Social media is seething with vitriol about candidates. Instead of candidates’ virtues, news feeds are spitting venom about them.
Facebook has gone from a digital slam book routed among friends to a cyber-Plaza Miranda where even sandlot friends bash each other. Instead of selfies, propaganda pieces are shared.
Personal updates have given way to political communiqués.
My smartphone has become a mini-LED billboard where ads of wannabes are shared by partisans. YouTube spots by candidates blare constantly, auto-shared by their supporters.
Still, all of this would have been tolerable if the pamphleteering were confined to articles propping up one’s chosen candidate. Unfortunately, the dominant kind are articles pulling down the opponent.
As a result, FB has become a battlefront in the propaganda war. One nasty meme begets a nastier reply. Satirical pieces are produced in industrial scale. Not long after a candidate has put out an ad, a lampoon version would soon be competing for viewership. And so goes the vicious cycle.
But here’s a memo to partisans who imagine themselves as take-no-prisoners cyber-gladiators: Oversharing and overreacting in social media, and engaging in tit-for-tat, toe-to-toe propaganda war with friends in the other camps harm more than help your candidate.
Whether it is a politico or a detergent, aggressive marketing destroys the product. Even soap vendors don’t knock on doors atmidnight. Timing is the key.
In other words, there are better ways to convince social media friends to vote for your candidate other than bombarding them with campaign literature.
And if it’s hate speech that is being retailed, the greater the alienation the supposed receiver of that information would feel, not just for the seller but for who is being sold.
To those who boost their candidate by bashing the competition, remember this: If you jeer more than you cheer, you hurt and not help your cause.
For this is the truth: When hard sell turns off the objects of your courtship, then far from adding votes for your candidate, it actually deducts votes from them.
Partisans should remember that they’re agents of their principal, and their behavior, even in cyberspace, would impact on the overall campaign.
For example, if a partisan with 1,500 FB friends habitually jeers the 20 or so friends who support other candidates, the majority of his friends who are still sitting on the fence would surely notice the abrasive way he pursues his crusade.
He would not only lose friends but lose votes for his candidate as well.
The truth is there is a large “market votes” out there waiting to be convinced. No candidate has yet reached the tipping point. Verbally bamboozling supporters of other candidates is not the way to win them over.
The way to make believers out of them is through language that is kind, gentle and understanding, and used in a discourse that respects healthy contrarian views. As they say, words that generate light, not heat.
One should leave the acerbic, below-the-belt, ad hominem attacks to the main actors and their surrogates on the national stage. Among friends, civility should guide the way we campaign.
To partisans: Observe etiquette in social media. That’s the way to influence people. More votes have been harnessed by kind words than by language that lacerates.
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But even if you wanted to heckle somebody, then do it to your own candidate. Hector him to improve his platform, and cure the defects of his policy pronouncements.
By being an in-house police, you’re doing him a great service by correcting his weaknesses, and thus making him a stronger and winnable candidate.
Only through such constructive criticism will the candidate be able to reach out and reel in those who are still sitting on the fence.
If you see a kink in his campaign, make sure your reservations are heard. Every campaign needs a friendly critic. No, make that an army which must holler if the emperor has no clothes.
As the campaign progresses, adjustments are made along the way—messages are tweaked, character flaws corrected. Believe me, candidates listen to feedback because those who stubbornly stick to fixed positions are soon defeated by those who are flexible.
Another way of helping your candidate is to convince them to go local, and in this, he might need your help.
In a tight elections, going micro, pinpointing programs, customizing a platform to local needs might just provide the winning edge.
A national candidate who could painstaking cobble together a town-by-town program of action will be looked upon kindly by voters.
Thus, if you’re looking for a comparative advantage for your candidate, then help him compose his plans for your town. After you have made the list, sell it to him, and ensure that he buys in.
The advantage of localizing platforms is that it transforms general rhetoric into specific programs. It break downs the national blueprint into local plans. It benchmarks what a candidate will do for a locality. It shows that a candidate cares even for a hicksville of a town.
A grassroots platform is the best antidote to motherhood statements—and the surest way to the voter’s heart. Help your candidate draft it. Be a creator of ideas instead ofsimply transmitting them.
