Social Media and Political Communication - Essay Example

Social Media and Political Communication By student’s name Course code+ name Professor’s name University name City, state Date of submission Social Media and Political Communication Introduction The aspect of the political communication addresses the issue of democracy in a given political unit. Through understanding political communication helps to assess the essence of political communication in upholding the elements of democracy good policy making. For a political group to be democratic, the interaction which involves three bodies ought to exist. These organizations include the government actors, the political actors, and the politicians. In this scenario, the media acts as the interface where all the political matters are disclosed for the public opinion to judge. Therefore, if the political unit is not concerned with the public opinion, hence the state democracy is compromised. This essay will assess the issue of social media especially the recent reformed media such as Facebook and tweeter in reshaping the role of political communication in a state. Though the help of media, political communication acts as an interactive process which is used to transmit information between the press and the politicians. This transmission of the information operas in three forms (Habermas, 2006). The first operation occurs between the government institution and the citizen which can be referred as the down-ward case. The horizontal operation is the second information sharing which links the politician actors and the public where the last activity involves upward motion where the information is passed from the public opinion toward the authorities Hallin, & Mancini, 2004). Taking cognize of the three forms of political information passage, therefore, it can be generalized that the political communication literature is grouped into three categories in a simple system where the main actors of the system include the production, contents and the effects (Stieglitz, & Dang-Xuan, 2013). Simple model 1. Source/ the information production contents of media messenger the results/influence Element 1 (information production processes) The major work of production process focuses on the message generation for political actors such as the political groups and the interested groups which pass through indirect and direct channels such as the newspapers and the television to the recipients. Most of this works analysis on are based on the macro-level in a nation state (Margolis & Resnick. 2000). Nevertheless, in some cases such as Germany and Canada where the press is regionalized the media market may demark the national state appropriately some of the reason being due to the extensive coverage of extensive information in the entire federal state the political unit operates (McChesney et al., 2000) Most of the recent studies have shifted their focus on the increased professionalization pf the political marketing campaign especially after the world war two which includes the rise of pollsters and political consultants. Large literature reviews of politics particularly Europe has also contributed to the large studies of the structural change in the news industry where they note that the economic basis and the legal structure regulating broadcasting have changed. In addition, comparative studies have also commonly analyzed that the present news culture mainly in the values of the journalist and the magazine editors have emerged with the quick change of technology (The World Bank. 2000). The resultant work of the growing subfields that researchers on the development of social media has resulted to many research bodies raising severe concern on the internet political party’s engagements which also have triggered rapid growth of new social movements. The major immerging challenge in this sub-field of research the element of comparison between the political communication processes within a given nations to border theories which requires modules of generalization which can be tested across the societies. The researcher faces even more intensified challenges when it comes to reconstruction of models to explain their researched concept where the idea in question is restricted in the places where the data was collected. This mode of generalization which serves a significant importance in the application of research ideas lack the meaning when two or more political units bears the different forms of government strictures. Some of the witnessed bias of existing of varying political structure in the world is that most of the theories that examine the role pf social media on political communication have their primary interest in post-industrial nations where the United States and Western Europe are the main areas of concern (Scheufele, & Tewksbury, 2007). Nevertheless, in the early 1990s, much attentions has been paid to the new era of independence where democracy was the primary emphasis to all nation in the whole world. In addition, in the same era, the issue of gender equality flag was carried by most of the politics news. However, the freedom of media (the press freedom) especially in discussing political matters of some of the region such as Burma, China, and Cuba where authoritarian regimes still exist, this research remains severely restricted (McQuail, 2010). Contents of media messages Another sub-mainstreams researchers that are related to the issue of social media in the political communication have focused their attention in Contents of media messages that results by the (model 1.) process. The researcher examines the tone of the political reporting presented in different social media platforms in various magnitude of politics tides, the agenda setting, presentation of the social minority and finally politic unit policy issues. This research that is a concern with the activities that a government makes on a political unit perform their research from a similar type of media taking the cognise of their involved differences especially on how the information is passed (Margolis & Resnick, 2000). Another field of question that Contents of the media messages researcher are interested in is the power of each type of the media have and how its influence is significant to the designated role. Some other forms of comparison that the field of researchers in question may be interested in is examining the trends of politics in a given unit over a specified duration. For instance comparing political scandals of the past two decades then relate to the present. To make the comparison even more effective, most of the recent collaborative teams have attempted to compare their models to more than one political unit with the same government political structure since the primary barriers of the developed models of the researchers is the difference that exists among various states (Gil de Zúñiga, Jung, & Valenzuela, 2012). The effects The last and perhaps the widest of all bodies of research that is done on the political communication in the whole world focuses on the potential effects of the exposure of various type of political information. Most of the early objective of this research was societal levels diffuse but in the recent studies; the attention has been minimal (Berners-Lee. 2000). The representative survey method has been the common used while focusing on analyzing the potential impact of the political information exposure on a different type of political messages. Some of the messages involve political opinions, political attitudes and values, and finally political behaviors which may be indicated interment of the voting turnout (Dahlgren, 2009). Through all these analyses, the researcher tries to examine the impact of each of particular message on a specific district sub-groups like women or undecided voters, or certain community or racial group (Tufekci, & Wilson, 2012). One of the prevailing challenges that inhibits the survey of this manner includes how the survey results can be used in generalization beyond the political unit where the result were gathered. For instance, a study conducted in United States, the result may only be applicable in other political groups that serve the same manners of the political system (Dahlgren, 2005). However in this case the effect may be used in most of the political groups especially those effects that are common such as the outbreak of wars, consecutively considering more dipper and complex result of one political unit, the survey result may be only applicable to the same state or any other that serves almost the same society and political structure (Coombs, 2007). Development of conceptual models and theories that explains political communications There is three main school of thoughts which accounts for the theories of political communication, which include the pre-war theories of mass propaganda, post-war and recent theories of cognitive (Waltz, 2010). In the early 1920s represent the establishment of mass communication where politics were great influenced by the rapid development of mass communication platforms such as radio and the newspaper, the era has changed with the technological and society advancement. The theory of Partisan Reinforcement is among the earliest theories which face most of the challenges such as the urge of systematic research with the scientific and modern technique. The theory elaborated the power of momentum gained as result media politics (McQuail, 2010). In conclusion, being the fact that in the 21st century technology, for any survey result to be acceptable, it have to present its finding in a systematic manner where its values are quantifiable hence can show clear results taking the cognise of the fact that any research invention for it to create a model it has to be made open to be criticized. Therefore, contraction of the model that will cater for all the essence of the file in question and leave a small space of errors and minimum generalization become the primary challenge while developing a model in political communication. Consecutively, since political communication is greatly influenced by the social media, the element of change due to technology have risen to the challenge where each day the politics are changed by the technology. Reference list Coombs, W.T., 2007. Protecting organization reputations during a crisis: The development and application of situational crisis communication theory. Corporate reputation review, 10(3), pp.163-176. Dahlgren, P., 2005. The Internet, public spheres, and political communication: Dispersion and deliberation. Political communication, 22(2), pp.147-162. Dahlgren, P., 2009. Media and political engagement (Vol. 551). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. For a personal history of these developments see Tim Berners-Lee. 2000. Weaving the Web. NY: HarperBusiness. Gil de Zúñiga, H., Jung, N. and Valenzuela, S., 2012. Social media use for news and individuals' social capital, civic engagement and political participation. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 17(3), pp.319-336. Habermas, J., 2006. Political communication in media society: Does democracy still enjoy an epistemic dimension? the impact of normative theory on empirical research1. Communication theory, 16(4), pp.411-426. Hallin, D.C. and Mancini, P., 2004. Comparing media systems: Three models of media and politics. Cambridge university press. McChesney, E. Meiksins Wood and J. B. Foster. New York: Monthly Review Press; Peter Golding. 2000. ‘Information and Communications Technologies and the Sociology of the Future.’ Sociology. 34(1): 165-184. McQuail, D., 2010. McQuail's mass communication theory. Sage publications. Michael Margolis and David Resnick. 2000. Politics as Usual: The Cyberspace ‘Revolution’. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. OECD. 2000. OECD Information and Technology Outlook. OECD: Paris. P. 81.31 The World Bank. 2000. World Development Indicators 2000. P.299. www.worldbank.org/data. Scheufele, D.A. and Tewksbury, D., 2007. Framing, agenda setting, and priming: The evolution of three media effects models. Journal of communication, 57(1), pp.9-20. Stieglitz, S. and Dang-Xuan, L., 2013. Social media and political communication: a social media analytics framework. Social Network Analysis and Mining, 3(4), pp.1277-1291. Tufekci, Z. and Wilson, C., 2012. Social media and the decision to participate in political protest: Observations from Tahrir Square. Journal of Communication, 62(2), pp.363-379. Waltz, K.N., 2010. Theory of international politics. Waveland Press. Read More

Large literature reviews of politics particularly Europe has also contributed to the large studies of the structural change in the news industry where they note that the economic basis and the legal structure regulating broadcasting have changed. In addition, comparative studies have also commonly analyzed that the present news culture mainly in the values of the journalist and the magazine editors have emerged with the quick change of technology (The World Bank. 2000). The resultant work of the growing subfields that researchers on the development of social media has resulted to many research bodies raising severe concern on the internet political party’s engagements which also have triggered rapid growth of new social movements.

The major immerging challenge in this sub-field of research the element of comparison between the political communication processes within a given nations to border theories which requires modules of generalization which can be tested across the societies. The researcher faces even more intensified challenges when it comes to reconstruction of models to explain their researched concept where the idea in question is restricted in the places where the data was collected. This mode of generalization which serves a significant importance in the application of research ideas lack the meaning when two or more political units bears the different forms of government strictures.

Some of the witnessed bias of existing of varying political structure in the world is that most of the theories that examine the role pf social media on political communication have their primary interest in post-industrial nations where the United States and Western Europe are the main areas of concern (Scheufele, & Tewksbury, 2007). Nevertheless, in the early 1990s, much attentions has been paid to the new era of independence where democracy was the primary emphasis to all nation in the whole world.

In addition, in the same era, the issue of gender equality flag was carried by most of the politics news. However, the freedom of media (the press freedom) especially in discussing political matters of some of the region such as Burma, China, and Cuba where authoritarian regimes still exist, this research remains severely restricted (McQuail, 2010). Contents of media messages Another sub-mainstreams researchers that are related to the issue of social media in the political communication have focused their attention in Contents of media messages that results by the (model 1.) process. The researcher examines the tone of the political reporting presented in different social media platforms in various magnitude of politics tides, the agenda setting, presentation of the social minority and finally politic unit policy issues.

This research that is a concern with the activities that a government makes on a political unit perform their research from a similar type of media taking the cognise of their involved differences especially on how the information is passed (Margolis & Resnick, 2000). Another field of question that Contents of the media messages researcher are interested in is the power of each type of the media have and how its influence is significant to the designated role. Some other forms of comparison that the field of researchers in question may be interested in is examining the trends of politics in a given unit over a specified duration.

For instance comparing political scandals of the past two decades then relate to the present. To make the comparison even more effective, most of the recent collaborative teams have attempted to compare their models to more than one political unit with the same government political structure since the primary barriers of the developed models of the researchers is the difference that exists among various states (Gil de Zúñiga, Jung, & Valenzuela, 2012). The effects The last and perhaps the widest of all bodies of research that is done on the political communication in the whole world focuses on the potential effects of the exposure of various type of political information.

Read More