driven by people. And just like people, democracy or politics in general is an imperfect system. The faults of democracy are also the selling points of it. A system where mutual participation of not only both parties but also citizens is a must. That participation is what makes a democracy democratic. The shortcomings of that are because we run on a system that is dependent on as much participation as possible. A problem is quickly identified, the mass majority of the participants haven’t been doing their homework. Or rather in this day and age, they might be trying to learn but end up getting some answers from a sketchy source. It’s the reason that the US doesn’t use something like direct democracy. Blaming those people for not being informed on every issue is not the solution. Instead, we elect people that we feel best to represent us because we can’t expect every citizen to keep up with all the political happenings. But a problem arises when voters can’t gather information to make more informed decisions about who should represent them. Or worse, when the information that is gathered ends up being false. This is especially important when you live in a time where presidential candidates are getting more and more controversial. As mentioned earlier, this is a fundamental flaw or hurdle that has to be overcome or mitigated for democracy to function as best as it can.

This is where social media comes in. As we discussed before, social media is growing and won’t be stopping anytime soon. Social media is also built to be a personalized and interactive environment meant to engage users. This is important for the future of the platforms and how they ought to be used. There are two things, I feel, that are holding social media back in a political sense. Those two things are the misuse of the platforms by politicians that are trying to use it and the misinformation that plagues the platforms because of the lack of regulation. I’m going to spend the rest of my time talking about the former of these problems. The reason I’m not addressing misinformation is because that can’t be solved on the user level. Past asking people to verify before they share, there’s not much I or the average user can do to combat it. Misinformation is a huge problem on these platforms and because of that, there is research being done to combat it. Whereas with platform misuse, that’s something that’s easily teachable and explainable. By just laying out how to use social media, political candidates can start taking advantage of the platforms. So let me clarify, telling a politician “how to use social media” is moreso explaining an explicit strategy to use with social media. There is no right way to use a social media platform. But when there’s a goal in mind, which is to reach and influence people, then there’s an optimal way to reach that goal.

So let’s break down what I’ve meant by calling social media personalized and interactive. The personalization of politics is a phenomenon that’s been observed loosely since televised debates started happening [10]. The time period the effect was being noticed, would be right around the election of Reagan. The effect being referred to is essentially where candidates become a cult of personality of sorts. Where a candidate's voter base might be looking to the personality of a candidate rather than solely their policy stances. Right off the bat, that might sound like a negative. That’s because it is, but we’ll get to the rest of the negatives of personalization too. But first, I’d like to discuss the positives that this effect does bring. The personalization of politics has been found to increase participation in citizens [8]. Personalization will humanize the candidates and allow those who aren’t politically savvy to learn about them [8]. This addresses the main hurdle of democracy, participation. This is shown in research too, non-participation is affecting the results of elections [11]. So the personalization of politics does have the opportunity to get people out to the polls. Now as far as interactivity is concerned, that’s inherent to the platforms that we’re discussing. Interactivity is especially prevalent on Twitter, where dialogues are encouraged [7]. This interactivity can be seen when analyzing the communication structure change that Twitter brings about [13]. Now communication structure, much like misinformation, is a little bit outside of the scope of this piece. So rather than hit you with theory, the reason that interactivity is important while discussing the personalization of politics is that they work well together. Interactivity on its own has been shown to increase political involvement [8]. But when in an environment that is both interactive and personalized, like Twitter, the effects are more pronounced [8]. Which is what makes social media so promising.

So how would your favorite politician go about incorporating personalization into their social media presence? Well, firstly they’d have to have a real social media presence. All too often politicians will treat social media as just a poster board to announce other events they are participating in [13]. Politicians need to treat the platform as it’s intended, a personal blog where dialogue is encouraged. So writing tweets about policy and general life updates or thoughts would help their online platforms be more personalized. With interactivity politicians just need to take advantage of the platform and talk to their supporters directly. This would be a great way to foster this sense of interaction.

I’d like to quickly touch base on the negatives of personalization. Making politics more personalized isn’t a complete fix at all, but it’s a step in the right direction of getting people more acclimated to political ideas. The major concerns are still the cult of personality problem. Meaning that a candidate might learn the social media game, but end up being a not great leader in practice or just having bad ideals. Another concern is the fact that the two-party system doesn’t like the personalization of politics [1]. The concern, from my understanding, is that this is a way for candidates to garner support outside of the parties. Often campaigns that are backed by a party, are the least personalized [1]. So currently if a campaign does take advantage of this they probably won’t receive full party support easily.

I don’t think any of these reasons are enough to outright dismiss the personalization strategy. I think done right and in combination with attacking misinformation, personalization and interactivity can make a legitimate difference in politics. It’s just whether or not we are willing to give it a try.

References

[1] Bøggild, T., & Pedersen, H. H. (2018). Campaigning on behalf of the party? Party constraints on candidate campaign personalisation: CAMPAIGNING ON BEHALF OF THE PARTY? European Journal of Political Research, 57(4), 883–899.

[2] Boulianne, S. (2015). Social media use and participation: A meta-analysis of current research. Information, Communication & Society, 18(5), 524–538.

[3] Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of computer‐mediated Communication, 13(1), 210–230.

[4] Bozdag, E. (2013). Bias in algorithmic filtering and personalization. Ethics and information technology, 15(3), 209–227.

[5] Dwyer, C., Hiltz, S., & Passerini, K. (2007). Trust and privacy concern within social networking sites: A comparison of Facebook and MySpace. AMCIS 2007 proceedings, 339.

[6] Kenski, K., & Stroud, N. J. (2006). Connections Between Internet Use and Political Efficacy, Knowledge, and Participation. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 50(2), 173–192.

[7] Kruikemeier, S. (2014). How political candidates use Twitter and the impact on votes. Computers in Human Behavior, 34, 131–139.

[8] Kruikemeier, S., van Noort, G., Vliegenthart, R., & de Vreese, C. H. (2013). Getting closer: The effects of personalized and interactive online political communication. European Journal of Communication, 28(1), 53–66.

[9] Lapowsky, I. (2018). How Russian Facebook Ads Divided and Targeted US Voters Before the 2016 Election. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/russian-facebook-ads-targeted-us-voters-before-2016-election/

[10] McAllister, I. (2007). The personalization of politics. In The Oxford handbook of political behavior. Oxford University Press.

[11] McElwee, S. (2015). Why voting matters. Retrieved from https://www.demos.org/research/why-voting-matters-large-disparities-turnout-benefit-donor-class

[12] McIntyre, K. (2014). The Evolution of Social Media from 1969 to 2013: A Change in Competition and a Trend Toward Complementary, Niche Sites. 21.

[13] Medina, R. Z., & Muñoz, C. Z. (2014). Campaigning on Twitter: Towards the “Personal Style” Campaign to Activate the Political Engagement During the 2011 Spanish General Elections. Comunicación y Sociedad, 24.

[14] Singer, N. (2018). What You Don’t Know About How Facebook Uses Your Data. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/technology/facebook-privacy-hearings.html

[15] Smith, A., & Anderson, M. (2018). Social media use in 2018. Pew research center, 1, 1–4.

[16] Yaros, R. A. (2008). Digital natives: Following their lead on a path to a new journalism. Nieman Reports, 62(4), 13.