Student Corner: National Politics and Use of Social Media

Department of Journalism, University of the Punjab, Lahore

As we know that Pakistani politics has been very uncertain. Due to political uncertainty, Watan Aziz could not continue on the path of development. This is the reason why we have faced terrorism and worst economic crisis many times, quality of education is not good, rule of law is not good and we are still not able to provide basic facilities to our people.

Before the popularity of electronic or social media, people depended on print media for information. Print media includes newspapers, magazines and books. Newspapers played an important role in Pakistani politics.

The columnists used to criticize the policies of the politicians and governments of that time in their columns. These columns had an influence on the governments and through criticism they would put a lot of pressure on them. Newspapers are still relevant even today although their influence on society is less today.

We are currently living in the age of social media. Social media has a huge impact on our professional and personal lives. We cannot ignore the influence of social media in our daily life. After 2010, the era of social media started with full force in Pakistan.

Social media played an influential role in the 2013 and 2018 general elections in Pakistan. All the major parties started the election campaign by addressing people in rallies and they were also campaigning on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Nowadays, all political parties in Pakistan have their official Facebook pages with blue ticks, and Facebook groups for party members to communicate with their fans and voters. There are official Twitter handles of various political parties marked in blue for verification.

All political parties of Pakistan are also present on Instagram with their official pages. The main point of this paragraph is that political parties have shown their presence on every major social media platform available in the country. Not only political parties but also their party members have official accounts or pages on these platforms.

Each tweet from the Twitter handles of these famous politicians is featured on nationally televised talk shows or current affairs programs.

Tweets can be motivational, controversial, informative, critical and satirical. Now Pakistani politicians prefer to give their opinion on tweet than press conferences. While press conferences can be difficult for some politicians, you can tweet anytime or anywhere.

As Pakistan’s general elections approach, political campaigns can be seen on social media platforms. The political campaign will gain momentum with time.

There are many pros and cons to using social media platforms for political gain. While the advantages of using social media platforms have been discussed in detail above, there are also many disadvantages.

I think one of the major disadvantages of using social media platforms is that there is a possibility that a political party with a huge fan following may not be able to ensure large numbers of people attend their rallies. Social media trends do not confirm whether fans of different political parties will vote for the respective political parties in the same way. Because electoral politics is largely linked to ground realities.