COMMONWEALTH PARLIAMENTARY CONFERENCE Colombo, Sri Lanka
58th Plenary Session - 14 September 2012
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN MODERN-DAY POLITICS
The social media must be used by Parliaments, Parliamentarians, governments and political parties as they are highly effective tools to involve and inform citizens in public policy-making and in the formation of governments. But all these groups must develop strategies to deal with a wide array of both positive and negative effects of these rapidly growing media, argued participants in the final plenary session. The positive effects of the various
forms of social media were laid out as Members recorded a high degree of their own participation in some or all of the social media. These media can empower the public in a way that is far faster, cheaper and more pervasive than other forms of communication. They encourage pluralism, reach young people more than other media and encourage greater participation, accountability and transparency. Parliamentarians can use their
“celebrity” status in such media as Facebook and Twitter to interest
people in politics and political issues. Social media have been effective in election campaign fund-raising, especially encouraging small contributions from individual voters. But delegates cautioned that the
social media alone cannot change the world and institutions and individuals in the political field must learn how to distinguish between good and bad uses. The uncontrolled nature of social media postings means they can be misleading and manipulative and can misinform. Irresponsible and irrelevant material can also overload readers and swamp genuine political reporting and comment – and the capacity of individual Members to deal with them. The social media can be used to
fuel rioting, as happened in the United Kingdom in 2011. They are not yet fully available in developing countries and, even in countries with good urban internet access, they are often not readily accessible by rural citizens and by the poor.
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However, the workshop noted
the social media are such powerful, effective and low-cost information sources that the problems surrounding them cannot and should not stop Parliaments and Members from developing effective ways to use them to inform responsibly and, in so doing, help teach young people how to separate good information from bad.
Transforming society The rapidly advancing world of information technology affects all spheres of life but none more so than politics and the replacement of authoritarian governance with democratic governance, said the Speaker of the Nigerian House of Representatives, Hon. Aminu Tambuwal, MHR. Easy access to information from
around the world promotes liberty, competition and choice. It can also be used to advance respect for the rule of law and human rights and
other indices of good governance such as equality and free and credible elections. Use of the new social media enables group thinking to promote concepts such as the independence of the judiciary, the development of civil society, multiparty systems and democratic institutions which are participatory, transparent and accountable, he said. Mr Tambuwal added that social
media challenged the established media by enabling individuals to report their own views on governments. Their ease of access and wide coverage enable wide-spread political participation and such developments in one part of the world can affect other regions very rapidly. But the Nigerian Speaker
cautioned that the interface between technology and social interaction is not yet universally available. Computers, cell phones and internet access are still not available to large sections of the populations of developing countries.