As people become more engaged and connected through emerging communication tools like the social media and online forums, political campaigns, including those of Politicians asking to win vote, political activists who wish to influence policy-making all have found ways to adapt to the new media system – a hybrid system of traditional mainstream media like newspapers, radio, television and new and more interactive media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
Chadwick (2017) Studied how political activists, parties and government incorporated them into this hybrid media system took the example of UK. He analyzed a popular non-governmental organization named 38 Degrees. This group consists of very few leading figures – only four paid staff and a few unpaid interns, but it effectively mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to sign an online petition, to e-mail their representative at the British Parliament, to share the campaign on Facebook, leading to a success in halting government plans to privatize the nation’s public forests. In other words, they took advantage of the interactivity of online media to encourage “media participation” as these platforms “are perceived as better for tight feedback loops, coordination, more active engagement and representing the movement to itself.” Like one of the founding leaders did, they maintain a good relationship with traditional broadcasting media like the BBC and the Guardian to “publicize its action through broadcast and print media” in an attempt to “target policy elites, validate the movement, and create highly visible signs of its efficacy for wider public.”
While at the same time, political parties in the UK drew a line between “strategy” – using the internet in field operations from online to offline, like what the activists often do, and “tactics” – the use of the internet and social media to gain more attention and coverage conventional media like broadcast and newspaper. In the US, similar patterns can be discerned. For the 2016 Election campaign, some people hold the view that Donald Trump took advantage of this hybrid media system to secure his success (Regina & Amber, 2017). There’s this theory that Trump rode the media to his presidential victory, contending Trump intentionally infiltrated the media system with his heavy presence in social media and sensational news coverage in traditional media. But as Regina and Amber pointed out, that is not against media’s rule when they choose what to cover in a political campaign – an interesting candidate with entertainment value, catching the attention and curiosity of their audience, despite that doesn’t follow the primary rule of covering candidates leading in the polls at the beginning.
What I found the similarity behind the reasons for political campaigns and politicians’ choice over the hybrid media model is that they are bearing in mind who is their audience and who they wish to influence. Activists groups know that, so they connect people with same intentions through social media and online platforms to convene a crowd big enough for the goal to change a government policy, and then they will contact traditional journalists to further cover such a phenomenon, turning their voices up a level to reach policy-makers. Since Trump himself is an unconventional candidate who had few political experiences before, he knew that he would be less welcomed among elites, but possibly drawing the attention of a mass that “reject the legitimacy of the mainstream press” (Ibid.), which coincides with his strong presence in on-site scenes, reaching his potential voters through broadcasting and online platforms – a similar strategy we saw in the past mid-term election.
More recently, Lee, Shi, and Hong (2018) used data from 2012 to 2016 in South Korea to examine the polarizing effect towards audience’s political opinions caused by social media use. Their founding suggested there is no evidence for a direct link between the use of social media and polarized political opinion, whereas, political engagement served as an intermediator in the process. Heavy social media users tend to participate in political engagement more often, which led them to form more liberal views for both neutral and more liberal users. This finding further proves the opinion that social media are helpful in encouraging participation and personal attachment, no matter in what part of the world. However, one big question in this research is that why conservative political engagement showed less significance to people in reinforcing their political stance. Just like we need to figure out who negative or positive news coverage influences people’s choice over casting a vote, a warmly-received campaign or less-successful one may exert different effects on the forming of a more polarized political opinion to its participants.
Reference
Regina G. Lawrence & Amber E. Boydstun (2017) What We Should Really Be Asking About Media Attention to Trump, Political Communication, 34:1, 150-153, DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2016.1262700
Chadwick, A. (2013). The hybrid media system: Politics and power (Oxford studies in digital politics). New York: Oxford University Press.
Lee, C., Shin, J., & Hong, A. (2018). Does social media use really make people politically polarized? Direct and indirect effects of social media use on political polarization in South Korea. Telematics and Informatics, 35(1), 245-254.