Social Media's power to influence the young

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Social media has the power in Australia to attract an audience towards politics that wouldn’t normally have any interest at all. This is in reference specifically to the younger generation known as Gen Y. With young people already using social networking sites such as Facebook it is not very difficult for politicians to have a strong presence and be able to connect with these people via the internet. Simply slapping things up on a page and contributing every now and then isn’t enough however. For example Tony Abbott has set up a blog but he hasn’t actually written anything on it since December 2011. This discourages people from wanting to visit his blog as it seems unprofessional and doesn’t account for the latest issues. If politicians aren’t going to write the blogs themselves, (which is highly likely) then they need to have specifically trained PR people maintaining such blogs to keep up a positive image. Posting things just in the lead up to an election is not enough; the public wants to hear reactions or responses to issues all throughout the year.



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The KEVIN07 campaign had a profound impact on influencing many younger voters through Kevin Rudd’s utilization of social media. This was the first time I personally saw people my age actively pursue an interest in Australian politics. Young people were buying the merchandise, wearing the tee shirts and campaigning for Kevin Rudd like they had not done for anyone else before. It was through a central website that combined many elements of the Web 2.0. It offered a video channel on YouTube and links to social networking sites like Facebook but also a campaign blog to allow people to comment and react to posts. Subscribing to ‘K-mail’ also gave people access to regular campaign updates and made them feel involved. 



Rheingold argues that the political public sphere, crowd sourcing, open source production and the blogosphere are things that didn’t exist a few years ago and are now creating political and cultural power due to the active participation of many people. This bottom up led participation has changed the way political information is dissected and understood. This also removes the media driven aspect of politics and creates a landscape relatively free from censorship.   

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However the problem still remains in Australia of compulsory voting, as people who have no interest in politics vote for a party that they may know nothing about, but they choose it for example, because of the appearance of its leader. It is not democratic to force people to vote and it may increase the number of donkey votes and informal votes. If voting was left up to the people who were informed and understood what they were voting for, then the result would be an a lot more accurate reflection of the public’s opinions.