Dr. Jun Ynares
THE VIEW FROM RIZAL
In last week’s column, we shared with our readers our thoughts on the important lessons we learned during the campaign season for the 2022 elections.
We discussed the value that our countrymen placed on performance and track record, noting that these were the bases of most of their choices as to who they would vote for to lead them in the next three years at the local government level.
There was one more important lesson learned: the need to understand in a deeper way the nature, power and role of social media.
The experience of the 2022 campaign reinforced what we knew about the value of this technology-based tool and confirmed many of our fears about the damage that it can bring about.
Here are the things we realized.
First, social media is an efficient public information tool.
Second, it is useful for introducing a person or a product to the public.
Third, it is a double-edged sword when it comes to building a public image.
Fourth, it is the least effective tool when it comes to building consensus, getting agreements, or even just triggering rationale, logical and sober discussions.
Given its reach, social media is a valuable tool for informing the public on matters that concern them: opportunities for fulfillment, livelihood and a better future. It is also the public’s preferred source of information, particularly regarding developments that could put their life, well-being and security at risk.
Social media helped people appreciate the performance of a local government unit during the past three years. It helped them see what has been done by their respective local community leaders on the challenge of the pandemic and the effort to help them cope with adversity.
Of the various social media forms, Facebook remains the most patronized. In 2022, it is on the top of the list of the most popular social media platforms with nearly three billion users worldwide. It is followed by YouTube with 2.56 billion; What’s Up, two billion; Instagram, 1.48 billion; and WeChat, one billion.
In 2022, sources say TikTok registered the biggest growth in the number of users which reached the one-billion mark in the first quarter of this year.
Given the reach, political candidates channeled significant portions of their campaign budget to social media, primarily Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Social media may have replaced television as the primary tool for political advertising in the 2022 polls. Communication strategists must have seen the potential of its reach and saw the major advantage of this medium when it comes to cost.
So, in the 2022 elections, we learned that social media could aid in communicating performance and track record. However, we also learned that communicating positive developments should be done long before an election takes place. Constant and consistent communication using this tool is important to build and reinforce the public’s memory and trigger an instant recall.
We also saw the downside of the nature of social media.
In the 2022 campaign season, social media may have made the polarization of the voting public faster. When the campaign season kicked off, many social media users immediately displayed their political preferences using visual symbols such as colors. This sent the message that they are no longer open to being convinced to consider other choices.
This defined the nature of the exchange in social media for the rest of the campaign season. The exchange had been virulent, marked by bashing, character assassination and by that new term “cancelling.”
The phenomenon may have shown political communication specialists that social media is not the preferred avenue for sober discussion aimed at creating understanding which could perhaps lead to a consensus or an agreement of sorts. No, social media is a “high emotion” space. It does not invite rationale, cerebral exchange of perspectives.
In an article posted by Yahoo Philippines written by contributor Juju Baluyut, Lawyer Michael Henry Yusingco, political analyst and Ateneo de Manila research fellow, described the phenomenon this way:
“Political discourse became non-existent in social media. We no longer engaged in political discourse because all we did was snipe at one another. “Bardagulan” as we called it.”
“Our political discourse was really more of a battle of hashtags, a battle of memes, a battle of gimmicks,” Atty. Yusingco pointed out. “They did not contribute anything substantive or meaningful in people’s decision-making process,” he added.
The point is clear. The public has to look for some other medium that will give them reliable facts that could serve as the basis for the choices they make. Social media may have lost that role.
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