Twitter Google Yahoo Store Bing Technorati Yellow Pages Pingomatic Ask
Thursday September 9th 2010

How politicians use social media.

With time and the advent of technology it is but fair that man must adapt to the changes. The politicians of today are no far behind. Be it twitter or Facebook or any other social networking sites, politicians are coming up with new and improved forms of campaigning and reaching the people as a whole. Twitter seems to be the favorite amongst the politicians and now and then we see some encouraging, informative or debatable tweets being posted. It is as though an entire new generation of politicians have been born who have taken technology as their tool for campaigning.

The White House, led by President Obama, started to post on twitter not to campaign any kind of new bill/law, neither to inform about any form of media trivia nor did they try to create any kind of controversy which would lead to any form of negative publicity. The White House used twitter to make the American people aware of the dangers and precautionary methods of swine flu. The Library of Congress is also known to share lots of historical free pictures on Flickr and many agencies have opened up channels in YouTube to handle their media content.

My.barackobama.com is a website which allows hundreds of users to use the website as a blog and this is an online way of getting the opinion of the people forward to the President and his team. Such innovative ideas can be a huge boon to all such politicians who are looking forward to making a bigger change to the economy and social life of the people. Social media is the place where you can connect with millions instantly. What better way to get your voice heard?

The Indian politicians are also coming up with their own set of technology tools and tech-savvy mentalities. We are all aware of the controversies which were initially associated with Shashi Tharoor, but inspite of that, Mr. Tharoor has a huge fanbase known as “followers” on twitter and is a regular user of the service.

Not far behind is the C.M. of Gujarat, Mr. Narendra Modi. Mr. Modi is considered as one of the most tech-savvy politicians in India and is very often seen keying messages on his palmtop or browsing the internet on his laptop. It is highly encouraging to see that Indian politicians are coming up with new and innovative ideas to stay connected with the “junta”, a common Hindi term for the Common Man.

If you search on Facebook you will also come across a fan page dedicated to the Indian prime minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh. The fan page supports opinions of the direct fans and there are lots of updates from the minister’s side which talks about political as well as personal updates. A true visionary and a big supporter of technology, Dr. Singh has made good use of social media to bring about harmony in the online world.

Bookmark and Share

Leave a Reply