Before you cast a ballot in support of your favorite presidential candidate on Election Day, you are probably going to “like” his Facebook page and “follow” his Twitter account.

Welcome to the age of social media, when even government has not been spared from its penetration into almost every facet of life for millions of Americans.

Officials representing many levels and factions of the government can be found on Facebook and Twitter, but accounts belonging to those running for the presidency tend to attract the most attention. This is true not only for national major party candidates President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney, but also for the candidates running for president of Syracuse University’s Student Association.

The SA election will be held Nov. 12-15. So far three candidates — PJ Alampi, the Student Life Committee chair; Allie Curtis, the vice president; and Kyle Coleman, an assembly representative and member of the Finance Board — had announced their candidacies as of Wednesday night.

Since 2008, when Obama made social media a large and successful component of his campaign, candidates throughout the country have followed his lead in navigating this age of technology to the best of their electoral advantage.

Social media is a beneficial tool in elections for promoting the awareness of a candidate and their positions on issues. But it becomes extremely unbeneficial to voters when the content of a candidate’s tweets and posts go beyond defending beliefs and into the territory of mudslinging. Messages become skewed, the capacity for misinterpretation is widened and the reliability of sources is increasingly questioned.

During the weekly SA meeting this past Monday, President Dylan Lustig said comments lacking in professionalism concerning the SA presidential race have already appeared on the group’s Facebook page, and he would like to see this come to an end.

When Lustig ran for the presidency last fall against then-Student Life Chair Taylor Carr, he said respect for the opposition, on both sides, was lost. He commanded that the utmost respect must always be applied, especially on the group’s social media accounts, for the rest of the election season.

Lustig could not be more spot on.

Though the nature of the campaigning beast invokes hostilities, supplying voters with useless and often untruthful statements against the opposing candidates is distracting from the core issues that presidential races, both nationally and here at SU, are supposed to be about.

Voters are capable of assessing a contender’s key positions and passionate arguments presented by candidates in order to make a decision on Election Day. Social media has made this information more accessible than ever. But navigating through the mud is increasingly difficult.

The electorate deserves to know the truth about the candidates vying for their vote, and it is not wrong for the opposition to point out flaws in the plans and goals of the other candidates. Debates, interviews, press releases and news articles are forums for this.

A 140-character attack with no room for explanation is not.

Everyone is entitled to his/her opinion, and everyone is entitled to share that opinion. But it is up to those who wish to lead their constituency to set the tone for expressing discontent.

Though on a national scale the current situation may never be changed, maybe Alampi, Curtis, Coleman and any other contenders could provide an example of respectful campaigning and social media usage here at SU.

Just give us the information, not the muddy posts.

Rachael Barillari is a junior political science and Middle Eastern studies major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at rebarill@syr.edu.

 

Published on October 18, 2012 at 1:00 am