Technology In Politics
Politics is changing. That’s a fact. Technology is having an impact on the way campaigns are planned and executed. But is politics changing technology or has technology changed politics?
Politics has been around for many thousands of years. The old practice was for politicians to get up, go out, meet people, hear their concerns and address them, speak about their plans, and gain feedback from those discussions.
But is that the status quo in 2019?
We’ve seen rapid advances in technology since the paper press. The electorate no longer has to look to newspaper stands to find out what’s happening, who’s doing what, where, why and how. It’s more than just social media, it’s more than just, TV, Radio, and computers. Politicians have become not only more tactful, but they’ve also become more careful. With the advent of smartphones, a simple wrong statement becomes a video or audio clip that will exist on the internet, forever.
The way people disseminate and absorb information has vastly changed the way politicians operate. Fake news has become the new catch of the day and propaganda that would once take weeks to propagate can sway the course of an election overnight.
But technology hasn’t only had negative effects; in fact, it has had more positive effects than negative ones.
Technology has created room for:
- More and better transparency
- Lower campaign costs
- More jobs through specialization
- Advancement in security and security technology to combat hacking
- A two-way channel to communicate with the audience
- More efficiency
- Access to more global expertise
- More big data to enable microtargeting
Software provides us with tools to more accurately conduct polling as well as automate the counting of ballots. Voters can now register and vote via their smartphones or computer even when they’re abroad. Even though the technology is still developing and there has been much debate on hacking, it has innately changed the nature of voting by itself.
Survey software has also made it possible to collect and analyze much more data much more efficiently. It has allowed politicians to more accurately see which areas they need to focus on and develop.
Technology has firmly become a part of our modern political systems, and while it’s clear that technology has changed politics, so has politics forced technology to change.
They have formed a symbiotic relationship that allows them both to grow and change for the better.