Using Twitter for Political Change: Advantages and Disadvantages

This paper analyzes the limitations and merits of using Twitter to attain political change and empower society. It discusses theories of citizenship, corporate citizenship, and framing, and examines the advantages and disadvantages of Twitter in promoting political change. The paper concludes that while Twitter can be a tool for political change, it also has limitations and can disempower society.

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Twitter is one of the key social media channels used by most of the politicians to sell
their agenda to the public. For example, the new hashtag publics are active in the public sphere,
and this is evident during the Global Frackdown protest. There are certain key limitations and
merits of using Twitter to attain a political change in the society. Further, Twitter has been used
as a means of empowering the community since it is believed that it contributes to a more and
fairer democratic society. However, there are certain limitations and merits of using Twitter to
empower the society. This paper seeks to analyse the advantages and disadvantages of Twitter to
attain political change including its use in empowering the society as well as disempowering. It
also aims at providing insights on twitter's contribution towards a more and fair democratic
community as is discussed below.
Theories of Citizenship
Generally, a public communicator should have high ethical standards. However there are
ways in which such an individual should apply the principles. For instance, the public
communicator should respect equal worthiness of every particular member of the community
without any favour. Also, he or she should share in a commitment with the intention to attain a
principled, fair and just society.
The aspect of citizenship has been used as an instructive theory which aims at
rationalizing the various activities of a public communicator, and this is within the wider element
of society. It has been argued that for one to belong to a particular society, it has to be beyond
oneself such that a person has to fulfil the various responsibilities of the society (Koc-Michalska
et al.2016 p.4). A sense of belonging in a community comes hand in hand with certain fulfilment
and responsibility which encourages a sense of belonging.

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Citizenship refers to the responsibilities and rights which makes one a full member of the
community. Such responsibilities and rights are associated with the ideals and values which is
held by a particular community. Consequently, the values and ideals which could be right at one
particular place and time may not have a continuous relevance and this could be due to the
numerous changes which occur on a daily basis.
Passive and Active Citizenship
Active citizenship has been described as the participation in the society through the
fulfilment of the various responsibilities bestowed every person. It typically entails certain
aspects such as corporate citizenship, democratic citizenship, military citizenship and
environment citizenship. The citizens with the active citizenship are much concerned with the
action and public responsibility that is the active participation.
The passive citizenship, on the other hand, involves the different rights to become a
member of a particular community. It has nothing to do with the role of contributing to the
society by defending the rights of others (Koc-Michalska et al.2016 p.4). The aspect of
citizenship and its forms are complex as well as containing different meanings and applications
in the community which is vital to the public communicators. It is therefore essential to the
public communicator because it offers a broader comprehension of the communities as well as
how they perform a variety of activities. Citizenship is, therefore, an effective tool for public
communication since it results in a more and fairer democratic community.
Corporate Citizenship Theory
Often the activities of a corporation have the ability and power to bring changes to the
lives of the surrounding community. Thus the aspect of citizenship, as well as its effects of

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responsibilities, rights and active participation in the community, can be used. According to the
corporate citizenship, an organization generally depends on the surrounding community for its
survival (Reddick, Chatfield and Brajawidagda, 2017 p.10). To survive for a long time, an
organization should conform to the critical expectations of society, and this has to be beyond the
profit-making aspect.
Additionally, an organization has two typical responsibilities such as the environmental
and social responsibility which it has to fulfil in the host society to survive. There are certain
vital benefits associated with the corporate citizenship such as it helps in the formation of an
integrated and stronger partnership which leads to confidence, inclusiveness and creativity. The
other benefit is that it allows for legitimacy, reputation and credibility to operate (Chen, 2018
p.180). Besides, it brings the stability which helps in the delivery of long term values to the
critical shareholders of an organization. Lastly, corporate citizenship results in a united internal
employee relationship which develops an employment base attracting some of the best
candidates for various job positions in an organization.
Differential Citizenship Theory
According to Hosch-Dayican et al. (2016 p.150), the differential citizenship implies the
multiple ways of viewing citizenship. It generally relates to the political agenda of promoting
cultural and social uniformity in diversity in morality, culture, ethnicity as well as religion. The
differential citizenship theory is critical especially to the public communicators. It is argued that
they can use the various fundamental tenets of citizenship as an ethic. Further, the public
communicators can agree to the concept and extend it to involve the aspects of corporate social
responsibility and corporate citizenship. The extension of the concept of differential citizenship

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is significant especially as a step towards the evaluation of the role of public communication as
well as its relationship to democracy.
Social Media and Framing
Based on the representation of news media, different people decode messages differently.
The framing theory stipulates that the frames of messages tend to work as interpretative devices
which aims at communicating shared meanings as well as organizing discourse relating to a
particular topic. With the growth of social media, there has been an expansion by the framing
theory to investigate the core activities of the grassroots activists to attain certain strategic
communication objectives (Gibson, 2015 p.190). From the case study, it can be concluded that
the tweets which contained the #globalfrackdown hashtag indicated a number of personalized
and collective message frames.
A key example is the solidarity and convergence frame which aimed at promoting
mutual support as well as transnational solidarity among the groups. Additionally, case study
disclosed a blurring offline and online types of political action tweets concerning the protests
which were used a way of mobilizing group support (Li, Dombrowski and Brady, 2018 p.340).
The Global Frackdown's tweet case study provides an example of the ways in which the private
enterprise and activists use the aspect of citizenship via the social media communication.
Moreover, it highlights how the word #hashtags function as a political act. Twitter,
however, has certain limitations and merits on its use to attain a political change including its
ability and power to empower and disempower the community. Some of the critical limitations
and benefits of Twitter are as indicated below in the paper.

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Limitations of Twitter
In as much as Twitter is viewed by the journalist as the best platform for reporting on
various events, it has certain limitations. For instance, Twitter is not a reliable indicator of wider
public opinion (Borge-Holthoefer et al.2015 p.700). Such an argument is based on the fact that
during the Global Frackdown, social media channel was used in the mobilization of the citizens
who were already active on the particular issue. For Twitter to be reliable and thus attain a
political change, it has to be applied as one of the eco-system of channels of communication to
add to a discourse on a social matter (Buettner and Buettner, 2016 p.2210). With the awareness
of the various constraints, there will be a development of a critical view which aids in the
avoidance of the trap of techno-utopianism. The techno-utopianism refers to the belief that
technology and science are the only ones which can solve every particular social problem.
According to Stevens, Xie and Peng (2016 p.950), the other limitation of Twitter in its
use to attain political change is that it only leaves a few individuals who possess the wherewithal
to place their energy and time into campaigns at the grassroots level. The other individuals
without the time and energy, on the other hand, have no time to become part and parcel of the
activists’ movement thus they only retweet and like posts. Twitter is therefore unreliable to bring
political change in society.
Often the agenda of Twitter and mainstream media are different because some of the
issues and events are usually filtered via the already developed news and interests of the
community. With the street voices being reflected in hashtags of Twitter and other trending
topics of discussion, it can be easy to orientate political parties on issues relating to public
opinions (Ibrahim et al.2016 p.330).

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Merits of Twitter
Twitter can generally bring political change gradually, and this is based on the fact that it
can empower other individuals to stand for something which they all believe. Thus it can be
concluded that Twitter can develop an action as well as mobilise the individual citizens in a
particular movement (Stevens et al.2016 p.950). Furthermore, Twitter has made many of the
citizens more informed than ever before hence the few who want to advocate for political change
can now use the Twitter platform to establish and organize actions. Consequently, the use
Twitter has developed a platform which allows for a more sustained civil engagement movement
whose primary aim is to achieve a political change in the society (Saleiro et al.2016 p.48).
The other merit of Twitter in tis use to bring political changes is that it can be used as a
tool to bring changes to various services and policies of the government. For instance, it can be
used in the prevention of corruption because it is a direct technique to reach citizens hence it can
be used initiate political changes in a nation through the movements formed (Grant, 2016 p.100).
Furthermore, Twitter can be used to attain political change based on the premise that it is a
channel for conveying political contents which are crucial for political change. For example, in
certain countries, it has been used in the prediction of the results of an election.
Besides, Twitter has become the new outlet used by most of the speakers who belong to
the elite already as well as those affiliated with some of the prominent positions in the political
debate (Cihon and Yasseri, 2016 p.34). With such an outlet, it is easy as well as simple to initiate
political changes in the society. Twitter can be said to be persuasive hence it influential in
relation to political discourse and this has therefore caused certain changes in the engagement of

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various citizens politically. It can, therefore, be said that convincing nature of Twitter in its use
can help in the attainment of political change in the society (Djerf-Pierre et al.2016 p.850).
There are certain political uses of Twitter which can help in the attainment of political
change in the community. Some of the uses include regular interaction with the followers and
respond to their problems, diffusion of information as well as response to the various attacks
from certain other politicians (Chadwick and Dennis, 2017 p.50). The above mentioned uses
forms some of the key merits which makes Twitter to be used in the achievement of political
change.
Based on the merits and limitations on the use of Twitter, it can be concluded that the
social media can be used in both empowering and disempowering the society. For example,
Twitter can be used as a channel to convey information to the community for instance to change
traditional power dynamics (Felt et al.2018 p.75). Furthermore, Twitter can be used to empower
the society because it allows the activities of the community to become more visible thus they
are involved in political change which is instrumental in any particular society.
At the same time, Twitter can be used to disempower a society, and this is because of the
fact that it can stimulate revolution which may result in violence. Such violence could lead to
many deaths in the community. In relation to democracy, Twitter does not promote a more and
fairer democratic society (Stevens et al.2016 p.950). One key reason is that it results in foreign
interference especially the elections. A key example is that of the 2016 US election where the
Russian set up fake tweets with the intention to influence public sentiment. It also a way of
corrupting democracy such that certain individuals use it to spread misinformation and hoaxes
which could have certain dangerous outcomes in the society.

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Conclusion
To conclude, Twitter is a tool which can be used to initiate political changes in the
society. However, there are certain limitations and merits associated with as discussed in the
paper.

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References
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