Facebook Face-off

IT’S BEGINNING to look like a stretch, but assuming the integrity of the May 2013 mid-term exercise—meaning the votes cast were accurately counted by the Comelec’s problematic PCOS machines and transmitted—the efforts of individual Netizens as well as groups to influence the outcome seems to have come to naught.

All apparent failures were the online campaigns on Facebook and Twitter  to prevent the election of certain candidates for the Senate (for example, that of Nancy Binay’s);  to elect candidates thought to be actually armed with platforms of government and/or who have a different approach to the problems of the nation; and to  minimize if not completely prevent the election of members of political dynasties.

These were goals that by themselves are already difficult to achieve in a single campaign period.  The primary nemesis of intelligent voting, name recall, cannot be reversed without a sustained campaign stretching across years and even decades.

Name recall is tied to the political dynasties issue, the most prominent names during every election being those of candidates from families whose various members have long been in government, and with which, as a result, the electorate is most familiar.

The attempt to acquaint the voters with lesser known candidates who had declared platforms  that departed from the usual motherhood statements of the traditional politicians similarly foundered.  Prominence apparently resonates with the voters more than actually having a platform of government—or even  halfway intelligent opinions on the problems and issues that confront the nation.

Encouraging voters to choose candidates on the basis of which of them have the platforms and plans of government that could address the country’s problems failed because name recall is deeply linked to the dominance of political families in Philippine politics and governance. The campaign against political dynasties themselves was also doomed from the very start because the dominance of political dynasties is both cause and result of the failure of the electorate to decide on the basis of issues rather than on whose names they can best remember.

As intrinsically difficult as the campaigns to make elections more meaningful are to wage, much less win, their being conducted through the social media did not help make them any easier, or likely to succeed.

Although many groups and individuals tried, the social media are not particularly suited to “serious” discussions. It isn’t solely due to the limitations of, say, Twitter, through which a user can communicate only with 140 characters.  It is also because such social media sites as Facebook are primarily vehicles for communicating personal information to “friends” with whom, in most cases, the individual  has in common the same interest in relationships, family activities, and other personal information.

It’s more than obvious that Facebook “friends” are far from those real-life friends with whom individuals often share common experiences, backgrounds and interests, as well as ideas and opinions on a variety of concerns including public ones. In those cases in which Facebook has brought together people who, to begin with, already share the same ideas and concerns, very rarely have they managed to successfully convince others with different views and opinions to come around to sharing their views. What usually happens is that the like-minded come together to reinforce their already set convictions in what amounts to conversations among the converted. It’s a function of the “un-serious” character of the social media: few if any are liable to change their minds through them, they being  first of all vehicles for the public disclosure of personal information, which in effect precludes changing already set views.

The consequence is that a group that may be focused on changing other people’s minds usually ends up with its members’ talking among themselves and reinforcing each other’s views, but failing to convince others with different opinions to share those views, much less to act on them by, say, going out into the streets to demonstrate in behalf of a particular advocacy, or by voting for particular candidates in behalf of such campaigns as diminishing the influence of political dynasties.

The face-off with political dynasties and clueless candidates that many thought could take place with the help of Twitter and/or Facebook didn’t happen during the May 13 exercise, and is unlikely to happen in the future.  Only real-life, face to face engagement works.