The rise of Social media as the Fifth Estate changed the political environment
Other than legislative, executive and the judiciary there is media as the “Fourth Estate” which refers to mainstream media — it informs empowers citizen and enhances democratic value. Today, with the advent of social media sites is changing the conversation and moving our society towards a “networked public sphere” which is a new age of active citizenship and heightened public deliberation. Along with the fast-growing social media sites changed our political environment all around the world. It also brought up a new group of outlier viewpoints in contemporary society associated with journalists publishing in non-mainstream and social media sites that we refer it to the “Fifth Estate”.
Through our media history, in the early stage (from 1920) citizens have been given rare opportunity to directly engage with politicians/political issues across all side, simply because political issue remains a“private” matter to the government. Nowadays, social media becomes the major communication platform not only for ordinary citizen use it to communicate with each other to share information but also engage with all sorts political communications. Research shows that 65% of people in Australia following politicians on social media and they are often self-selecting to their preferred sources and stick to one side of politics to maintain accuracy and fairness of political coverage.
Political organisations also realised that social media is changing our political environment through time. From the perspective view of the political system, it is important to adopt social media for political communication especially during election time. When social media represents an effective tool to widely spread information, campaign and gain public attention on policies and political positions. Then building community support for candidates running for public office. Studies also showing that political institutions and government agencies do need a platform to be able to continuously visualise, analyse, gather and summarise political information online to improve communication with citizens and voters. This is encouraging more political discussions, as well as allows direct dialogues with citizens and political institutions/agencies to identify current events.
Facebook and Twitter are increasing their usage directed by the public’s attention even they have different emphases. Twitter is an ideal platform for users to spread information and express political engagements through their networks. (such as option poll to current political issues) Facebook has been used to create pages and groups to enter into direct dialogues with citizens for political discussions. In order to keep personal connections with voters, image building, pushing policy positions, interaction and debate, etc.
A perfect example of how social media is changing political communication is “How” Donald Trump successfully employed social media during the election time and won the election. No doubt he is good communicator by knowing how to capture public attention and engaging with the audience to follow his steps. He is an example of successfully adopting social media with political issues that helped him to win the election at a later stage. Before the election, Trump had almost 19 million Twitter followers and 18 million Facebook fans. Today, Trump’s followers have reached almost 60 million on Twitter and over 25million on Facebook. I also noticed that broadcast and cable networks did a big help to Tramp’s success. Simply because every time they reported on Trump’s tweeting, they effectively shared his message with broader viewers. His ability to successfully use social media platforms to share his message but also to build a connection with citizens who are interested in or not interested in his political campaigns is remarkable.
Therefore, Twitter, Facebook, and other popular social media sites are providing ideal places for users to spread not only information in general but also political opinions/engagements through the network.
