Elections create a stir on social media pages

No matter where it is happening, Social media nowadays has become an extremely powerful weapon in shaping our political strategies. Here in Bahrain also things are not that different, especially when viewed in the backdrop of Saturday’s election. To find out how our election is being influenced by social media users, Tribune sat with Social Media expert Ali Sabkar, who told us that the changes are substantial.

Citing statistics released by Social Media Club Bahrain in association with Lucydia.com, Ali Sabkar of Global Co-Chair of Social Media Club Inc. told Tribune that they have identified as many as 179 Instagram accounts created for the election campaign. “This year there are 179 Instagram accounts for 293 candidates where the total followers have jumped to 579,977.” Explaining, he said there is a substantial jump in the number of times a post of hashtag appears. “While 1,159 accounts used official election hashtag on 19,677 posts that received 1,472,870 engagements which almost was viewed and reached to12,865,080 accounts out of which 364,638,391 got impressions.

Impressions in terms, that how many times the post or the hashtags appeared on social media” Twitter is also experiencing a massive engagement of candidates and potential voters. As of now, there are 58 election focused twitter accounts with a total of 147, 171 followers. “The official elections Hashtag on Twitter were used in a total 18,619 tweets by 3,900 accounts followed by 1,472,870 engagement received by users. Moreover, 17,579,005 accounts were reached with 139,486,688 post impressions.” The communication process, Ali Sabkar said, has now become more direct, fast and complex.

“This has also led to a process of shrinking words and expanding access at the same time.” Citing elections results from other countries and from Bahrain’s previous elections, he confirms that social media can influence voters if the candidates use it in the right way. “Voters can view posts of candidates and their response at the same time, so with a proper and effective content, a candidate should easily make use of those responses.” “Moreover, this year in Bahrain, the elections would turn out as a defining one as social media marketing is striving to reach out to first-time and young voters.”

“Compared to the previous elections, we see that a lot of people are using social media platforms to reach out to individuals. “Also according to the statistics more than 60 per cent of the candidates are using social media to engage their voters through their Instagram account,” said Ali Sabkar. “This also means that a lot of people are using hashtags to promote themselves, which also indicates that a lot of youth have entered election fray this time.” Another major change found during the election campaign is the reduced use of conventional advertising platforms such as tents and billboards.

“Instead, a lot of candidates have hired youth to promote them on social media, handle their social media page and help them run their campaign.” “Moreover we have also seen a lot of interaction from the rest of the countries in this year’s elections due to social media, the 29 embassies around the world have been extremely active in promoting the elections in Bahrain,” Ali added.