Social Media, Web Technologies and The Political Process

Political processes such as election, policy, debate and media coverage are becoming increasingly dependent upon the use on Internet-mediated activities, so to are the outcomes of campaigning changing the democratic process. The dissemination of ideas and its communicators are now more varied and diverse and changing the way its citizens are engaging and responding to the political process.

Consumption of information and communication distribution in its various mediums has always had an important role in civilsation and everyday life. Accessibility to and the ability to engage in the dialogues found within these texts have largely been determined by factors such as literacy, education and class. Members from most demographics of Australian society are able to participate in an interactive political dialogue. In Australia, internet usage is comparably higher than most other countries with approximately 72% of Australian households having access to the internet and broadband was accessed by 62% of all households. (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008-09) This trend is prevalent in first world nations.

Nagourney, (New York Times, 2009) explores how the Obama campaign illustrates the instantaneous nature of Information and communication and the continual stream of political stimuli, that can be accessed by voters and politicians and how political dialogue is becoming more accessible to the masses. “The changes go beyond what Mr. Obama did and reflect a cultural shift in voters, producing an audience that is at once better informed, more skeptical and, from reading blogs, sometimes trafficking in rumours or suspect information. As a result, this new electorate tends to be more questioning of what it is told by campaigns and often uses the Web to do its own fact-checking.”

Democracy in politics has changed, now a true democracy relies on technological literacy and access to a computer. Power is a knowledge based phenomena, with such high levels of technological accessibility and literacy in Australia, (NCSS, 2009) Politics is imbricated into the everyday experience of the internet by those who document, communicate and participate in its processes and forms these are largely driven by public intellectuals and journalists but act to encourage participation by all its citizens (Fellows, 2010) away from the traditional mainstream media and something new is emerging (Coombs, 2009) and it is having a siginificant effect on governance and the outcomes of election campaigns.

As mentioned by Mike Kent in the Net102: Politics and Participatory Culture lecture, (Kent, 2010) By utilising Social Media, users in one sense are able to gain more control over public perception and representation in the media as they are able to provide primary statements, make these available to their public and control their social identity to a greater degree and the technology is more accessible and affordable then regular media campaigns. During the Australian 2010 federal election, Twitter and facebook were actively used by both major parties and then neglected afterwards.It is interesting to note that whilst the major parties surely have a budget for continual engagement in these technologies it seems to be the domain of the smaller parties such as the Greens and campaigners such as GetUp (Coombs, A. 2009) who continue to have a strong day to day internet presence, often operating at a grass roots level, relying on community support. Similar movements in the major parties does not occur to the same degree as they tend not to engage one on one with their audiences the way these groups do (Kent, 2010)

This distance or lack of engagement by the major parties in Australia with this technology on a day to day basis may also have something to do with the way power is traditionally constructed, John Fiske, (1992) marks distance as an important signifier of high and low culture/stations or dialogue and asserts that such distance encourages reverence and respect for text separate from the mundanities of everyday life as there is no distancing in the culture of everyday life. So once this meet and greet stage is over, it's back to formalities, hard nosed policy making and debate. Whilst technology's promise of greater transparency and communication is alluring to audience members, it doesn't actually get the real job of running the country done.

Contrasting this perspective of power, it is interesting to note that both the Obama campaign 2008 (Nagourney, 2008) and the Greens through their affiliation with GetUp and one to one ground work via twitter accounts (Coombs, 2009, Herrick 2010) had a consistent internet presence and gained significantly much of their momentum from online campaigning (Coombs, 2008, Nagourney 2008) perhaps indicating a shift in the way power is constructed. The Greens, not having the same media resources as the main parties, meant that having a strong online presence was an important campaign strategy, enabling them to reach out to untapped audiences. Campaigners utilising ICT technologies in this way are able to in a sense humanise elections, provide audiences with familiarity and accessibility and make its members feel as though they are part of a democratic process.

The internet has given regular citizens the opportunity to engage in the election process more effectively and political bodies the power to control their image and engage with their public more readily. However, the internet possesses similar processes of construction of power and culture. The utilisation of ICT technology in political campaigning has meant that Politicians are no longer at the mercy of the political leanings of journalists as they are able to provide their own articles, blogs and media releases, often instantaneously. The success of the Greens campaign and GetUp, in 2010, illustrates how official election coverage, held by mainstream media providers is becoming less centralised as the cost of producing, distributing multimedia messages via internet is becoming more affordable way of reaching the masses. The shift away from this type of monopolisation of information has forced the established television and print media to rethink their role and now there is clear interaction between television and Web 2.0 or ICT technologies. Traditionally these avenues of mass communication production available to an elite few, are now available to smaller groups and institutions previously underrepresented in the media.


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