The Increasing Influence of Social Media on Politics
Seven Word Summary: Social media is influencing politics, voters included!
Political campaigning is starting to heat up, again, in Australia and abroad — namely the United States.
So, what can organisations like yours learn from the increasing influence of social media on politics?
Read on.
Social media content drives voter behaviour. That’s easy to say, easy to believe, but difficult to digest.
Of course, political campaigns, which are really just marketing campaigns in a political setting, have always driven voter behaviour. So, what’s different?
It is two things; user-generated content (UGC) and social media algorithms.
User-generated content has far and away replaced marketer (or political-party) generated content as being the most pervasive and influential marketing material that people see on social media. This was the original purpose of the Internet, to break down hierarchies, power distances, and barriers to sharing of and access to information, and to participation in society in general. However, whose voices are the loudest when it comes to creating and sharing UGC? This leads to my next point.
Social media algorithms are black boxes with only one premise; they will deliver us the content that is most likely to keep us engaged. Why? Because the more time we spend on social media, the more the social networks can claim access to large, diverse, audiences of consumers (or voters) that advertisers will pay to target. Add the multiple data points that the social networks have on each of us let advertisers uniquely target their ads better than ever before.
So, what content is proven to keep us engaged? Research, including my own, has consistently shown that content that evokes negative emotions stimulates the most engagement. That engagement is in the form of time spent scrolling or, even more powerfully, commenting or sharing.
The next obvious question is what types of content most evoke negative emotions? Clearly that is a question we can all answer, as it is personal to each of us, but at a fundamental level it is content that feeds a narrative of in- versus out-groups. Put simply, ‘us versus them’. It is content with headlines and stories focusing on the things that ‘they’ are reportedly doing, or trying to do, that in some way feels threatening to ‘us’, particularly our values and way of life.
The problem is, if we trace back the process by which social media works, as I have tried to briefly outline in this short piece, the content that we see is likely to be automatically selected with the very aim of making us angry, so that we remain engaged. In this way, how can it possibly be that this content is definitely 1) representative of what is going on with the majority of people in the ‘them’ camp, not just extreme fringes, and 2) even more worryingly, true at all?
These questions are what makes the fact that social media content drives voter behaviour difficult to digest. If enough people that vote are not asking these questions, then enough people are voting based on fears that are very likely not real. What is real is my fear that an increasingly prevailing environment of ‘us versus them’ is incompatible with a functioning democracy. So much so that some people, fringe or not, question whether ‘functioning democracy’ is a misnomer in itself. That’s another discussion.
About the Author
Paul Harrigan is an Associate Professor of Marketing, with research published in over 50 international journal articles and books.
His expertise in digital marketing, specifically social media marketing, has seen him work across the UK, France, Australia and the UAE.
Paul brings a wealth of knowledge and industry experience, with a passion for helping organisations unlock the power of digital marketing.
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