Should Social Media Be Regulated: Its Impact on Political Decisions

There is no monocausal theory that can adequately explain the total explain of how social media changes and influences politics as it is divided onto a string of different and various platforms that are regulated in different ways, operating in different countries and having different target audiences. It goes without saying that at this modern day and age, nearly over 80% of the people in the world have been exposed to social media content at some point in their life time, and as a result have been exposed to the impact of the Internet. This is should social media be regulated essay, a critical assessment of the paper seeks to assess and evaluate the changes and impact that internet has brought to politics all over the globe as it unfolds

Firstly, the social media has become a place where views and likes are the most prized possession one can have on the internet. Whether one is a politician or a Hollywood celebrity or a businessman hiding in his office or a professor, all rely on the internet to work its magic and increase either views or likes or both on whatever content they may publish or distribute online. This push has led to a demand of eye catching and spine gripping content that will grab the attention of the viewers and eventually forcing politicians to follow suit in order to gunner support. One good example is the current American Donald Trump, who, like Ronald Reagan has a knack for dramatic speeches. Trump has been very effective is using social media, especially twitter and Facebook to share his political views and in most cases his views come in a shocking or unthought of a manner that propels people to engage to it and subconsciously accept his rhetoric.

Moreover, social media is a largely unregulated space that allows demagogues and those that push extremist agendas either left or right or based on religion to manage influencing people without being brought to book or condemned for their deeds. In comparison to television or newspapers where individuals and organizations that want to push forward an agenda are visibly seen and can be condemned or even restricted access should they push agendas that may influence hate, the internet allows such content to exist. In addition, the internet is a broad spectrum that is made up of the dark web and the popular web and moderating or eliminating extremist messages and ideologies has been a worthless exercise although it is an attempt that yields a certain level of success. This in turn has led and forced politicians to adopt similar strategies to reach the people by also posting extreme propaganda that may trigger hate such as Geert Wilders of Netherlands, Donald Trump or Tommy Robinson in the UK.

In addition, the social media is a business platform first of all and this causes restrictions on extremist persons to be limited as it might cause a huge loss for internet brands. It has been argued that if twitter is to shut down Donald Trump’s page or if Facebook does the same, this might cause those following the influencer to abandon using the services and as a result trigger loss for the company. These links show how business is tied to politics as social media companies normally act to restrict and block extremist content from people with a small following but are unable to restrict those with a lot of followers as it might impact their business. Evidently, this has changed politics to favor the popular candidates as they can use the internet and social media to their favor without facing any challenges such as Barrack Obama’s use of Youtube, Donald Trump’s use of Twitter and Volodymyr Zelensky’s use of Instagram.

Furthermore, the internet and social media marketing campaign strategies used to boost some political agendas through selective content for the viewers. Through Facebook marketing strategy, if an individual follows a particular cause or ideology or political organization, their previous marketing strategy and data capturing allowed them to broadcast ads that have a similar content to the user so that the user may be able to find content that is aligned. Therefore, it must be taken into account that through this initiative, the internet and social media is accidentally pushing one agenda ahead without allowing balanced opinions to exist as the viewer will be prone to ads with similar content than to ads that allow an individual to see different sides thus being biased to political agendas.

Moreover, the internet is now a cyber media “guru” that has social media hubs and power houses that are owned by different individuals. This is a striking difference from the television or radio stations whereby tin most cases there is always one station that is owned by the government or state or belongs to the nation. These kinds of stations make it possible to exercise media moderation without being biased to either political party as they can have set rules about hate speech for example and can either redact the sentences where a politician used hate speech or they can simply inform the politicians of what is not acceptable, and in most cases the politicians accept because they would be wanting to spread their message across. Taking this into account, it becomes clear that social media cannot be easily moderated just like TV and Radio, as it is owned by individuals who have their own political identities, ideologies and belief, and as a result, social media moderation has a very high chance to lean towards biasness in terms of political interests.

Furthermore, the social media part of the internet allows users to easily share their own version of the truth through social media platforms without much verification. This has propelled what Trump has coined as “Fake News” and led to its spread all over social media such as Facebook or Twitter. The current sitting American president Donald Trump amongst others, has used this to push and get himself elected in the highest office in America when he was still a presidential candidate by regularly posting unverified data such as the “birther movement” that was questioning whether the then sitting American president Barrack Obama was born in the United States of America. Trump also used this platform to post arguable information about the religious background of Barrack Obama stating that he is a Muslim. This was aimed at tarnishing the image of Barrack Obama amidst a rising tide of terrorism that was linked to Islam. Taking all this into account, one can therefore clearly see that social media and the internet has changed political debate in the sense that it has now allowed unverified information to be used as a tool by opposing politicians in political debates.

In addition, the use of Internet, through social media has allowed the personalization of politics to push individual goals by politicians. Through the use of social media, politicians can break away from partisan agendas to pursue their own agendas. This can be easily seen, the politics of the United States whereby the American president Donald Trump has often used his Facebook and twitter pages to push forward his attacks on certain individual political actors or individuals or to push forward some of his campaign promises that would be facing challenges. Most evidently, Trump has used social media to voice out his unpopular scheme of building a wall in the Mexican border, denouncing people that are were part of the investigation that alleged he colluded with Russians in the 2016 American elections such as James Comey and Robert Mueller, and other important figures from the republican party such as Nancy Pelosi over the government shutdown. This has also been a result of disagreements between the republican party itself with some republicans opposing Trump’s ideas or policies such as the late senator John McCain who bore the brunt of Trump’s harsh and scathing tone on a social media dress down after he had voted against the Health Care bill proposed by Trump. Social media has made it easy for politicians to push forward their own agendas if they are in disagreement with their party, thus triggering the personalization of politics through the use of social media and the internet.

Moreover, the internet allows an easy exploitation of the democratic process of different countries through the use of different mechanisms such as hacking, malware or schemes as the one known as troll farms. These have been largely used by Russia in an attempt to influence the political outcomes in different countries. In America, Russia is alleged to have used the spyware sofacy to hack the DNC servers that led to damning information about the democrats and gave a better opportunity to Donald Trump at winning. The Russians also used troll farms which isa scheme whereby numerous fake accounts are created and pretend to be Americans supporting a particular political group, of which in this case it was the Trump campaign. This was a move aimed at putting Hillary Clinton at a disadvantage to winning the elections.

In addition, Russia used the same sofacy malware in previous Ukraine elections in an attempt to push for their favorite candidate Yarosh to the highest office in. It was later discovered that the Russians were behind it and the plan did not succeed. In France in the previous elections, the Russians are alleged to have hacked the emails and accounts of Emmanuel Macron in an attempt to discredit him for the elections, unfortunately they found nothing and instead it helped to boost the image of Emmanuel Macron as a clean candidate. Taking all these factors into account, one can clearly see that the internet has made politics to become a very fragile and sensitive matter especially when it comes to elections and sensitive data. Through, hacking, use of malwares and troll farms, the internet has managed to change politics

Furthermore, In Australia, more than half of the population uses social media and as a result, internet has been used by politicians to change politics overall. As a result of the high number of Australian people that use the internet, the Australian politicians have also adopted and taken politics to the internet space in order to be able to address their constituents and targeted audiences. This has changed the Australian politics in the sense that now even politicians go to the internet to reach out to people and the internet or social media platforms in Australia are now used mostly for political purposes thus politics changing to the internet in Australia.

Moreover, the use of internet and most commonly the social media platforms has led to more positive outcomes in terms of political change. Through the use of social media to reach out to people there has been an increase in voter turnout especially in Australia just to mention a few. And this has improved the democratic process in the sense that the number of participants in the matters regarding the state or country would have increased by a large margin thanks to social media. The use of internet also allows the public to get well acquainted with the people they elected or are voting for. The social media pages allows those already elected for office to be able to swiftly reach out to members of their constituencies. It is also a useful tool especially when it comes to knowing the policies of a political person or candidate, most social media users get to be informed of such policies through social media and they become aware of them.

Furthermore, the social media has been effective in reigning on government’s decisions especially in democratic places where the voice of the majority matters. Inmost countries like in the United Kingdom, where the heat of Brexit has been a pain for an extended time, the UK voters at some point in time, used social media platforms to petition the government in preventing a “no deal” exit scenario whereby the UK would have to leave the EU without a deal. This has also taken place in the United States where the impending impeachment of current sitting president has been an issue that has at some time flooded the social media sphere with requests to impeach the United States president. Evidently, upon all this into account, it therefore becomes clear that the use of social media has been instrumental in influencing and changing political decisions globally. Although no known success has been identified yet, these attempts in petitioning the government are useful in noting that social is an instrumental tool in influencing political decisions all over the globe.

In addition, the prevalent use of social media has led to an increased transparency in politics. Thanks to social media platforms such as Facebook or twitter amongst other things, journalists have been able to either stream live or share ground breaking stories or news from all corners of the globe in real time. This has led to an increased pace of information sharing that has restricted politicians in a way from hideous and scandalous activities as the release of such content once it reaches social media reaches all corners of the globe and cannot be stopped. This has also led to more transparent communication from politicians in an attempt to maintain a clean public image s a release of any data that a huge public figure or politician might have kept from the public may decrease the familiarity of the individual hence this has led to a more transparent communication, thus social media changing political decisions around the globe.

Moreover, social media has also led to a rise of political agendas that are based on outspoken public consensus. A good example would be the rise in extremist agendas, whereby politicians such as Tom Robinson of the UK, Jayda Fransen of the British First or even Donald Trump, have based their political speeches and agendas on popular discussion that appear in the comments of what they post on their social media pages. Through this attempt, politicians play to the whims of the people and use that to gunner political support and push ahead agendas that are controversial or may be deemed as extremist agendas. This therefore clearly shows that social media has the ability to influence political decisions around the globe.

Conclusively, social media has changed politics both in a negative and positive way. In some states it has led to increased participation boosting the democratic process, whilst in some cases it has led to the democratic process being undermined in attempts to influence the outcomes of democratic processes through the use of malwares and other internet schemes. This has made internet to be more fragile and sensitive especially when it comes to electoral data. In terms of political debate, the internet has allowed the flow of informed unchecked as no fact checking service is available on social media, hence political debate is largely plagued with unverified information and also communication has become scathing or rather dramatic in order to gain the attention of the audience as most people on social media search for exciting content rather than the ordinary mundane government policies.

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