Over time, with further advancement of social media across the world, we have seen the poll strategists of the political parties using social media to get to know how deeper their penetration is and what the issues are which people are facing: social media has quite helped in that, if not entirely in the third world countries, but the developed ones. Even, one can say that social media has also been used—potently—in influencing the voters as we have seen when the US accused Russia of doing that when Donald Trump was voted to power.
The power of social media could be further understood by how India’s known poll strategist, Prashant Kishore uses the platform: not just to reach out to the masses; he also underlines the importance and key role of social media in shaping the image of individuals, good or bad. In developed countries, the good or bad perception about the political parties as well as the politicians who represent people, or, are intending to, are weighed and vetted based on what they put out on social media. There also are various studies carried out by reputed institutions across the world that have studied the usage of social media as a tool by politicians and have come up with revealing results.
That brings us to the point of what the approach of the politicians needs to be when it comes to the use of social media because just one overstepping…and boom, you are gone. There is a need to ensure that they control their immediate responses to matters around them because so many times it has been seen that reputed politicians end up sharing fake news, suiting their interests, only to come to know later, that it was just a bluff: and by the time they realise it, the damage is done. And it is not just limited to sharing fake news only, rather, there is more where caution is a must. Politicians need to tread carefully because, in the end, what they do is what gets projected and that’s what ends up denting their image. Better use social media with caution or it would prove more of a bane than a boon.
