Frankly, if it wasn't for Maya pushing me to write something I wouldn't have - so without any political puns - la3younik!.... For a complete list of the politicians using twitter (or having twitter used on their behalf by tech-savvy consultants/assistants) please refer to the complete list on Mustafa's Beirut Spring.
It seems - up until recently - twitter was a person's safe haven from political bombardment, according to Mustafa only very few of those actually engage in dialogues while others still resort to the usual top-down communication mechanism. Whereas this seems as an oddity in an age where everyone is challenging the authority of traditional media and one-way-street communication, looking a bit down leads us to conclude that whereas the means of communication has changed - the technique from both emitter and receiver is still the same.
It might seem shocking for you to learn that people still like to be told what to do - without much argument or fuss. Still like to be in the "entourage" - virtual or real - of politicians and in case you think I am exaggerating think of the famous kiss Ammar el Houri planted on Saad Hariri's hand after his speech in Martyrs' square!
Naturally, how much the Amchit residents are influenced by president Suleiman's tweets, or if the hardcore Future movement members in Akkar and the deep Bequa'a give a toss is Ayman Hariri got himself a T90 (a tweet straight from Saad) remains to be seen.
So now social media, in all its forms, has been highjacked by politicians who most likely do not know how to operate a computer. Or if they do like Mohammad Rahal only use it to play minesweeper during boring cabinet sessions.
Photo credit Al Balad newspaper
No comments:
Post a Comment