Running head: SHOULD POLITICIANS USE SOCIAL MEDIA?
Should Politicians use Social Media?
Subject: Political Science
Institution Name: Columbia University
Social media has become the dominant media in recent times. It is shaping people
opinions in diverse fields including in politics. Since political opinions are being shaped on
social media so it has attracted most politicians to be on social media platforms. Most politicians
have social media pages on popular social media networking sites where they propagate their
views as well as interact with their followers. The upside to politicians being on social media is
that they are now more accessible to common public. The downside has been concerns regarding
some politicians using social media to indulge in reckless behavior as well to propagate hateful
views.
The numbers of social media users have grown exponentially in recent times. In 2019, it
was estimated that at least 3.5 billion out of 7.7 billion humans on earth were using social media
(Esteban, 2019). Some of the popular social media sites included Facebook with 2.4 billion
users, YouTube with 1.9 billion users, WhatsApp with over 1 billion users, and Twitter with over
321 million users (Esteban, 2019). The numbers of social media users in most nations far surpass
the number of traditional media users. The time being spent by users on social media sites also
exceed the time they spend on traditional media including TV, radio or newspaper. So social
media has emerged as the dominant media replacing traditional mass media.
The role of social media in shaping political opinion is evident from fact that a popular
platform named Twitter is almost exclusively used for political debates. Though political debates
take place on other social media sites as well and most politicians have presence on multiple
