Social Media now has become a progressively important part of many people’s life. The awareness of using social media has moved way ahead than just creating, sharing or exchanging information. Social media are now taken as one of the important tool that is shaping public opinion, promoting business and reaching out to targeted audience to meet your goals. The wonderful feature of providing real time information through social media like Facebook and Twitter, people are being more conscious and relying on social media for various evidence and gen. There’s no doubt that opinion building used to be very complex in earlier days consuming big times, however, through social media now it has become one of the simple process that construct any public opinion and construction is very quick.
It will take no time to construct public opinion through social media now. For instance, couple of weeks ago the has tag of #DonateOilToIndianEmbassy became such a viral in couple of hours on twitter that twitter user decided to gather in front of Indian Embassy and did symbolic protest against unofficial blockade from India to Nepal. The has tag became very popular that it topped the list in twitter trends. This shows how quick social media can be in building public opinion. There are many instance where social media has played crucial role in making people aware about various contemporary issues and concern. I would like to relate my case where social media played an instrumental role to shape my consciousness on various concern – I still remember one of my friend added me to one the facebook group in 2011 and the name of group is ‘Come on youth, Stand Up’ – then the group was basically focused on building campaigns to metaphorically pressurize CA members and political leaders to draft constitution on time. Later the group shaped well and started campaigning on various social issues, in fact the same group played instrumental role right after massive earthquake for various relief related work. So this proves various other groups and campaigns like this is building strong public opinion to execute various humanitarian work, advocacy and general awareness.
In Nepal, major campaigns like Occupy Baluwatar happened for more than 100 days to advocate against gender based violence and impunity, Nepal Unites to bring youth in same platform to raise awareness on various socio-political issues, Welcome to my Constitution in 2012 which symbolically welcomed constitution to act as one of the pressure group then. Similarly, now youth civil society are conducting various creative and constructive campaigns under has tag of #HamiNepali assisted from social media to build strong public opinion – one the event they recently conducted was #WakeupKumbhakarna to symbolically replicate the character Kumbhakarna (one who always sleeps). There are so many campaigns and events led through social media in Nepal and across the globe like ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to raise fund and awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. We also have example of removing Egyptian ruler in recent Egypt's revolution and many experts says social media played an instrumental role in the revolution. There are social media based campaigns and movement which were not successful as well – social media may not always play instrumental role in building public opinion so the bottom line is it can construct both constructive and destructive opinion.
Thus, public opinion refers to an expression of major fraction of community on various social and political agendas. In current scenario, the social media users represents the major chunk of population so the opinion building via social media can be considered as major way forward for any issue. No doubt, public opinion can be created, converted or diverted from social media.
Constructing public opinion via social media
Social Media now has become a progressively important part of many people’s life. The awareness of using social media has moved way ahead than just creating, sharing or exchanging information. Social media are now taken as one of the important tool that is shaping public opinion, promoting business and reaching out to targeted audience to meet your goals. The wonderful feature of providing real time information through social media like Facebook and Twitter, people are being more conscious and relying on social media for various evidence and gen. There’s no doubt that opinion building used to be very complex in earlier days consuming big times, however, through social media now it has become one of the simple process that construct any public opinion and construction is very quick.
It will take no time to construct public opinion through social media now. For instance, couple of weeks ago the has tag of #DonateOilToIndianEmbassy became such a viral in couple of hours on twitter that twitter user decided to gather in front of Indian Embassy and did symbolic protest against unofficial blockade from India to Nepal. The has tag became very popular that it topped the list in twitter trends. This shows how quick social media can be in building public opinion. There are many instance where social media has played crucial role in making people aware about various contemporary issues and concern. I would like to relate my case where social media played an instrumental role to shape my consciousness on various concern – I still remember one of my friend added me to one the facebook group in 2011 and the name of group is ‘Come on youth, Stand Up’ – then the group was basically focused on building campaigns to metaphorically pressurize CA members and political leaders to draft constitution on time. Later the group shaped well and started campaigning on various social issues, in fact the same group played instrumental role right after massive earthquake for various relief related work. So this proves various other groups and campaigns like this is building strong public opinion to execute various humanitarian work, advocacy and general awareness.
In Nepal, major campaigns like Occupy Baluwatar happened for more than 100 days to advocate against gender based violence and impunity, Nepal Unites to bring youth in same platform to raise awareness on various socio-political issues, Welcome to my Constitution in 2012 which symbolically welcomed constitution to act as one of the pressure group then. Similarly, now youth civil society are conducting various creative and constructive campaigns under has tag of #HamiNepali assisted from social media to build strong public opinion – one the event they recently conducted was #WakeupKumbhakarna to symbolically replicate the character Kumbhakarna (one who always sleeps). There are so many campaigns and events led through social media in Nepal and across the globe like ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to raise fund and awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. We also have example of removing Egyptian ruler in recent Egypt's revolution and many experts says social media played an instrumental role in the revolution. There are social media based campaigns and movement which were not successful as well – social media may not always play instrumental role in building public opinion so the bottom line is it can construct both constructive and destructive opinion.
Thus, public opinion refers to an expression of major fraction of community on various social and political agendas. In current scenario, the social media users represents the major chunk of population so the opinion building via social media can be considered as major way forward for any issue. No doubt, public opinion can be created, converted or diverted from social media.
