Social Media's role within modern day Government.

As you can see from the above picture can you imagine how our fore founders view how the current state of politics is ran using social media? Imagine people displaying their tweets about how they do not agree with the constitution and having arguments over a certain "Bill of Rights"? Technology has brought us a long way since the foundation of this country in 1776. As we progress more and more as a society technology will always be at the center of it as it is an integral part of society today and prime example being "social media".


Social media is the ever so controversial topic it seems like today but it is something that a large portion of our society uses every single day. This large portion of society now expands to our elected public officials using social media as a platform to spread awareness to whatever cause they see fit to promote. First we should start with pointing out the good that social media brings in the Government section. Any time a natural disaster occurs social media is usually on the fore front of reporting that news even sometimes before the actual news stations can report it and it is passed out to every user across the web. This is very important as big events such as hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes are devastating natural disasters and with social media the news can be blasted out to everyone very quickly and updates can be made rapidly as well. Next, every single senator representing the people that elected them are currently either active on Twitter or Facebook giving the people an easier way to voice their opinions to their elected officials. This is a great thing as previously people would mail letters to their representatives and you never truly knew if it was getting to them or some random person in the mail room who was paid to open the mail and send a letter back. Now you are having a direct internet medium that you can portray your voice to those you elect with your vote. This becomes a very powerful tool for those in power because they can see first hand how those who elected them feel about certain topics and issues and make management decisions from their. Social media within the government really took off during the first initial election of former President Obama when his team effectively tapped into social media and touched and grabbed the vote of many people through multiple social media giants (twitter, and Facebook mainly). Social media is a very powerful tool and can when used properly persuade many people to vote for elected officials by simply relating to those candidates that many people may not see a certain side of on an everyday basis.

Now like with everything in life there are negatives and positives in virtually everything and there are negatives of social media as I will explain. Whether you are a fan of social media or not you must get on board the train because it is here and it is here to stay regardless of opinion. For all of the good social media does on pushing out certain vital information and giving politicians a platform to push out certain messages quickly and easily to their citizens there is a flip side. Simply take a browse on your favorite social media site and see for yourself on any and every political "post, tweet, snap, etc" there will be people going far overboard on bashing either the sender or others that do not share the same views that they do. No matter your political affiliation I believe and hold the firm belief that if you are an elected official you should portray yourself in a professional way and not bicker back and forth over the internet and social media with other politicians who you disagree with. This creates a narrative of whether or not we are a democracy or a bunch of immature preschoolers who would rather argue and fight instead of coming together for the better of society. Enough is enough with politicians trying to "one up" each other on social media because that does absolutely nothing but drive the already huge divide we already have right now in this country.


As stated previously social media is a giant force that is already engrained into our society and is much more than just a government tool it is much bigger than that. It is up to the up and coming generations to realize it takes a whole nation to change not just political divide and once people begin to understand that then we can begin to make true change. The biggest change must come from my generation (millennial) as we are the next group up coming into adulthood and many decisions will be made as a group by us and we need to make sure those decisions are positive.