The Importance of Social Networks in the Pre-election Period

Abstract

Objective and fair elections is a fundament for the development of the country’s democracy. Such campaign is very important for Georgia, a country on the path to democracy. Following the growing influence of social networking users and platform, political parties, candidates and activists use social networking to spread their own ideas and programs. In order to receive and spread information, people mostly use “Facebook” among numerous social platforms. “Facebook” has also become one of the large-scale platforms for electoral activities, which significantly influences electoral environment and defines voters’ behavior. Observing pre-electoral campaign of the latest elections made it clear, that “Facebook” was used not only for spreading personal programs and ideas of the political actors, but for discreditation of the separate candidates by disinformation and dissemination of damaging information, which had an organizational and purposeful act. During the observing process, it has become clear that besides of discreditation of different electoral subjects, social media is successfully used for political finances and agitation related to ignoring of electoral legislation prohibitions. Keywords: Social network, Elections, Political parties, Voter.