Social Media Influence On Politics

This chapter presents the literature that enhanced and broadened the researchers’ perspective on how social media influencers were able to influence the voters to vote for Rodrigo Duterte. The review also furthered social media and its effects toward political participation; interplay of social media and politics and how it changed the political landscape, particularly the election campaign; the effects of celebrity endorsement and politics and how it changes the perspectives of voters; Rodrigo Duterte’s popularity and; news consumption.

Social Media

With the emergence of social media in today’s era, people tend to be more interactive and participative on the internet. Based on a current study, there are 2.7 billion people worldwide who use

They believe that voters nowadays are now inclined and somehow dependent to social media networking sites in terms of all aspects in life, specifically in politics. Neil Washbourne (2010), author of Mediating Politics: Newspapers, Radio, Television and the Internet, compiled studies for the view of online participation maybe able to expand the numbers of those politically active even in reaching groups who were formerly inactive or less active in mainstream offline politics. According to Albrecht and Wright (2006), the uses of the net in politics demonstrate a degree of widening of the mainstream of politics, including some genuine attempts of governments to consult in a deliberative manner with their citizens because it bears the potential to somewhat equalize the power for groups to circulate their messages and publish their goals; this equalization means both of the groups who are referred to as legitimate voices in debates and the themes and topics worthy of consideration and that have been made into political issues. Moreover, the study included that the Internet allows the widespread of social movement perspectives around the world, via elites for the most part, questioning authorities, whether religious, political, patriarchal, cultural or economic (Spender,

The researchers gave an example regarding the different types of people who use the media. High-income people, who are usually better-education, use newspapers more than the rest of the population. Although people with low incomes and less education spend more time with the media, particularly television, they extract less political information. While it may be true that the media remain the only consistent source of political information for most citizens, this does not necessarily mean that the public believes what it hears and reads in the media. The media’s power to influence a candidate’s electoral chances has multiplied as voting patterns have changed, partly as a result of the breakdown of political parties and partly as a result of certain basic demographic, social and economic