Social Media Influences Youth Integration & Politics — The Communication Insight
The discussion surrounding youth integration in politics has for long been controversial, with most believing that power should lie in the hands of the experienced. Ideally, for any communication process to take action, it is ideal that there exists feedback.
During the early years of communication technologies, the absence of feedback dominated political influence. Acta Diurna, the first known ‘newspaper’, functioned as a driver for official notices for Roman Citizenry. The Acta was first published in 59 BCE and continued till AD 222. The scope of feedback was no to negligible, often duties to be done by the people and the completion of that would then be considered to be ‘feedback’.
Late 1940s onwards, the transitions of communication systems were more visible in the communication models that were presented. The linear model of communication was first introduced by Claude Shannon & Warren Weaver in 1948/9. The model outlined the communication through encoding, decoding, and how communication noise affects it. But more so, it highlighted the importance of receiving feedback from the recipient to the sender. The model concurrently influenced further models that broke down the aspects that the original model bore. The ideology of ‘feedback’ was also influenced by the recent onset of political culture around the world post the Second World War. Eradicated systems of dictatorship, emergence of neo-colonialism in post colonialist countries and segmenting the world into three political hemispheres — first, second and third. The political subgroups within these three political worlds often collide and youth participation is either guarded or grounded.
Historically, youth participation in politics is often synonymously synchronised with the term ‘revolutionaries’. Revolution equates change, but change is not always negative. This is the mindset and the ideal that sets apart social media’s influence on youth participation politics more than other traditional forms of media. Social media paves way for engagement and a new corridor called ‘digital marketing analysis’. This allows political parties to carve out the interests of the people and crunch down to exact numbers. If I were to talk about a political billboard on the most populous street of the one of the most populous cities in the world, and if I were to ask you the number of people that had seen or had been ‘influenced’ by that billboard, your answer would likely be in approximate figures, say a million. This is not the case for social media however. Using social media, you can definitely point out if the number of viewers were two million, four thousand and sixty-six or nine-hundred thousand five hundred and ninety-two. You can also see the insights that cover the number of shares, likes, dislikes and more. This indeed allows political parties to ‘show their work’, and to carve out a niche for audience segmentation for better reach and growth.
So what’s on stake for the users? A ‘third world’ country, for say, India, the major chunk of its population ages between 18 and 65. Ideally, the more politically active subgroup. This subgroup has voting rights and are often if not always active voters. Coincidentally, this subgroup also is vehemently active and vocal on social media platforms. Taking up a step to engage in political conversations online, sharing opinions among a community of those politically like-minded. They are also free to use social media for enforcing personal political ideologies and conspiracies. Social media allows for individual voices to be heard, creative freedom and diminishing distance for freedom of speech and expression.
Social media also allows for politically neutral platforms to exist, for the people, and often created by the people. These platforms will not find space in traditional media formats, where political inclination is somewhat necessary for sustenance. The impact of political parties on media outlets can be damaging for the viewer’s perspective on a certain issue. Certainly, scenarios such as this are able to create layers between media and the audience, with a new middleman — ‘opinion leaders’. The opinion leaders influence mass perspective. This normative is plausible significantly on social media but the stark contrast would be the existence of ‘for’ and ‘against’ groups under the same umbrella. On social media, the youth are free to collide, combine and call out what they feel is inaccurate. Social media also allows for the third gender to find a spot for political representation and awareness. The third gender often lands themselves in the midst of nowhere between heteronormative terminologies and the tendency of traditional media formats to diverge from third gender issues. Social media allows for a safe space and safety net for expressing worries that could and will go unheard in traditional media, like television, radio or newspaper. The topics that take charge on social media can be varied to an extent where ‘inclusivity’ isn’t challenged. Social media, for many, acts as the youth’s daily political digest. It provides for a broader vision, away from agenda setting by traditional media. The influence of social media on the youth’s political ideologies, awareness and appreciation is uncanny. It compels political organisations to keep pace with the evolving times, and stay relevant to ‘all’.
