By Kim Tae-jong
Once again, the mighty influence of Twitter proved impossible to ignore in the Seoul elections Wednesday.
Well-known users and celebrities used the micro blog as a medium to encourage voting, to ensure everyone would cast their ballots, contributing to boosting the voter turnout and thereby affecting the results.
Analysts said Twitter boosted the participation rate of young voters in their 20s and 30s, the majority of whom favored independent candidate Park Won-soon over his rival Na Kyung-won from the ruling Grand National Party (GNP).
A joint exit poll by the nation’s three major TV networks showed about 70 percent of those in their 20s, 76 percent in their 30s voted for Park.
“The latest elections showed again that Twitter is a driving force to fuel the motivation of young voters in elections in recent years,” said Yoon Hee-woong, a senior fellow at the polling agency Korea Society Opinion Institute. “We believe Twitter and other social network services (SNS) helped increase the turnout rate of young voters by about 5 percentage points. This will further alter voter ratios in the future.”
Tweetmix, an SNS analyzing firm, echoed the assertion that SNS is having a great impact on elections.
It said the number of messages related to candidates on Tweeter stood at about 96,000 during the campaigning period before the May 27 by-elections, while it jumped over 10-fold during the campaigning period of the latest mayoral election, totaling about 980,000.
On election day, Tweeter was flooded with election-related issues with words such as election polls, candidates’ names and turnout rates accounting for 80 to 90 percent of the most-searched key words, it said.
The number of election-related messages in Tweeter was about 500,000, of which 200,000 contained messages to incite voting.
Regardless of the election watchdog’s guideline to regulate the SNS concerning the election, a number of people including celebrities uploaded and shared pictures taken before or after casting ballots to encourage many tech-savvy voters to visit polling stations.
Experts also said another important role of the SNS is that it was used as a platform where candidates, their supporters and voters freely debated over election pledges and policies.
Park has more than 150,000 Twitter followers allowing his campaign messages to instantly spread to the Internet and mobile devices, nearly three times that of Na’s 51,000.
Tweetmix said messages containing Na outnumbered those of Park in the campaigning period between Oct. 10 and 25, which recorded 531,772 and 453,386, respectively. However, the messages retweeted about Na were mostly about her negative aspects and scandals while Park saw more messages in favor of him.
Yoon said as the SNS has changed the campaigning and election culture especially for young voters, it will be crucial to communicate through the new channel when preparing for future elections.
“Instead of strictly regulating the SNS, politicians should seek a better way to take advantage of it to connect with young voters,” he said.