Social Networking Can Eliminate the Gap Between Leaders and Supporters

Information spreads faster than wildfire these days. Thanks to the rising popularity of social media. However, politicians in Bangladesh are not utilizing the social media for organizing their supporters and promoting their agendas.

As per  Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw,  news treatment in mass media can determine the main agendas of a political party.

A study conducted by We Are Social and Hootsuit revealed that the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka has  22 million active Facebook users. That is 1.1 percent of the total monthly active users of Facebook. Needless to say,  netizens in Bangladesh are active on Facebook and receive messages faster than the traditional news media.

However, there are several drawbacks.

Bangladeshi politicians rarely use social media platform for their election campaign or to promote their political agendas. The prime minister and the main opposition leader of Bangladesh are not on social media. They send their messages to people through traditional media.

Till date, political parties email their press release to print and online news organizations to reach their supporters and common people. Social media could be a powerful tool to organize people. For instance,  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan foiled a coup attempt by going live on Facebook. Politicians of Bangladesh, particularly politicians who are not in power,  could also use this approach to organize people for a protest, blockades, and so on. Bangladesh is a highly politically polarized country and the party in power has always a stronghold over most of the news organizations. Social media could be a tool to spread out their messages without any censorship.

One thought on “Social Networking Can Eliminate the Gap Between Leaders and Supporters

  1. Hi Kohinur, I like this post. First, you contrasted the effect of traditional media with that of social media, which further stressed the particularity of the agenda-setting of social media. Second, you connected the social mobilization with agenda setting of social media, which is a very interesting field for me. Thanks for your sharing.

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