Political parties are pouring resources into social media to prepare for the election. But how influential will platforms like Facebook and Twitter really be in swaying voters?
The Institute for Race Relations (IRR) explored the question in a recent survey, learning that only a tiny proportion of the voting population are active on the platforms. According to the poll, conducted in August and September last year, only 9% of registered voters were on Twitter, which the institute called “negligible”, while 36% of people registered to vote had Facebook accounts.
This year's general election is being touted as the most hotly contested since 1994, with opposition parties hoping to push the ANC below 50% in provinces such as Gauteng and the Northern Cape.
The IRR poll showed that according to political affiliation, DA voters had the strongest presence on Twitter (16%) and Facebook (53%). The ANC was “significantly underrepresented” in relation to the DA and EFF. ANC voters only had a 2% representation on Twitter and 28% on Facebook, while the EFF had 10% representation on Twitter and 42% on Facebook. The margin of error in the poll was 3.1%.
Yet a great part of public sentiment and news remains driven by the attitudes and positions adopted on Twitter. Political parties should therefore be wary when only looking at the position of those voters on Twitter, the IRR said. An example of this was a question on whether land in rural areas should continue to be controlled by traditional leaders. A total of 41% of all voters polled agreed with the statement, while only 18% of voters on Twitter agreed.
Political analyst Ralph Mathekga said SA is still at the “infancy stage” in using social media as an effective way of communicating political messages and campaigning. The reality is that the majority of voters in SA do not have access to social media.
"It would be senseless for any party to overinvest in social media campaigns, because the returns are not going to be proportionate to what you put in. It is not where you find a great number of South Africans, it is not where you influence politically," Mathekga said.
Though only a small number of voters are present on social media, those who are may be the more influential members of their communities and, to an extent, the leaders of society. Their Twitter conversations do filter into wider society, particularly through the media.
It is for this reason that Media Monitoring Africa director William Bird says the growing realm of social media should be taken seriously by political parties. He said social media in SA was growing all the time, despite the high cost of data. If one looked at where advertisers were putting more and more money, it was into digital.
“We know that just over 50% of the population have access to the internet. There is a high proportion of young people that are on internet and social media platforms. I’m not sure I will say it is that little.
"If you can get things to trend there [on social media] and start to get people to take notice there, that will get picked up by other media anyway and lead into other conversations," Bird said, using as an example the now defunct British PR firm Bell Pottinger and the “white monopoly capital” campaign it pushed. "So to suggest that it is not going to have significant influence is just simply not accurate at all,” Bird said.
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