Politicians use social media to fight back

By Alex P. Vidal

“The influence of social media is unbelievable. It’s sad to see-it’s a fake life that some people live.” – Virgil van Dijk

SOME politicians have been using the social media not only to promote themselves during the elections, but also to attack those who criticize them in the mainstream media.

Using their Facebook and Twitter accounts, pugnacious politicians also blame those responsible for their electoral defeat, while those in power hit back at their media critics in full throttle.

It appears they have weaponized the social media “to level the playing field,” so to speak.

If you criticize us in your newspaper, TV, radio station, blog, we can also strike back using our social media accounts, is what they appear to be grumbling.

They feel their supporters’ and fans’ favorable comments and “likes” in Facebook, Twitter, and other platform, are enough to assuage their frazzled emotions or to “avenge” the critical items in the mainstream media that tormented them.

A president devotes 80 percent of his time to lambast his political adversaries on Twitter; a defeated candidate for Iloilo City council blames a partymate who won a seat in the House of Representatives for “campaigning against me.”

A defeated candidate for congress uses his Facebook account to sour-grape; a defeated candidate for vice mayor “blocked” Facebook friends who did not support him; a frustrated congressman “wishes” for the downfall of his former rivals in a series of vicious posts; a member of the Sangguniang Panlungsod taunts a columnist who criticized an ”irrelevant” resolution the former had authored; to mention only a few.

 

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Are they effective? Thirty percent YES; seventy percent NO.

The social media has become their base, their solace or comfort zone. What they get when supporters and fans “like” their social media outbursts and write sympathetic comments are instant but temporary relief and self-serving “retribution” for an imaginary hurt.

Politicians who feel this way are onion-skinned and think they don’t deserve to be criticized and scrutinized.

When they err and the adversarial media confront them, they become paranoid and treat the constructive criticism as an attack against their persona.

They grumble: “You criticize me because you don’t like me and you want me to fail.”

What they didn’t realize was the number of people, their audience in the social media don’t represent the majority of those who follow and monitor what they do in public service.

Praises and sympathies from members of the social media fans club don’t change anything about their competence and worth as public servants.

 

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Many members of the social media fans club don’t even vote and are only “effective” in as far as glamour of social interaction is concerned. Their opinions don’t represent the true sentiments of the mainstream public.

It’s actually the politicians’ empty victory, or a make-believe conquest of negative opinions leveled against them in the mainstream media, which is still the more effective, powerful, and decisive.

Engaging the Fourth Estate in a “showdown” won’t work for politicians pissed off by constructive criticism, or criticism meant to help them become effective leaders.

After five, six, or even a dozen posts in any social media attacking their critics, the set of “friends” in their hollowed territory won’t be seeing or reading the posts again.

When we check the Internet any time in any part of the globe, their series of ferocious and harsh social media posts can’t be located or even “searched”, while all the articles in the news websites detailing their incompetence, lack of civility and decorum, their being onion-skinned, their corruption and abuses will instantly appear and never be forgotten.

Just “Google” it.

 

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)