TheJakartaPost
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Politicians and social media
Social media has been maturing in our society lately: Facebook, Twitter and others
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ocial media has been maturing in our society lately: Facebook, Twitter and others. Either ordinary people or public figures are using social media. The role of social media is one of the publican or campaign tools and helps image building.
Based on the article in The Jakarta Post on June 29, "Politicians, officials take to Twitter in droves", has inspired me to make this opinion. As I mentioned above, without looking at the Twitter users' background, this form of social media has been successful to inspire people, with no exception for politicians.
The politicians are using Twitter as one of their ways to promote their party. The use of Twitter as one of the ways to campaign is the right way, because the people who are interested with them are able to keep updated with the current issue and as well are able to share their thoughts.
Like for example, a tweet from Barack Obama, the president of USA, will have much impact on his followers and some of his followers also can give Obama their thoughts about the current issues. It can be seen by how many replies he will get once he tweets, whether the replies are good or bad, at least Obama will know and understand how his people react upon some issues.
Yet there are some negatives responses from some Twitter users. Some users don't understand the rule in using the site. Some public figures have been called by the police for posting something that they aren't supposed to post to the public. Some of them used harsh words and sentences that may offend much to some of the people.
These are not good if you want to promote yourself or your party (political organization). Therefore, I think the users of social media have to understand how to bring up their characters into words wisely and send their messages to the society clearly without offending readers.
Look from their popularity among the society, society will definitely keep on getting updates and as well as be reminded about the campaign. The other benefit is each of the individuals from different societies and backgrounds are able to share thoughts with each other to produce positive results in decision making.
Syandra Kwan
Jakarta
