Which candidate is winning on social media?
Supporters of Moon Jae-in, the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party of Korea, take his photos near Chonbuk National University in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province, last week. All major candidate are competing fiercely to win voters’ hearts on social media. / Yonhap
Moon leads pack in attracting followers
By Jung Min-ho
Donald Trump received almost no major newspaper endorsements and still managed to win the U.S. presidency, thanks to his Twitter feed that galvanized supporters and amplified his messages without relying on traditional media.
For a presidential election in one of the world’s most wired countries, the impact of social media may be even bigger. All major candidates are now competing fiercely to win voters’ hearts on Facebook, Twitter and Kakao Talk, the most popular messaging app in the country, as the race comes down to the wire.
Left-leaning Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) candidate Moon Jae-in, the frontrunner in the race, is outperforming the others in the battle.
As of Monday, more than 500,000 people “liked” his Facebook page, which has been posting his pledges and videos of his campaign rallies with greater frequency than other candidates. Moon, who ran for the presidency against Park Geun-hye in 2012, took advantage of his experience and has never stopped communicating with his followers through the channel ever since.
Ahn Cheol-soo of the People’s Party, Moon’s most serious challenger this time, has garnered a little more than 115,000 “likes” on his Facebook page, which is less than the Justice Party’s Sim Sang-jung with 225,000.
Meanwhile, the two right-wing candidates ― Yoo Seong-min of the Bareun Party and Hong Joon-pyo of the Liberty Korea Party ― are not performing well.
Hong said on Facebook earlier this month that he will win the election by actively using social media “as Trump did,” blaming the media for “making biased reports” against him.
But in terms of the number of “likes,” he has the least among the top five with 27,000, behind Yoo’s 35,000.
Unlike the liberal candidates, Hong’s messages are filled mainly with text and no photos or videos. Yoo seems even less active on Facebook, doing almost nothing other than sharing content from mainstream media.
Moon is also leading on Twitter with nearly 1.3 million followers, which more than quadrupled from his campaign four years ago.
Ahn, who had a similar number of followers as Moon at that time, now has 808,000, which isn’t that far ahead of Sim with 686,000.
The presences of Yoo and Hong are even smaller on Twitter, in which they have 2,400 and 4,400 followers, respectively.
Moon is also dominant on Kakao Talk with 115,000 followers, but Sim is outrunning Ahn by more than three times.
Social media has dramatically reshaped the way people form and share political opinions thanks to the pages of running dialogue and ubiquitous accessibility.
Observers say liberal candidates are faring better on social media largely because of their younger fan bases. However, the performance gap between the liberal and conservative candidates has become even wider compared with the previous election, in which Park Geun-hye was competing closely with Moon.