Dear Jesus,

I agree with you that we are in 50/50% case. However, at least until now, social media are more independent, and the connection is "horizontal" than top-down. Finally the technology, especially computerts and robotics will change the present society. The problem is if it will be for good and not for bad.

Dear, Kamal.

That´s a very good example. Here you can find an interesting paper on it. I hope you find it useful.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258122779_The_Arab_Spring_and_Social_Media_Audiences_English_and_Arabic_Twitter_Users_and_Their_Networks?ev=srch_pub&_sg=F6W9TjPZF2fUW4GTNyZCoPXshb9BpD%2BwBdp331N71UPAHmWkF2GtP5qbiM%2F7b53W_LIDTig%2BzJL6TtEsxt1X8bKEoc4Lg%2BbBXEmppPnwjhOpEeh08V6MNFLJfR4Cc2y0R

Regards.

Article The Arab Spring and Social Media Audiences English and Arabi...

Dear Jesus

With the growth of internet and the popularity of social media, the web has become a new communication tool for electoral battles. Through the use of platforms like blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, Orkut, social media play a key role in politics and representing the movement of expansiveness information.

A significant factor is the number of followers increased, where voters can create their own blogs to talk, send recommendations, create mini-sites to organize collections of actions and events and this was key to the election of Barack Obama in the United States

The Brazilian politicians are gradually entering in social media. You need to listen well, give satisfaction, show results, dialogue with voters, so there is real monitoring of continuous communication on both sides.

Dear C. Lewis, that´s quite true. But I think the key question is if there is really a conversation between politicians and citizenship in the social media. I don´t think so. As Nelson says, the number of followers is increasing. However most of politicians don´t answer the questions that citizenship make, they don´t dialogue with voters, although social media is an ideal vehicle for having such a conversation.

Dear Jesus,

I agree with you that we are in 50/50% case. However, at least until now, social media are more independent, and the connection is "horizontal" than top-down. Finally the technology, especially computerts and robotics will change the present society. The problem is if it will be for good and not for bad.

In political communication, social media is more important than traditional media. This is true, and there are many examples in this concern.

Dear Mahfuz, I totally agree.

But the question is: do politicians know how to use social media properly? I assume most of them how to communicate through traditional media, but, what about social media? what do you think?

@Jesus, the importance of social media in political communication is enormous!

@Ljubomir, that´s true, what, do you think it has already become more important than traditional media?

Obama used social media very effectively. See a good comparison of Obama and Romney here.

http://www.journalism.org/2012/08/15/how-presidential-candidates-use-web-and-social-media/

Dear Jesus, It is rapidly playing important role in political arena. It is used to disseminate political campaign and new policies , which is judged a useful media for fostering interactive communication. It can help gauging degree of popularity among politicians, public figure and celebrity as well.I think it can complement the traditional media as there are still limited number of people to gain access to this social media.

Dear Choen, that´s a good point. Don´t forget about the digital divide. There are so many people who still can not access to social media!

@Jesus, the role of social media have overpowered the role of traditional media, yes!

It really depends on who are your supporters. For example, in recent years, some political parties or event organizers focused on the youngsters as their target, social media were completely overpower the role of traditional media in communication of political ideas and move people to join their protests and other activities.

Agree. effect is enormous!

@Kamal, I have found an article on Social media and Arab Spring! Here is the link about this issue! Part one, fine reading!

http://voices.yahoo.com/social-media-arab-spring-part-one-12593156.html

@Ljubomir, many thanks!

It´s a quite interesting article

Dear Ljubomir. Splendid article. I've learned a lot reading it.

Thank you.

Best,

JP

In discussing the importance of social media in political communication we need to understand that in politics, if you want to be relevance you cant not focus only on high tech but also need to develop high touch, What I mean is the high technology communication medium that you use must be a company by a high touch and meaningful content that can touch the audience feeling and left deep cue towards their mind so that they can always relate you and the massage that you try to established.

The perfect example to support this discussion would be of Mr. Narendra Modi, in becoming Prime Minister of India. Social Media have played very important and significant role.

It is always the case that to promote an idea or a product, take it to places where the audiences you want to make in touch are available. To get the young members of society, social media is very important and effective. That has been been the case in America when president Barack Obama run for the presidency - he used face book and twitter to galvanize and get connected to the young people and made a huge turn over during the voting time. The young and the ambitious are becoming more influential and powerful in politics and determining factors on election outcomes. Other traditional medias where the old and traditional people love to be around and available are also as good as these social medias . Even to stir a social revolution seen in Arabic countries, where Ljubomir put a link about it, social media are becoming more popular and effective.

@Everybody

Many thanks for your answer.

Now, it is quite clear to me that the importance of social media in political communication is increasing day to day.

Dear Jesus

you made a good conclusion. today, Social Media is changing the political history of developing countries where for years traditional media was  dominating the political communication. 

Social media is being used as a tool by political parties to communicate and manipulate.

The social media is very crucial for any category of political communication. It is vital because it is an instant crowd-puller with interactive audience capacity. As a form of mass media, the social media is quite good for political communication although it is equally quite risky for the same.  It would appear as if the social media has become more important than the traditional media in political communication today. There is a stiff competition between the two. But the traditional media still holds the higher ground in most cases mainly for: traditional audience, legal issues, objectivity, accountability, transparency, right of reply, public interest, integrity, and economic interests. At the same time, there are instances where the social media may be given priority over the traditional media due to personal, emotional, professional, scope, and timeliness of the issues involved. In addition, the social media has equal impact with their traditional counterpart in some cases. Many political communicators belong to social media networks or are quite popular in social media. At the same time, they too are actively involved with the traditional media either as media professional practitioners, commentators, journalists, broadcasters, and investors. It is possible that, with the passage of time, the two will run neck and neck and the best option will be to combine them for maximum audience exposure or impact. The objective of a political communication is to inform, persuade, educate, mobilize, impress, retain, entertain, engage, convince, or attract a mass audience.

Dear @Kamal, @Asmat and friends, regarding Arab Spring, here is Part II . "Complementing the analysis in Part One, this segment examines the Tunisian case -providing an overview of censorship technologies employed by the state to combat Internet activism."

http://voices.yahoo.com/social-media-arab-spring-part-two-12593197.html?cat=15

I'm not sure of the answer. Obviously, social media are important in political communication. but the real issue is how do social media change political communication not only in what is related with interactivity and participation, but in what about the quality of participation . And when we come to this point I have lots of doubts that I tried to present in the following text

Dear Jesus , I think that SM causes to changes on the character of political communication. There is not one way communication and the recievers of messages are not masses. The users of social media has oppurtunity to product content as well as being recievers of messages. They also contribute to the dissemination of political discourse, individually. It makes partipation more open to personal participation. SM also creates pressure on traditional political actors to use new Technologies during political communication process. However, there is important gap to use it as interactive tool, especially for organisational actors like parties and leaders. My article in the followng link may contribute to discussion in terms of the gap of interactive usage and SM usage by traditional actors during political communication. 

http://www.igi-global.com/chapter/relationship-between-social-media-and-political-parties/109111

It really depends on the spread of ICTs in a country and the extent to which mainstream media is trusted. For example there's research showing that what people share on social media is mainly mainstream media articles so that it's clear that mainstream media remain important even on social media. But where there is no trust in the mainstream media eg Egypt during Egyptian uprisings them social media becomes more important. On the other hand in Kenya's non-urban population social media is barely relevant at all due to the cost of such technologies. In South Africa, social media is an important way for the middle class to undertake political communication, but at the level of poor communities protesting their living conditions it is barely relevant at all.

I believe that efficiently conducted marketing online campaigns in social media can already increase the insensitivity of new online media, including social media to traditional communication channels. Effective marketing campaigns on social media before political elections may already have more than 50 percent share. How big it will be depends on the technological possibilities in the field of new online media for a specific electoral staff that is active during the election campaign.

Dear Jesus Díaz-Campo,

In recent years, we notice that terms like fake-news, post-truth, digital misinformation, and related phenomena seem to gain more and more attention from public opinion. In my opinion the emergence and development of the network society, of the social communication platforms, of the possibilities offered by technology can explain the influence of these phenomena. We have all seen the impact of such phenomena in our current political communication.

Best,

Nicolae-Sorin Drăgan

“Truth is hard, propaganda is cheap.”

― DaShanne Stokes https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8303508-truth-is-hard-propaganda-is-cheap?fbclid=IwAR0zU0NnBTvzDYAKXKgG3pkB1OIYZmImtXsiIY2r3ua6VB6TxAqT4HlR7Y8

There are a lot of rumors and fake information there. Everybody needs to guard against any false information.

“Always remember... Rumors are carried by haters, spread by fools, and accepted by idiots.”

― Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1012133-always-remember-rumors-are-carried-by-haters-spread-by-fools?fbclid=IwAR0INq8yCq-9X9vDvNqpSDQHRpjvrXbfLB6cwKek7iJHGVOfIBdgYyoztNs

Social media are changing the nature of political communication because they can be used to inform users in new ways.

Traditional media or social media all serve for it's governor.Police is a game.I n some countries, governor control money, In others money control governor.

Social media are fast form for political communication, but fake news are so usuall.

AI is commonly used by social media to recommend news to it's every reader. We read the news already have the political trend of the social media.

Of course, social media still are very important performance, but this new trends for younger generation has changed all. Facebook , for example, is for women from 22-50, men have very low interest about this platform, young generation used chatbot or just photo.More and more around the world you can see infantile people, am not sure that this people have interest about politic and they understood this political semiotics

Social medias are of huge importance for political communication, especially in non-democratic regimes where TV and newspapers have been occupied by ruling party. That is the case in my country. Twitter, Facebook, Viber groups, Instagram... are our window to freedom. Follow the links. #Serbia

https://www.instagram.com/ljubomir_jacic/

https://www.facebook.com/1od5miliona/

https://twitter.com/Jacic012

agree with M. Ljubomir Jacić

It can do miracle. Just study my country, for example.