Current Event 2

Social Media acts as a free advertisement source for politicians and the president elections candidates. A tweet on Twitter, or a post on Facebook reaches millions of users. According to the "2016 Presidential Election Circus: Is Social Media the Cause?" article Donald Trump, the Republican party candidate, would have to pay $380 million, in order to reach his audience by using classical ads instead of social media tools. The huge audience that uses social media as a source of news and other information makes social media websites and applications a battle field of opinions. 

The current event that brought millions of active internet users to the social media battle field was Trump's claim about Muslim population is not going to enter US anymore. His claim brought great attention to his figure. Obviously, his statements are targeted to raise public's alertness and make his name known by everyone. Here, it comes to psychology of people's mind. Who would an American citizen vote for? For a person that brings up such an intimate and emotional question about Muslims in the country or for a less familiar candidate? Familiarity is social media's weapon and Donald Trump actively uses this weapon to make his political campaign to be heard. Moreover, opposing views on social media unite supporters and sometimes persuade the opposers are now right.

On the other hand, opposition unites as well and the battle between pro-Trumps and con-Trumps gets even worse. Great flow of criticism of Trump's claim turned Twitter and Facebook in political debate. In my opinion, it does not hurt the candidate's reputation, it just brings attention to his political career. This interest serves a purpose of making a candidate familiar to the public. The familiarity would be a turning point for those who will vote without knowledge about politics. As  history shows, the rest who have a certain political views (eg. republicans or democrats)  will vote for their party candidates.

Information link: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/07/politics/donald-trump-muslim-ban-immigration/