Social Media
Singaporean politicians win and lose at social media
IMAGE: SUHAIMI ABDULLAH
SINGAPORE — As Singaporeans prepare to vote next week, local politicians have been stepping up their game on social media.
When your electorate is super-connected –- as Singaporeans are -– this move is important. Particularly when the official campaigning period is so short, at a mere nine days, it’s one of the few ways voters can get a sense of who the candidates are.
It’s something that the incumbent Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong knows perfectly well — his social media feeds feature a beautifully curated mix of official photos and personal posts.
It’s a brilliant plan that makes the prime minister look like just another average Singaporean living a happy life with his family and colleagues, strolling in parks and visiting hawker centres.
Positioning the prime minister as a nice guy you could hang out with in a kopitiam (coffee shop) cuts across the gulf of power relations and makes him seem much more likeable.
Sylvia Lim, chairman of the opposition Workers’ Party, is also proving to be quite the social media whiz. Her Instagram account is so good at trolling; it’s practically a social media work of art.
Such a tongue-in-cheek social media profile makes one seem more approachable, like a good mate to hang out with rather than a stiff, aloof politician.
Another opposition candidate with a great social media presence is Jeannette Chong-Aruldoss, from the Singapore People's Party (SPP). Her feed shares photos and experiences from her many walkabouts, portraying her as an earnest and devoted candidate who has put a ton of work into wooing her voters. And then there’s the fierce speech that closes this video of her team on Nomination Day:
Alas, not every politician totally gets the social media game.Alas, not every politician totally gets the social media game.
New party Singaporeans First tried to prove their ability to connect with the digital generation by sharing their press release on Facebook. Unfortunately, the party flubbed, failing to export their release out of Microsoft Word before taking a screengrab:
When Singaporeans pointed out that the red squiggly lines of the spellcheck were pretty unsightly, SingFirst appeared a little lost, asking people what the problem was in the comments section. They finally fixed it, but didn’t want to lose the likes that the first post had already garnered, and so just ended up posting the whole thing again.
Social media can be a cruel friend, and such a gaffe simply makes a party look inept. But perhaps not as inept as it looked when it printed a campaign banner with the Tamil language portion in gibberish.
When so much of the election is being watched on social media, parties need to be savvy in the way they present themselves. Things can go unexpectedly viral, and you don’t want that to be because you’ve made yourself look silly.
Political parties who haven’t figured out the point of social media should get themselves a crash course quick, and understand that it’s not about sharing photos and press releases for the sake of having things to share, but about engaging people and revealing a bit of your personality — or at least the personality you want people to think you have.
After all, not everyone can count on the government's censorship arm disallowing your videoto attract eyeballs.
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