Do social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr have a place in Uganda’s ongoing 2011 election campaigns as February 18 looms large with every passing day?
And are these new media platforms having impact if any among the various constituents of the major political parties that have a presence on the Internet the same way newspapers, television and radio broadcasts have?
Well, a look at the websites of the four main political parties participating in the general elections indicates that social media has been adopted by the major political players in Uganda but is yet to catch on like is the case in the developed world.
Social media was a big factor in the US presidential elections back in 2008 when President Barack Obama widely succeeded at it during the Democratic Party primaries and during his election bid for the US presidency.
Obama used Facebook, Twitter, as well as apps for the iPhone, to get people voting in numbers that had not been seen before.
Members of the electorate even contributed millions of US Dollars to Obama’s campaign with the help of new media and the social networking sites were major channels for generating the money let alone inform members about what was going in.
Authors of a book titled “Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Change Your Life” said Obama had more than 2 million American supporters on Facebook; his rival McCain had, just over 600,000.
On Twitter, Obama could count on more than 112,000 supporters 'tweeting' to get him elected. McCain, for his part, had only 4,600 followers on Twitter.
The party websites of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) and the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) have recognized the need for interactivity through the social networking sites, which are especially popular among the young people.
The NRM and FDC have members actively participating using the social networks.
This though cannot be said of the Democratic Party (DP), which has the Facebook, MySpace and Twitter icons on the party website, but they do not take you to the party’s Facebook page or Twitter account.
It is worse for the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), which has an old fashioned website (www.upcparty.net). The website does not have any interactive resources. Some of the material on the website has not been updated in months.
In fact, there is nothing to show on the UPC website that the party has a candidate traversing the country in search of votes and selling the UPC manifesto to Ugandans in readiness for a general election.
The NRM website (www.nrm.ug) is the most dynamic and modern of them all. The party constituents and members can follow goings on using Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.
Supporters can also make phone calls for any inquiries and also subscribe for short message services (SMS) on their mobile phones to receive the latest NRM updates by sending an SMS to 6760.
On the Twitter account @YKMuseveni, no one was following President Yoweri Museveni while 15 people are followers.
On both the Museveni Facebook fan page and the NRM Secretariat Facebook page, there is a total of 467 members.
The pages essentially have posts of newspaper articles and it is these that members are reacting to that form the bulk of the activity on the pages.
Visitors to the website can listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos of some of candidate Museveni’s campaign rallies across the country or view still images off the Flickr website.
The Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), which is leading a coalition of political parties has a website (www.fdcuganda.org), which comes with a blog and an emailing list for starters.
One can also follow FDC on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and there is a provision for RSS feeds.
On the social networking site Twitter, nine people, most of them top members of FDC were following FDC on Twitter while 37 people are followers.
“I weep whenever I look at the pathetic state of our health sector. I don’t need to come from Kampala to remind you,” one of the tweets on the FDC twitter accounts reads.
FDC’s twitter page was more active with 85 tweets compared to 3 on the NRM twitter account.
On the FDC Facebook page, 857 people ‘like’ FDC and the page has a combination of newspaper posting with members commenting as well as actual posts from within the FDC.
The Uganda Federal Alliance (UFA) of Betty Kamya, the Member of Parliament for Rubaga North, who is also in the presidential race, has a Facebook page with 44 members who like UFA.
Jaberi Bidandi Ssali’s People’s Progressive Party (PPP) does not have a website let alone a Facebook or Twitter account to talk of.
The same is the case with Abed Bwanika’s People’s Development Party (PDP).
In general, visits to Facebook pages, Twitter accounts indicate there is interactivity between the parties and their members or constituencies, but it is still very insignificant.
One cannot easily draw conclusions based on the numbers of visitors to these social media or members of the electorate taking advantage of social media but the fact people are interacting indicates Uganda is not so far off for social media to play a big role in the electoral process.
Elsewhere, these new platforms give perfect real time feedback to political events, political statements that when many members of the electorate use them, they cam amplify the impact of an event according to an article that was published by the Guardian newspaper right after the elections in the United Kingdom (UK) this year.
Attempts to speak to party spokespeople about the ways in which they are using social media were fruitless. Most are upcountry, while those that are in Kampala missed various appointments for interviews.
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