Influence of Social Media on Politics

Aneesh writess, social media is playing a crucial role in economic social and political facets of most of the population in the world.

Social media is playing a crucial role in economic social and political facets of most of the population in the world. Important social media platforms are Facebook, twitter, Instagram, and Snap chat. Especially in politics, its growing influence is increasing rapidly. Its inherent characteristics of being able to reach fast at very low costs adds to its wide influence globally. But due to lack of checks and balances it has been misused for various purposes. In the political field, politicians started collecting personal data of voters. By this information, politicians started brainwashing the voter. It also
promotes good things like accountability and accessibility of politicians and government. First, let us concentrate the positive side of the coin- social media is very useful to connect people from different communities and regions and Its keep on increasing. Around 2.77 billion people are using social media in their day in the entire world. Nowadays social media became a platform for many movements and revolution by mass mobilisation and awareness. Movements like jallikattu, Egyptian revolution of 2011,England riots and invisible children. It’s a forum for peoples to discuss and debate. This is the deviation from mainstream media which is corrupted in nowadays or biased towards certain political party or person. in India most of the newspapers and TV channels are partially or totally favourable to certain political parties. social media creates awareness in people about how the government is doing and what are the positives and negative sides of it. Social media used as a forum for discussions and debates on various government measures and policies. Even political leaders are using social media as a platform to reach people by various methods. Nowadays most of the people are spending most of their time on social media than the newspapers. Narendra Modi came to power in 2014 by the wide use of social media in his political campaigning.  When we see the negative side of social media on politics, politicians and political parties started using loopholes in social media. They are collecting people’s personal data and brainwashing them by various methods. Through social media, we can show a joker into a political leader. In USA trump showed as nation savoir by bringing slogan “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN”. Spreading false information and rumours are also becoming simple on social media without proper authentication.  People are the principal culprits as they are the ones who spread false information. Data theft by many political parties to influence voting behaviour of the voters is one of growing concern area. For example, Cambridge analytical is one of the current events which exposed the future threat misusing of personal data. Social media is relatively new, just now its started to impact on society, there is even proposal of voting on the internet, so strict laws should be made on data theft. These young politicians of India have adopted social media because they know that is where today’s youth is. There is a need to build strong security software’s to protect user’s personal data. Whether you feel politician’s use of social media is promising or dangerous, it is important to keep in mind just how recent this it is, and just how strangely easy it is to mislead online.