Social media penetration, party politics and elections in Tanzania Emerging practices and challenges

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-185
Author(s):  
Christopher Simeon Awinia
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Party Ideology ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
The Way

Tanzania has witnessed an increased use of social media in political party campaigning over the last decade. Use of social media was nonetheless curtailed by a changing techno-political framework regulated by acts relating to cybersecurity and statistics. This study was guided by two hypotheses: firstly, that despite restrictive cybersecurity laws, social media in recent years has been effectively institutionalised as a new civic cyberspace for political party campaigns during elections. Secondly, increasing use of social media in elections has had a transformative effect on the way party structure was organised to conduct political mobilisation, promote party ideology and both inter- and intra-party interaction, and for fundraising. The study interviewed party members and leaders from five political parties which participated in the 2015 and 2020 general elections and concluded that social media had a transformative effect on core political party campaign activities.

scholarly journals Political Parties in India, Preferring a Well-Resourced and Well-Organized Social Media Net Working for the End-Results in General Elections

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 1230-1233
Author(s):  
Suseela Rao Sayana
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Web Technologies ◽  
The Social ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Digital Landscape ◽  
End Results

Abstract: Social Media, in the present era of electronic revolution has become the means and end of all communication as such the democracies are wondering if social media can be a valid indicator to predict election end-results. Keeping in view the demand and surge in the use of social media like Face Book, Twitter etc. the present exploration work towards the scrutiny whether the social media had any consequence on the 2014 General Elections end-results. A huge number of social media whispers for 120 days from 5th January to 5th March, 2014 of sufficient political parties in India have been considered for the present exploration. It clearly speaks that, social media whispers, occupied paramount importance on the end-results of General Elections 2014. Keywords: Political campaigns, Web technologies, Advertising, Internet, Digital Landscape, Social media tool, Mass communication

scholarly journals Empirical Scrutiny of the Usage and Impact of Facebook on the Electoral Process in India: A Concept of the State of Punjab

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 2945-2955
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Future Research ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
The Impact

This paper presents the analysis of the increasing use of Social Media and its participation during the electoral voting in India with context to Punjab. Besides that, to understand the meaning and impact of especially Facebook on elections, we take survey results collected from different people in Punjab and Facebook data related to different political parties. There are numerous challenges when it comes to engaging people during political campaigns. The current findings in literature show us that previous efforts to involve public participation with prior media tools did not meet the full expectations. With Social Media’s indulgence this could change, because engagementof people seems to be the major concept that explains the difference between the impact of old media and ‘new’ Social Media. The survey explains that Social Media seemed to significantly influence voting behavior during the last general elections (2014). And, during the elections (2019) too, politicians with higher Social Media engagement are expecting relatively more votes within most political parties and banking upon Facebook practices. To conclude, we hereby propose a future research framework which studies how political parties take benefit from Facebook to contrive and convalesce the methodologies they follow with their party members, volunteers and general public.

scholarly journals Encouraging Popular Political Participation and Effective Election Monitoring Through Whatsapp Social Media Platforms

2021 ◽  
Vol 04 (04) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ikegbunam, Peter .C ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
General Election ◽  
The Political ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Election Monitoring ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Nigeria and Nigerians have witnessed different kinds of electoral frauds since the return to democracy in 1999. Counting from the 1999 general election in Nigeria, the 2019 general election is the 6th general elections conducted in the country. Unfortunately, none of these elections have been considered to be free and fair as there are always public outcries from one end to another against the results of the elections as a result of lack of transparency in the process. Drawing from this background, this study, examines whether heavy use of WhatsApp platforms by different political parties in the election encouraged popular participation and effective monitoring of the electoral processes. The study which examined a total of 318 respondents sampled from select WhatsApp groups of the two leading political parties adopted the survey research method with the social media engagement and technological acceptance theories as its theoretical framework to ascertain whether the use of WhatsApp platforms by political parties encouraged popular participation among the electorate and determine if WhatsApp platforms were helpful to parties in monitoring the 2019 general election as well as its processes. Findings revealed that WhatsApp use encouraged popular participation and electoral process monitoring. The researchers recommended that the political parties and the electoral umpire should engage more in the use of social media platforms in passing information during, on and after election to encourage transparency in leadership.

The Effects of Manifesto Politics on Programmatic Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annika Hennl ◽  
Simon Tobias Franzmann
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Core Business ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Decision Mode ◽  
Programmatic Change

The formulation of policies constitutes a core business of political parties in modern democracies. Using the novel data of the Political Party Database (PPDB) Project and the data of the Manifesto Project (MARPOR), the authors of this chapter aim at a systematic test of the causal link between the intra-party decision mode on the electoral manifestos and the extent of programmatic change. What are the effects of the politics of manifesto formulation on the degree of policy change? Theoretically, the authors distinguish the drafting process from the final enactment of the manifesto. Empirically, they show that a higher autonomy of the party elite in formulating the manifesto leads to a higher degree of programmatic change. If party members constrain party elite’s autonomy, they tend to veto major changes.

Political Interaction Beyond Party Lines: Communication Ties and Party Polarization in Parliamentary Twitter Networks

2021 ◽  
pp. 089443932098756
Author(s):  
Marc Esteve Del Valle ◽  
Marcel Broersma ◽  
Arnout Ponsioen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Exponential Random Graph Models ◽  
Party Polarization ◽  
Exponential Random Graph ◽  
Political Networks ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
High Degree

A growing body of research has examined the uptake of social media by politicians, the formation of communication ties in online political networks, and the interplay between social media and political polarization. However, few studies have analyzed how social media are affecting communication in parliamentary networks. This is especially relevant in highly fragmented political systems in which collaboration between political parties is crucial to win support in parliament. Does MPs’ use of social media foster communications among parliamentarians who think differently, or does it result in like-minded clusters polarized along party lines, confining MPs to those who think alike? This study analyzes the formation of communication ties and the degree of homophily in the Dutch MPs’ @mention Twitter network. We employed exponential random graph models on a 1-year sample of all tweets in which Dutch MPs mentioned each other ( N = 7,356) to discover the network parameters (reciprocity, popularity, and brokerage) and individual attributes (seniority, participation in the parliamentary commissions, age, gender, and geographical area) that facilitate communication ties among parliamentarians. Also, we measured party polarization by calculating the external–internal index of the mentions. Dutch MPs’ communication ties arise from network dynamics (reciprocity, brokerage, and popularity) and from MPs’ participation in the parliamentary commissions, age, gender, and geographical area. Furthermore, there is a high degree of cross-party interactions in the Dutch MPs’ mentions Twitter network. Our results refute the existence of “echo chambers” in the Dutch MPs’ mentions Twitter network and support the hypothesis that social media can open up spaces for discussion among political parties. This is particularly important in fragmented consensus democracies where negotiation and coordination between parties to form coalitions is key.

scholarly journals Voting Behavior in Parliamentary Elections in Slovakia

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 392-408
Author(s):  
Miroslav Řádek
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
University Students ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Exit Poll ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
The Future ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Final Question

Abstract Department of Political Science at Alexander Dubcek University in Trencin prepared its own exit poll during election day on March 5, 2016. The survey asked seven questions that were aimed at determining the preferences of the respondents concerning not only the current but also past general elections. Interviewers surveyed the choice of political party or movement in parliamentary elections in 2016 as well as preferences in past elections. Followed by questions concerning motivation to vote - when did the respondents decide to go to vote and what or who inspired this decision. The survey also tried to found out how many preferential votes did the voters give to the candidates of political parties and movements. Final question asked about expectations for the future of individual respondents. This article is the information output of the survey. The interviewers were 124 university students and its return was 1,612 sheets. The aim of this paper is to communicate the findings of this unique survey, which is unprecedented in the Slovak political science.

scholarly journals Introduction (Special Edition – The Presidential Nomination Process)

2008 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 289-291
Author(s):  
Wayne P. Steger
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
General Election ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Special Edition ◽  
Presidential Nomination ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Democratic Country

Understanding why certain candidates get nominated is an important aspect of political scientists. This topic is a narrow one and influences a wider variety of subjects such as the political parties, general elections, and even the extent to which the United States is a democratic country. Presidential nominees matter—they become the foremost spokesperson and the personified image of the party (Miller and Gronbeck 1994), the main selectors of issues and policies for their party’s general election campaign (Petrocik 1996; Tedesco 2001), a major force in defining the ideological direction of a political party (Herrera 1995), and candidates that voters select among in the general election. This volume is devoted to presidential nominations and the 2008 nomination specifically.

scholarly journals Refractory Frontier: Intra-party Democracy in the Zambian Polity

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
John Bwalya ◽  
Owen B. Sichone
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
National Development ◽  
Democratic Consolidation ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Leadership Positions ◽  
Leadership Transitions ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Selection Of

Despite the important role that intra-party democracy plays in democratic consolidation, particularly in third-wave democracies, it has not received as much attention as inter-party democracy. Based on the Zambian polity, this article uses the concept of selectocracy to explain why, to a large extent, intra-party democracy has remained a refractory frontier. Two traits of intra-party democracy are examined: leadership transitions at party president-level and the selection of political party members for key leadership positions. The present study of four political parties: United National Independence Party (UNIP), Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), United Party for National Development (UPND) and Patriotic Front (PF) demonstrates that the iron law of oligarchy predominates leadership transitions and selection. Within this milieu, intertwined but fluid factors, inimical to democratic consolidation but underpinning selectocracy, are explained.

scholarly journals Usage of Social Media by Leading Political Parties in General Election 2018 of Pakistan

2020 ◽  
Vol V (III) ◽  
pp. 32-43
Author(s):  
Ashraf Iqbal ◽  
Kishwer Perveen ◽  
Saima Waheed
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Social Networking Sites ◽  
Dominant Party ◽  
The Social ◽  
Setting Theory ◽  
Social Media Tools

Social Networking sites are highly used for political proposes. In this study, the research tried to search the usage of social media by political parties during elections campaigns 2018 in Pakistan. The researcher applied the agenda-setting theory to link the social media posts of these political parties' pages and content analysis research technique for analyzing the variables. It was concluded from the that these social media are highly used for mobilizing voters where the users of these mediums not only see these posts but also like, comment and share for responding about what is uploaded on these social media pages by the representatives of political parties. It is concluded that from three trending political parties, PTI emerged as the most dominant party by using these social media tools, by uploading a maximum number of posts, by mobilizing voters to vote for a specific political party.

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