Social media is increasingly being used as a political voice around the world. It allows more freedom of expression and makes it easier for like-minded individuals to organize collectively. Studies show that social media users, especially younger ones, frequently engage in civic activities like commenting on issues, following candidates, and joining political groups online. While social media gives more people a platform to voice opinions, some argue it mainly benefits those already influential online and there are doubts about how accurately it represents those without internet access. Overall, social media seems to be enhancing political participation for many, though governments can also attempt to monitor or control online political networks.

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Information
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Social Media allows people to gain a political voice and is leading to
change in many societies.
Introduction
Nowadays the attention of the public is directly related to platforms web 2.0 such as
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. According to the article published on the web Journalist
Resource [1], there is evidence that people who consume more news via social media have a
high probability of being politically engaged. The Obama presidential campaigns in 2008 and
2012 and the Arab Spring in 2011 are true examples of how digital era can trigger a political
action, although significant data does not exist to conclude it. At the same time Social Media
has grown as a forum for political activisms [2]. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube stimulate
citizens to be involved in political events but it is clearly restricted to active people on the
Internet.
It is noticeable that new media channels have increased in the past few years and they have
contributed to the augmentation of the electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) communication. In
general, consumers are using Web 2.0 tools (e.g., online discussion forums, consumer review
sites, weblogs, social network sites, etc.) to communicate their opinions and exchange ideas
[3]. But this form of communication (WOM) can generate positive and negatives points of
view on the Internet.
The debate continues to know exactly how Social Media are changing the way people see
political actions such as campaigns and activism. Is it a real channel to communicate
effectively with citizen or peers? Can politicians and leaders connect with their target groups
through Facebook or Twitter? Can Social Media provoke revolutions? Can a normal guy
mobilise thousand of persons to riot?
The questions posed above are present interrogatives of the media, researchers and
politicians. Internet and Social media have proved to be a useful channel to promote protests
and conflicts. Yet, they also allow governments to control networks and monitor activists.
Prison may be the punishment for some of them.
To understand the role of the media, the concept of the networked public sphere has
appeared in the past twenty years as a venue for discussion of public interest. It is an
alternative arena for political debate. This arena is more independent from huge media
entities (large newspapers, TV channels, etc.), sometimes without government controls and
open to wider participation. Remarkable questions are raised: have the Internet and Social
Media impacted on democracy? [4] Or is it possible to describe social media as a genuine
public sphere?
This report shows studies and examples presented by Christian Fuchs and other researchers
to address the role of Social Media as a political voice these days using the concept of public
sphere. It summarises discussions that are in favour of this argument and others which have
a more sceptical view. Finally, it describes the influence of Social Media in Knowledge
Management practices.

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The Public Sphere
Fuchs in his article [5] mentioned the definition of public sphere proposed by Habermas. It is
defined as a public sphere where all citizens have access and include freedom in several
aspects such as: assembly, association, expression and publication of opinion.
This concept is based on the concept of Marx about public sphere. Marx indicated private
property and intellectual skills are necessary to have participation and at the same time it
indicates that just bourgeois class could have access. This statement generated many
criticisms from the other classes. For instance the working class critiqued it and said they had
been excluded from the “public” sphere.
As a result of the arguments presented above, the public sphere is really an environment that
allows their members to have freedom but under conditions of resources. Social media can
become a public sphere but it is only conditioned to the bourgeois class.
Property and Intellectual skills are important in Social Media because without them it would
be impossible to build a community online. Other resources like leadership and team working
are also important to build a name in the online world. Reputation is often cited as an
important determinant of information sharing behaviour. People share and contribute their
knowledge because they want to gain an informal recognition and establish themselves as
experts [3]. On some occasions these characteristics come by default if the online user is a
famous person. Social networks like Twitter require that people be influential in order to gain
attention and be noticed. It proves that people with access to the Internet are becoming the
voice of those without access. But this last affirmation raised doubts as to whether it is the
true opinion of people without online profiles.
Fuchs in his work determined a relation between social media and the public sphere and truly
believed Web 2.0 tools has resulted in for and against public discussions in the political realm.
He posed key questions related to Twitter as an example of Social Network.
Next, the optimistic and sceptical public discussions about Social Media (as a channel to gain
political voice) are detailed.
Social Media as a way to engage people
According to the paper provided [5], some surveys, studies and concepts have shown that
Social Media engage people to have a political participation. Some facts of this are presented
as follows.
Social Media enhances the collective motivation whose purpose is increasing the welfare of a
group or collective. Collectivism can be related to the social identity theory where a person
acquires identity from the groups they are part of. Social Network users take part in
Knowledge sharing when they feel their ideas are according to the community [3].
Shirky in 2008 affirmed that Social Media enhances freedom. He addressed the concept that
to speak online it is only necessary to post opinions on social networks in order to connect
with others. One result would be to get positive effects of the new media but on the other
hand, it could bring about radical changes in society. Shirky also argued that social media is a
channel for insurgents to adopt new strategies. Social networks also contribute to the

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creation of committed groups that follow specific rules and would result in an improvement
for democracy. Although, he has evaluated the two sides of social media, but he affirmed
that the positive effects outweigh the negative ones and in order to confirm his opinion, he
stated the techno-determinist equation: social media = more democracy = more freedom.
Democracy involves the inclusion of new ways to be politically immersed. Online protests,
political opinions on blogs, posting content on YouTube, comments in online forums and
tweets are examples of online political activities these days. Papacharissi argued that online
activities are enabled politically through a private media. Twitter is presented as a model
where boundaries between public and private spheres do not exist.
A survey presented by Rainie [7] indicates that 60% of American adults have an active
account in sites like Facebook or Twitter and 66% of them have utilised these platforms to
post their notions about topics regarding to civil and political issues, react to other postings,
follow candidates, share, like, comment and be part of a group on social media pages. It is
useful to know that some of these activities are more likely to be pursued by younger social
media users (see Figure 1)
Figure 1, younger social media users are using social networks for civic activities (Source: Rainie [7])
Benkler et al. in their publication [4] stated that the impact of digital technologies on social
mobilisation and politics have causal mechanisms that show the relationship between
Internet and politics. First it mentioned the cost for organising collective movements. Second
it described the tendency for individuals to form groups and last but not least, the
opportunity to meet people with similar points of view regarding a particular problem on the
Internet. Social networks can offer a wide motorway for individuals to express loudly their
preferences and opinions.
A study published in 2012 [6] suggested that supportive messages to promote a specific
candidate on Facebook increased directly and indirectly a total of 340,000 additional votes. It

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was due to the fact that closer friends with real opinions were more influential than television
or radio advertising.
One interesting example of how Social Media can engage people (even when government
laws do not allow to make protests) was experimented in Spain. Last year a law prohibited
protests outside governmental buildings. In response Spanish activists decided to create the
first virtual political demonstration using holograms (see Figure 2).
For the virtual protest, the 'NoSomosDelito' ('We are not crime') movement asked
sympathisers to join the demonstration by sending videos of them via a webcam. Nearly two
thousands projections were transmitted during one hour outside government buildings. This
perfectly communicated that despite laws and barriers imposed by local governments, Social
Media and technology allow people to join efforts to contribute to freedom of opinion.
Figure 2: Thousands of holograms march past the Spanish parliament in Madrid as part of a virtual protest against a
new law banning demonstrators outside government buildings (Source: Tomlinson [8])
Social Media as a fake political voice
In contrast Fuchs addressed that even when Social Media can give resources to organise and
coordinate protests, it cannot replace the true protest experience. It is demonstrated that
online activism can cause material damages such as Anonynous group (hacking and blocking
important sites). But most of the online events like sending a tweet, writing a blog or
uploading a video have harmless results and could be ignored by the people in power.
Being political is part of anyone’s day-to-day activities and social media has increased the
opportunities to express opinions to a specific network. But at the same time, being online all
the time keeps people in a pleasant comfort zone. Digital users feel rewarded when they sign
an online petition or “retweet” the last tweet of their political supporter. In response Fuchs
mentioned an argument presented by Gladwell where it reported that real activists and rebels
risk their lives by becoming victims of violence by the police. Thus, activism from behind a
computer or smartphone is not real. Gladwell also pointed that Facebook and Twitter would
succeed in situations that do not require real people (without sacrifice). In contrast to

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Shirky’s opinions, Gladwell concluded that social networks allow activists to express
themselves but these do not represent any political impact.
In this article Morozov introduced the concept of slacktivism as an online activism that has
zero political or social impact. It gives to the online protestants an illusion of causing impact
on the world. Slacktivism is considered as an activism of a lazy generation. He also argues
the notion of a twitter revolution is just a utopia that hides the real knowledge of
communication.
Another important aspect is the role of journalists and how their knowledge (shared in social
media) contributes to democracy functions. The paper published by Poell, Thomas. & José
van Dijck [9] argued that the press should promote public debate or provide critical checks
on governments and for this, journalists must operate independently from both political and
economic power. It also pointed mainstream news are being manipulated by political
pressure, which in democracies are expressed via journalists. Poell and van Dicjk questioned
whether social media act as neutral platforms and provide egalitarian support for activities.
Drawing this query, it is demonstrated that social media undermine the ability of journalists
to work with freedom.
Knowledge Management through Social Media
Panahi et al. [10] reported that Tacit Knowledge resides in the head of individuals and it can
be represented in form of experience, know-how. This knowledge is the most significant
value of a person. From a Knowledge Management perspective, it is necessary to store this
knowledge to share and manage in order to make decisions. But nowadays, the utilisation of
technology destroys the paradigm of the traditional knowledge management systems. It
happened because the current knowledge has an unstructured nature that make difficult to
manage it. Traditional mechanisms such as mentoring, face-to-face meeting, observation,
etc. are not longer effective because the fast growing business models. The article also
argued that the inclusion of web technologies the opportunity to share the tacit knowledge
with experts using interactive and collaborative technologies.
An article published by Reichental [11] stated that Social media make knowledge iterative. As
example: content on Twitter can start discussions; and chats in enterprise social network that
link employees, experts and data can defy categorisations. It is commented that social media
completely changes the way that knowledge management paradigm works.
The arguments presented above can suppose that social media affect the way in which the
knowledge is transferred. This could influence the political inclinations of people in the public
sphere. The framework in the Figure 3 presented by Shu et al. [12] support it. This
framework identifies the social relationship between members of a political organisation. It
describes how socio-technological factors change the knowledge transfer. As a result, it
determines the performance based on political inclinations of members of any organisation.

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Figure 2: Conceptual Framework (Source: Shu et al. [12])
Conclusions
Social Media is a great tool to express opinions, ideas and disseminate information. Social
media also enhance the creation of social object content that allows knowledge transference
with communities. However, social media is not a true tool for political actions or the cause of
these. Researches presented in this report clearly evidence examples that social media could
amplify riots or demonstrations but do not create them.
Real owners of the “public sphere” are those who are in power. Power (governments, big
companies, political parties, etc.) and resources are the most important value to gain
influence on Twitter or Facebook. Without them it is impossible create mobilisations or
influence people to go to the streets and protest. At the end, social media platforms must to
follow laws and regulations according of each country.
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References
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[2] Renzi e Berlusconi sui Social and In focus – European Elections 2014 (2014) The role played by
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[3] Cheung, C. M. K. and Thadani, D. R. (2012) The impact of electronic word-of-mouth
communication: A literature analysis and integrative model
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and the Networked Public Sphere: Mapping the SOPA-PIPA Debate.
[5] Fuchs, C. (2014) Social Media: A Critical Introduction
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(2012) A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization
[7] Rainie, L. (no date) Social Media and Political Engagement. Available at:
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[8] Tomlinson, S. (2015) World’s first HOLOGRAM protest: Thousands join virtual march in Spain.
Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3038317/The-world-s-HOLOGRAM-protest-
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buildings.html (Accessed: 28 April 2015)
[9] Poell, Thomas. & José van Dijck (2014). Social media and journalistic independence. In
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Bennett & Niki Strange. 182-201. London: Routledge.
[10] Panahi, S., Watson, J. and Partridge, H. (2012) Social Media and Tacit Knowledge Sharing:
Developing a Conceptual Model
[11] Reichental, J. (no date) Knowledge management in the age of social media - O’Reilly Radar.
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[12] Shi, Y. and Wang, S. (2009) in Cutting-edge research topics on multiple criteria decision making:
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