The one with the social media impact

Inspired from the American Elections on the 6^th of November, when the Obama’s election  was repeatedly characterized as a “social media effect”, I decided to make a research on the political impact of social media in Greece. The respondents had to answer on a variety of questions focused on how social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, among others, has influenced their political views, their vote in the last Greek Elections in 2012, but also how these kind of social media can provide a unique place where young people have the opportunity to discuss about political issues, exchanging ideas, views, videos, photos and articles.The questionnaire referred to young people from 18 years old to 30+, the most common ages of social media users. It is fascinating that there is a big variety of answers, differed from age to age, but also from men to woman. First of all, on the question “Which of the social media do you use more for your political update?” 51% of respondents chose blogs, 35% Facebook, 8% twitter, 3% YouTube and finally 3% chose another kind of social media. As the concern shows, often they do use social media to get informed about political news and their answers were based on a scale 1 minor to 5 major, while the most frequent answer was 3 (33%). 25% answered that they use social media for their political update 2 to 5, 19% 4, 6%1 and 14% 5, meaning that social media is the basic media platform from where they get informed about political news. On another question the respondents had invited to answer whether they believe that political information through social media is more objective than in any other type of media platforms, the results were unexpected.Greek people feel that the political information is least more objective (47%) and at the same time another 47% state that political news are a lot more objective, 6% claim that there are not more objective at all and none of them believes that there is much objectivity. Concerning the ability of having discussions with political focus, 76% argue that social media can help evolution of this kind of discussions. Indeed, 39% state that these online conversations can actually affect a lot their political view, 36% claim that they have less effect, 22% answered they do not get affected at all, and 3% clicked on the “very much” answer.  On a higher level, 64% state that through social media they can express their personal political views, but poorly, in contrast to those who answered that it can be expressed satisfactorily (25%). As a result, it can refer that social media can be a productive way of debating between users and their political views. In fact, when they had been asked if social media have influenced them in whether and how often they deal with politics, 25% responded negatively, 39% said “a little”, 28% “a lot”, 8% “very much”. 

Another question was related to the impact of social media on helping an issue to guarantee its position in the political agenda through its continued promotion. None of the respondents think that social media does not have a basic mediating role, as 64% believe that a political issue can greatly be helped in its promotion, 8% think that the promotion is on a minor level, and a great 28% state that social media can largely help a political issue to guarantee its domain in the agenda. 

And here comes the level of the effect social media had  on the respondents’ vote in the current Greek Elections on June 2012. How did young people react to the messages sent through social media on this critical period of the great national debt and crisis? How much did their personal and important vote  get affected by social websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs, where did they spend their free time? The answer is promising, as 39% were minimally affected, 31% were not affected at all.

Indeed, only 28% of the votes were partly directed from social media, and a small 3% answered that its vote were affected at a great level. Continuing in the same path, there were a variety of answers as concerns the possibility of a party to be promoted through social media platform, where most of the respondents were positive. More specifically, 47% state that a party can be a lot promoted through social media, 36% think there can be a great promotion, 6% that there is not enough power to social media to promote a party, and finally, 11% claim that there can be only a small promotion. 

These results express that young people and generally social media users feel ready to accept party’s campaign through social networks, as Obama effectively did. This level of influence at a political level was first seen in 2008 when then Senator Obama defeated John McCain and took over as President in what has now been coined as the first “social media election.” President Obama’s grass roots campaign gained a steady momentum through social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. Voters were able to interact with the candidates and, for the first time, were able to share their thoughts, photos, opinions, videos, among others, via platforms that did not exist just four years prior.According to SEO Vote 2012, as of November 5, 2012 Mitt Romney had almost 12 million likes on Facebook and 1.6 million followers on Twitter, while Barack Obama had close to 32 million fans on Facebook and 8.6 million Twitter followers.The same thing can be adopted in Greece, as Greek parties should get more e-energetic, using social media in creative ways, creating a culture of sharing with their followers and getting more personal, having a messaging activity, and a call-and-response basis even for asking for donations. Thus, the respondents in conclusion were asked about their feelings when a politician creates a personal account in such social networks, 58% answered that they like it, because they can communicate directly with him or her, and 42% do not care about it. The general feeling of the statistics is that people do use social media to get informed about politics, and need more social media activity from Greek politicians, as a request for more personal and direct communication. Another interesting result is that there is a gap between men and womens’ opinions, as men feel that social media does not have a great impact on politics yet, in contrast they think of social media as a social platform rather than a political one. On the other hand, women are closer to the global idea using social media as the new platform where politics play a basic role nowadays. The question is what to expect in the future from this perplexed relationship between social media and users as concerns political impact? Should we be positive about an evolution of exploitation of the positive features of the new platform or Greece will lose another opportunity of political and democratic revolution?