Politicians struggling to cut through on social media, experts say
Social Media While there can be no doubt politicians are becoming more visible on sites like Facebook, Twitter and instagram, social media trend experts have questioned their effectiveness. University of Western Australia associate professor of marketing Paul Harrigan said politicians needed to adapt the way they communicate on social media platforms if they want young people to listen. "I would say that they're treating these two-way channels like traditional one-way channels," he said. "They need to be going out there and try to engage with people and listen to what people are saying — their thoughts, their views, their policies — and then adapting their strategy around that. "But I'm not seeing that happening." Mr Harrigan said often what most parties were doing was taking the same message, sometimes the same advertisement, and simply placing it on Facebook and Twitter. "It can't be as planned as that," he said. ...