SNS emerges as new campaign tool

By Chung Min-uck

The efficiency of Social Network Services (SNS) in mobilizing voters proved to be powerful in the selection of a unified liberal candidate last week.

Many experts say that the independent Park Won-soon was chosen as the sole candidate of the opposition camp mainly due to the use of SNS. In the election, Park not only beat his main opposition Democratic Party (DP) counterpart Park Young-sun in jury evaluation and opinion poll, but scored a higher-than-expected turnout in a direct poll, which originally was anticipated to go in favor of the DP contender, as young voters started to rush in to cast votes after 2 p.m., prompted by encouraging messages sent through Twitter.

“SNS like Twitter are direct communication tools that can reach voters privately. They of course have a bigger influence than other media,”said Kim Ho-ki, professor of Yonsei University’s department of sociology.

“It should also be noted that SNS users are mostly young, and that getting support from them has become a vital part in winning elections these days.”

Young voters in their 20s and 30s have been the deciding factor in recent elections as they don’t have clear party inclinations like the older generation, meaning they can change their voting tendency easily depending on the circumstances.

“Nowadays young voters support the liberals while older ones support the Grand National Party (GNP),”said Kim.

“So it is obvious the GNP is starting to show interest in SNS.”

Na Kyung-won, GNP’s sole candidate who is to face Park in the Oct. 26 Seoul mayoral by-election, together with her set of welfare policies is beginning to make use of SNS in her campaigns to win over young voters, while the liberal camp tries to maintain its dominance in such campaigns.

An official from Na’s ad-hoc committee for the election said “Na will also focus on utilizing SNS to get ideas from the young generation and use Twitter to organize impromptu meetings with citizens.”

An aide of Park said “We are the originators of SNS campaigns.” “We will get our influence of SNS going through the by-election.”

As SNS play more and more crucial roles in elections, some worry about its side effects.

Professor Rhee Yang-soo of Yonsei University’s department of public administration warns that the new communication tool used in political elections could seriously distort the right selection of candidates.

“The use of SNS in elections could harm the political development of the nation as they can be misused to deliberately distort facts in order to win elections,” said Rhee.

“Without veracity and professionalism in its content, it is nothing but a tool to instigate the crowd. It is also questionable whether the young generation has a rational standard of judgment to analyze candidates through information received on SNS. So I think it shouldn’t be used as a communication tool toward younger voters.”

Rhee added that the politicians who try to take advantage of the new communication tool are only thinking about the merits of it to win elections.