Respect For Politicians Easily Swayed By Social Media

As the saying goes; trust takes years to build, seconds to break and forever to repair.  

In the political arena of yesterday when a politician broke the public’s trust the party would convert to damage control, doing all they could to spin the event in a positive outlook for themselves.  This was generally one way traffic and could therefore manipulate the public without strong public opinion to counter it.  Not so anymore, social media has given the public a very loud and oftentimes boisterous voice with which to air their misgivings with political figures.  Nowadays trust is not just broken with an individual but with a large community and those individuals in the community are only a click away from the truth, or the opinion of others who have built up there own amount of trust within the community.

This means for today’s politician to remain relevant it is important to have a clear, concise overview of what they stand for and be able to stick to this path.  It is far too easy for the public to discover inconsistencies in an individuals promises and use social media to show this.  Opposing political parties use of this tactic has flooded websites like Facebook and Twitter with these shortcomings contributing to the cause of a lack of interest in politics today.  It seems the Australian public is becoming either dis-engaged or negative towards our politicians and their various campaigns (Keane 2012).

To counter this lack of interest and involvement politicians need to take a positive outlook when it comes to social media and use it to connect with communities.  Creating a static website is no longer a valid strategy and whatever forms of communication are used they need to be monitored (Howard 2012).  Web 2.0 has setup a system where the public expects to have there concerns addressed when they are raised within a social media context.  By answering the public through this medium and keeping a concise agenda a dedicated politician can earn the respect of the public themselves and hopefully separate themselves from the backstabbing and rumour mill that has caused this disconnect with public and politicians in the first place.

Howard, A 2012, Connecting With Communities, Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government, viewed 13 January 2013, <http://www.acelg.org.au/upload/documents/1345603527_Connecting_with_Communities_ANZSIG-ACELG_August_2012.pdf>

Keane, J 2012, Social Media Protects Democracy, The University of Sydney, viewed 12 January 2013, <http://what-matters.sydney.edu.au/topic/keeping-politics-honest-with-social-media>