The Politics of Social Media

Summary and Response

Ramsay, F. (2009, Aug 26). The politics of social media. Marketing, , 13-13. http://proxy.consortiumlibrary.org/docview/214935542?accountid=14473

            As simple as it sounds, Politicians love twitter. With no political intentions at the beginning, #welovetheNHS was viewed by the political activists as a spontaneous communication tool. Twitter is a social media site that spreads messages to the public, it because to share information during the Iranian general election and it transformed politics. People who do not use a social media easily have less power than the ones who do use it as an additional way to communicate and share information. Tom Watson was a minister who used twitter to announce his resignation and Sadiq Khan told the world about his promotion to prime minister. All this happened in June and it was something that made twitter more popular. Twitter easily gets out the word about things happening in the world but Facebook also does a very good job making things go viral. Best bet on getting the word out is to use both! You can use either of these social networks to grab the public’s attention and you can also use it to grab the media’s attention.  #welovetheNHS grabs both the public and media’s attention. Getting the attention of both is hard to do.

            When I am on Facebook or Twitter, I use it to get the attention of my friends. I don’t care if media has anything to do with it. If I were to ever want to start a group for something involving politics I’m sure using either Twitter, Facebook or both would help me create a group of people sharing opinions all over the world. I like how it explains that social network help make a person stronger. Even though a social net work can sometime it can be a bad thing, like it was for Joe Lipari, it just depends on how you state what you are feeling.That makes me feel stronger because social network currently are a part of my everyday life.