Social Media in Politics
Turning into the 21st century, a generation of the internet. People can have freedom of speech on social media platforms, and which is one of the advantages and characteristics of social media. Also, the users can produce some hot topics by posting on social media, and which increase the awareness of topics itself as well as the public. As the impacts of social media have mostly involved in modern people’s life, hot topics can spread rapidly, and world-widely, especially the hot political topics on social media.
Back to 2014, there was a pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong (Umbrella Revolution), and which was protesting about the Hong Kong electoral system. However, people have their right and freedom on telling their opinion towards the protests, and some of them were against the protest, and some of them were supporting the protest. Due to the influence of social media, this protest movement had internationally brought up and attracted people’s attention all over the world. According to the statistic, there were 1.3 millions of tweets that posted up during the days of the Umbrella Revolution.
On the way of the Umbrella Revolution, there were two different colours which individually represent their opinion towards this protest movement. The symbol of a blue ribbon is presenting the side of against the movement, and the yellow ribbon presents in the opposite way, which is supporting the movement.
Due to the diversity of owning an opinion towards a political topic on social media, the controversy between these two ribbons was fierce and aggressive, and people who were against or support the movement held up lots of ‘mouth fight’ on social media. Also, some users had changed their profile icon of social media accounts to present their identification and opinion towards the movement, and which became a trend of showing the personal political opinion on social media at that time. Due to the functional social-networking features of social media, the society of Hong Kong gradually divided into two sides of opinion and symbolised a certain group of people who were against or support the movement. On the other hand, social media became a platform where the opinion of the public could be presented widely and visibly, and which let the Hong Kong government and society would be aware of this movement. Due to the spreadability and shareability of social media, people around the world would have the awareness of this movement through the reporting of news media as well as social media.
Recently in 2019, Hong Kong has held up a protest movement, which is called as ‘Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement’. This movement is aimed to reject the policy of the introduction of the fugitive offenders to Mainland China, and most of the protesters are behaving the same way of protesting Umbrella Revolution, which is presenting their personal opinion towards the policy by using those two ribbons. Obviously, at this time of protesting, the conflict between both ribbons are not unpreventable, and the ‘mouth fight’ on social media as well. But, there is something different on social media by comparing the situation of the Umbrella Revolution.
“Fact-check”, this term has been publicly using during the protest movement. Why? As learnt from the failure of Umbrella Revolution, the information about the protest that presents on social media might not be truly telling the factual situation of protest, and social media platform is likely a launchpad of publishing the be-related information of protest. At the stage of protest, fake news on social media is likely a new political weapon to perturb public opinion towards the protest, and people would be confused on supporting or against the protest which based on absorbing the amounts of fake news. Again, the feature of social media is that users can post anything they want so that fake news is unpreventable on social media. Then, the importance of “fact-check” is to alert people to identify the true or bogus of the related news of protest as people can post up some fake news on social media by using anonymous accounts.
In a conclusion, social media is a platform where people can speak whatever they want and post it up, but under the condition of presenting personal opinion toward the political topic, it becomes offensive and unpreventable, especially in terms of users reaction and engagement. The shareability of social media brings up some areas of advantages and disadvantages under the political discussion on social media, and the social-networking feature comes out the outcome of dividing society into two sides of opinion.
