The power of Social Media Campaigns in Politics

            

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            With the emergence of social media platforms like Twitter, diverse groups of people have found spaces to congregate that overcome barriers like distance and time. Prior to the U.S. Presidential Election on November 8, 2016, several politically charged social media movements emerged. The #BlackWomenVote campaign and the #HowDoUFeel? movement are two examples of efforts made to unite people with commonalities in effort to make the voices of those groups heard. Regardless of whether social media campaigns like these ones result in voters taking action at the ballots or directly lead to the election of a specific candidate, the creation of these campaigns send a powerful message.  

            Since social media campaigns are usually public and can potentially trend or go viral, the groups behind them probably use them to assert that they want visibility and they won’t be ignored. In the article, Communication, Power, and Counter-power in the Network Society, the author Manuel Castells says, “The emergence of mass self-communication offers an extraordinary medium for social movements and rebellious individuals to build their autonomy and confront the institutions of society in their own terms and around their own projects” (Castells, 2007, p249). This quote might explain the thinking the creators of #BlackWomenVote had when conceiving the campaign. As a minority group, black women in America are disenfranchised and may feel overlooked at times. Given this sentiment, the #BlackWomenVote was created to fight that and inform them of the issues therefore encouraging them to voice their opinions, vote, and show that they have power collectively. Now that the U.S. Presidential election is over and the results are in, media agencies are analyzing the demographics of voters. News outlets have reported that 94% of black women voted for Hilary Clinton. Although she didn’t win the race, just the fact that news outlets are analyzing which candidate black women voted for and why the voted for a certain candidate, proves that they matter. The #BlackWomenVote campaign has proved to be relevant and whether or not black women were motivated by it, it is important that campaigns like this exist. Before social media platforms and digital media innovations grew in popularity, media news outlets and those with power were the only ones able to get their opinions out to the public. Now Twitter, Facebook, and smartphones help people connect and circulate their opinions in a way that makes it hard for power holders with political agendas to control them. In the aforementioned article Manuel Castells also says, “For new social movements, the Internet provides the essential platform for debate, their means of acting on people’s mind, and ultimately serves as their most potent political weapon” (Castells, 2007, p250). From this quote, one can understand the thinking process of the creators of #HowDoUfeel movement. The movement was created for millennials to voice their opinions about the 2016 U.S. presidential regardless of their political affiliations and to get them to the polls. For the creators of the movement, it was more important to let millennials know that their voice and vote matters than to sway them to a particular candidate.

            Even though the number of followers of the #HowDoUfeel movement and #BlackWomenVote campaign didn’t necessarily translate to the same number of voters, it still matters that the groups behind the campaigns and their followers made their opinions visible beyond the polling stations. Aside from votes, public opinion can affect change because politicians are known for trying to appease their constituents and no president wants to be disliked by the public. Politically charged social media campaigns created by the public can pose threat to government officials and their positions, which is why these campaigns hold power.

Reference: Castells, M. (2007). Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society. International Journal of Communication. 1. 238-266. Available from http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/46/35 [Accessed 31 October 2016].