Surprisingly, this was my LA essay test topic. I personally have very strong opinions on this issue and therefore would like to bring the discussion online to talk more about it informally. In addition, I would also like to narrow the scope to make it easier to understand. Thus it would be the impact of social media in the recent General Election 2011.
With regards to GE 2011, I presume that everybody agrees that one reason why the GE was more exciting than all the previous ones was due to the presence of social media. During the entire course of the election, many political parties, especially the Opposition, tapped on social media and social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook for the spreading of information. Such an example is the National Solidarity Party who created a Facebook page to garner support for every single constituency that they were contesting in. In addition, other parties like Workers Party also created Twitter accounts to keep followers and supporters up to date about their upcoming rallies and walkabouts. Due to social media, many has thus been calling GE 2011 "the watershed election". From these examples, I think one advantage that we can find from social media is that it helps in improving the ease of the spreading of information. Just because of the presence of social networking sites, they has thus contributed to the fact that the General Election 2011 is so exciting. With Youtube, now anybody and everybody can post videos of the entire rallies online. Simply type in "Singapore General Election 2011 rallies" and I am sure you would have an entire list of rallies from various parties in a blink of an eye. With such accessibility with just a click, this has thus connected and made Singaporeans up to date with GE 2011 issues.
Another thing which I think contributed to the fact that General Election is so exciting is because social media has allowed many videos and pictures to go viral. Such an example is Tin Pei Ling's "I don't know what to say" line and her posing with a Kate Spade bag. Another example is the very unexpected returning officer, Yam Ah Mee, who became an overnight sensation after people kept hearing him repeat "Pursuant to Section 49, sub-section 7E, paragraph A of the Parliamentary Elections Act..." over and over again. Some even made a video of him repeating the line over and over again! See below for the "I don't know what to say" and "Yam Ah Mee" remixes.
With such videos and GE craziness, how can the general election not be exciting!
In my opinion, I believe that many Youth are addicted and hooked onto social media. One might not think so but if you think about it for awhile, we can actually consider ourselves addicted. I am sure that everybody has the tendency to go onto Facebook at least once everyday. And most of the time, we just keep it on as one of our tabs as we open new tabs to surf the web or complete our homework. This can be considered addicted to social media because we are already unknowingly spending many hours on the internet and Facebook. However, at the same time, I believe that social media also has many advantages like allowing friends to interact and discuss issues online. For instance, me and my friends were rapidly discussing the GE results online on polling day for 5 hours non-stop without the need to meet up physically. I think that social media can be put into good use, like has hyping up the entire GE atmosphere. However, I presume it all falls back down on how social media is used in order to reap the benefits from it.
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