AKEED, Amman

To a certain extent, the comments and discussions exchanged by activists on their social media accounts and personal pages concerning the elections can be considered a window on the attitude of public opinion vis-à-vis these elections.

In the current season of parliamentary elections, the persons directly involved, including candidates and their lists and supporters, have been visibly present on social media platforms. Many people have created pages and accounts related to the elections. In fact, these pages constituted the main media outlet for candidates in the period that preceded the legal period of advertisement. Interested persons took advantage of the fact that it is hard to control what is published on social media and to hold people accountable for it.

Presumed candidates started holding consultations and "sounding out" people on Facebook, while others posted direct announcements on their pages. In many cases, these personal posts on Facebook turned into news on electronic sites, which considered these posts sources for the names in question. Naturally, some of these names pursued candidacy all the way, while others backtracked or denied having had any intention to run in the first place. This is especially since any person could propose the name he or she wants.

In a previous report, AKEED addressed the cases of a number of women whose story with candidacy started and ended on social media pages and sites that copied information from these pages.

The press and electronic sites have followed the phenomenon of the growing presence of social media in election-related media. Al Dustour daily published an item under the headline "Parliamentary Elections Talk of Social Media Sites; Youth Make Most Comments". Al Ghad newspaper also published an item under the title "Grammatical Mistakes and Mansaf…Facebook Users Looking for Mistakes on Election Posters." The item was reported by other sites after changing the headline.

The item stated that the campaigns of candidates, which are displayed in pictures and bright colors in streets and squares all over the Kingdom, have become the main preoccupation of Facebook users after many of them took it upon themselves to monitor every small and big aspect related to these slogans and to catch their mistakes and post them on social media sites. The item gave examples of Facebook activists making fun of mistakes on posters and banners of candidates.

An electronic news site depended on posts by Facebook activists, capturing serious grammatical mistakes in the advertisements of candidates in the streets. It wrote a short report under the headline "In Pictures…Serious Mistakes on Banners of Election Campaign in Jordan." The site followed up on this and called the most prominent name on the list that made the mistakes, but that person attributed the mistake to the calligrapher! Perhaps, the mistake that was circulated on a large scale and that some sites wrote about involved a banner that said:   "الحق يعله ولا يعله عليه" (Arabic word is misspelled twice).

There was another case, in which a news site corrected a mistake made by Facebook activists when they promoted the picture of an election slogan that says "Yes to Corruption, No to Reform." The site revealed that the picture is from the previous elections.

As a matter of fact, social media has become a main element in the financial cost of election campaigns. Some sites cited an item published by Al Rai daily on the expected spending on social media in election campaigns. An economic expert estimated "the direct cost borne by candidates to the 18th Lower House of Parliament to operate social media platforms to present their election platforms within a month from 20 August until 20 September at around 7 million dinars." In the details, the item said that the financial cost goes to "the social media team that runs these pages, besides direct cash payments to posts to increase the number of followers through these platforms, specifically Facebook." The expert pointed out that he had made his calculations on the basis of average spending of 20 dinars per candidate on social media as candidates started marketing paid posts to increase visibility.

However, social media pages have been the easiest method of attacking and slandering opponents to the extent that made the Cyber Crime Unit at the Criminal Investigation Department use its page on Facebook to send a message to candidates, in which it said: "Do not use social media sites to offend others and spread hate between people by seeking to achieve private agendas and purposes. Use them to disseminate your election platform to reach the largest number of voters and strengthen voters" conviction to select you as their representative." It reminded them of Article 11 of the Electronic Crimes Law, which stipulates that the crime of libel, defamation, and contempt shall be punishable by at least three months of imprisonment and a fine between 100-2000 dinars.

Through this observation, the Jordanian Media Credibility Monitor, AKEED, would like to underline the professional need of the media for increasing their monitoring of what is happening in the social media vis-à-vis the elections. This is the right moment to come up with important answers to a number of questions, key of which are the following:

• Do social media platforms provide environments that reflect serious and realistic discussions concerning election-related public affairs?
• Which political, social, and economic forces are most visible in election-related discussions on these sites?
• What are the issues and topics raised by election discussions on these sites? Is there anything new in them and what is the ceiling of freedom when raising them?