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IELTS vocabulary the influence of social
media on
politics yes this is another very
specific one but social media in all
fairness is a quite a frequent topic the
reason is because it's so in I's terms
it's incredibly new and it's always in
the news uh and it's you know mobile
phone addiction social media addiction
cyber bullying and with the elections
the US elections and this so-called
Russian interfer and all of this it's a
very very I don't want to use the word
trendy but it's a very prevalent topic
and in this tutorial we're going to look
at some specific topic topic specific
vocabulary we're going to look at the
pros and cons the arguments get some
ideas we're going to look at a grammar
point which is cleft sentences and we're
also as we normally do finish this off
with some model speaking answers so if
you are a student who struggles with
ideas then you definitely need to need
to stay tuned grab a pen start jotting
ideas down get those pros and cons if
you're a student who struggles with
grammar well we're going to briefly look
at as I said cleft
sentences and as we move through this
tutorial I'm also as always going to be
going off on random tangents not random
tangents but I'll be going off on
tangents just giving you extra help you
know and bits of advice okay if you've
got this problem do XYZ so it's going to
be an incredibly valuable beneficial
tutorial for
you now my name is Ben Worthington I'm
from the UK I've been teaching IELTS for
practically too
long and I you know some students uh
some tutors and even myself at times
have said I hate I and publish videos
saying I hate IELTS but the reason is is
not only because I've been doing this
for so long but the main reason why I
published that is not my frustration
with doing the same job it's the main
reason was because students would be
focusing on I Els and missing the
English language and you know just
focusing is it five paragraph essay is
it this structure is it that structure
for the essay and all of this and
missing sort of like the obvious which
is the language skills
so we're going to build both of those
today we're going to look at language
skills and I skills as well so let's
jump into it social media has become
indispensable
nowadays uh especially for political
campaigns definitely want to write that
word down political campaigns is great
term for this topic for obvious reasons
um now as a side note when we mention
social
media you definitely have to mention
such as Facebook Tik Tok YouTube Viber
whichever okay but you definitely need
to mention these big companies there's
only like five of them anyway globally
you've got to mention them when we do
give lists we give lists in threes you
know YouTube Facebook and we chat
whatever
okay um and I'm I'm just going to circle
back to the beginning I'm pretty
confident because of the US elections
and you know when the US have the
elections the whole I mean in the UK
anyway we report on these and this is
pretty much the case of the West most
examiners are in the west so they will
be bombarded with political uh news as
well so it's highly unlikely that they
don't include this in the exam I'm not
going to say guaranteed you're going to
have an ex a question about political
campaigns but it's it's quite likely
okay the chances that you get a question
of regarding social media and social
media and political campaigns or just
political campaigns or just social media
are quite
High let's have a look at cleft
sentences so CLE sentences are used to
emphasize a particular part of a
sentence in order to highlight its
significance so these sentences uh
usually start with it is or what and
that's a rearrangement of the normal
sentence structure or order and what
this does is it brings uh foreground
brings to the foreground specific
information so for example it is through
social
media that politicians can reach a
broader audience instantly can you see
there so let's go through some more
model sentences
again it is through social media
platforms that campaign messaging can be
personalized and targeted
effectively next one what really matters
in modern campaigns is voter engagement
and social media platforms have
transformed how this is
achieved so they're quite strong these
cleft sentences the they're incredibly
effective you know once you've got your
position clear you follow with a cleft
sentence um and you know your position
then is's no doubting where you stand
which is great for an argumentative
essay an academic argumentative essay
which is what you're effectively writing
for the ILS
exam it is the digital strategy that
plays a critical role in reaching young
voters
effectively next sentence what we see
increasingly is an echo chamber effect
facilitated by social media platforms
great sentences these it is targeted
advertising that allows for the precise
delivery of political content content to
specific demographics I'm going to talk
more about this in a second what is
often overlooked is the influence of
social media on political discourse
which can both enrich and degrade the
quality of public
debate quite a mouthful in that sentence
it is Data privacy issues that pose
significant challenges for the Integrity
of online political
campaigns that's a lot to unpack in that
sentence too final
one what has changed the landscape of
political rallies is the emergence of
online rallies which can gather
thousands virtually that's
fantastic now I jumped into this a bit
two feet so
and so let me just rewind so social
media okay especially for advertisers
not just for advertisers uh political
Camp adver not just using adver adverts
for political campaigns but the same for
Coca-Cola the same for other companies
or you know even your local hairdress I
might use um Facebook advertising but
the power of social media you're
advertising is that you can pinpoint
exactly who you want to
Target so your local hairdresser does
not want to be running a national
campaign across the whole of Scotland if
they're based in Scotland they want to
just be targeting their town or the even
just their Village and even then if they
just specialize in doing um men's
haircut they probably just want to
Target men between the ages of 20 and 30
for the services in the village and you
can do this you can do this with social
media so let's just zoom out and now
we're a politician and we know that I'm
just going to use the UK for an example
that
maybe one town in England is 50% Tory or
conservative and 50%
labor now what we can do is tagget
people who we think will vote which
might be uh men and women between the
ages of 30 and
50 who we think have or who are recently
married who have got a car who have
bought a house and this is the kind of
profile that we want to Target for our
political campaign we can pinpoint those
people now and we can run ads to that
specific demographic and maybe from our
research we've identified that this
demographic between 30 and 40 are
undecided so now we can just Pummel them
with
ads we can send lots of adverts to that
specific demographic in the hope of
persuading them rather than running
billboard campaigns next to the road or
posters on on lamp posts or TV campaigns
because when we run those types of
campaigns we're not so sure who's
actually seeing them everybody seeing
them from the little kid in the pram to
the old- Aged pensioner walking down
with his stick everybody seeing them and
it's kind of uh an inefficient way of
doing the marketing from a political
campaign point of view if we only need
to reach those between 30 and 40 who've
recently bought a house because we know
that those haven't decided yet then we
can now Target them thanks to platforms
such as Facebook YouTube I don't think
YouTu yeah maybe YouTube Facebook
YouTube uh Tik Tok uh WeChat whichever
okay so that's the situation um and
that's why and then in the last us
election and elections all across the
globe actually there
at there are rumors there are suspicions
of other countries buying adverts to try
and get the political party that is
going to be most favorable for that
country they're trying to get that
political party into Power by buying
adverts so it's really really
contentious these are exciting and New
Times never before have we faced this
this is probably one of the reasons why
it's all over the media and if it's all
over the media there's a high chance
it's going to be all over your I exam as
well because the I examiners are
obviously consuming the
media right then let's have a look at
the advantages of social media and
political campaigns well it enables
direct communication between politicians
and the public it's not just a one-way
Channel like the billboard or the TV
advert there's two-way communication
now it allows for Rapid dissemination of
campaign
messages okay we we don't have to build
a TV advert we don't have to book a slot
for that TV advert three months in
advance we want to run a campaign we run
it almost in one afternoon get our
images together run the advert make
Target our demographic and then just get
that media out there get that
information out there so it's very fast
it
facilitates targeted Advertising based
on user data is exactly what I was
telling you before about the
demographics encourages greater
political engagement among the youth
because on these social media platforms
it generally skewes to a younger
population it's cost effective compared
to traditional media as I said
before it increases transparency of
political
processes enables realtime feedback from
the electorate let me expand on this
one if your message in your
advert is not important to your target
audience they're not going to click it
so you can test okay I'm a politician
and I'm going to say we're going to give
more money to the NHS okay this gets 8%
click-through rates the um the audience
clicks or 8% of the audience clicks on
this I run another campaign saying I'm
going to make all the roads uh smooth
and get rid of potholes and this gets 5%
of the audience clicking the advert now
I know which is the more more important
concern for my
audience next sentence it can be used to
mobilize supporters and organize
events interesting you know so if there
is uh yeah basically you can just
organize your own rally you can organize
your own campaign and I think this is
where it gets a little bit dangerous cu
if I remember correctly something
similar happened in Jan January the 6 in
the US so it's if uh when they stormed
the White House I'm not entirely sure
though you need to do your own research
there it can reach a global audience
enhancing international support
amazing cons what are the disadvantages
it can spread misinformation and fake
news quickly wow put fake news into
Google and you'll be on for a roller
coaster ride of
there it may reduce the quality of
political
discourse there there are privacy
concerns related to data harvesting for
political purposes if you want to know
more about that you can I think it's
Cambridge analytica who had
a I think that's the reason actually why
Facebook is now called meta because when
they published the results of this whole
Scandal related to Cambridge analytica
Facebook decided to change the name to
meta and they basic all the journalists
covered that story of changing the name
to meta rather than covering the
Cambridge analytica story but
anyway side note let's get back onto I
um it may lead to increased scrutiny and
invasion of privacy for
politicians uh final one there is a risk
of cyber attacks and hacking of Campa P
accounts so there we go there's plenty
of disadvantages there um I strongly
suggest you jump on to YouTube uh if
you're still a little bit uncertain and
and haven't got a clue what I'm talking
about you definitely need to just jump
on
YouTube start watching some videos or at
least get a playlist together start
watching it fake news January the 6th
what happen social media Pol politics
all of this
um and the advantage of doing that is
that you're going to hear a lot of the
topic specific cations which I'm going
to share with you in a minute you're
going to hear them in their natural
environment let's move on social media
platforms political discourse campaign
messaging voter engagement targeted
advertising digital strategy online
rallies Echo chamber effect and data
privacy issues so so there's plenty of
vocabulary there fortunately for you
we're going to reuse all of this
vocabulary now in typical speaking part
three
answers so question why do politicians
increasingly rely on social media for
campaigning pause it try and think of an
answer based on just what I've been
telling you and sharing for the last 10
minutes so why would they reliance
social media well we've got it's more
cost effective it's more uh better
targeting and we reach a younger
demographic so three reasons like that
okay let's see what
my uh let's see what we've got written
down politicians turn to social media
mainly because it provides unmatched
reach and immediacy it's basically speed
there and as I mentioned before the
targeting the unmatched reach reach is
the term from advertising so the reach
of a TV advert at 600 p.m. in the UK
might be 30 million whereas the reach of
a social media
advert might be
um 5 million but it might be 5 million
of the exact profile that you want
rather than a national TV advert that
cost 20 million to reach 30 million
people and of those 30 million you just
need to reach 11 million well it's uh
it's not going to be very effective okay
let's continue with that answer morover
platforms like these allow for targeted
advertising making campaign strategies
more efficient and cost
effective next one should there be
stricter regulations on political
advertising on social media yes there
definitely should be stricter
regulations to prevent public opinion
manipulation and protect against
misinformation furthermore this would
help maintain the Integrity of the
Electoral electoral process Integrity is
great word there the maintain the
Integrity of the Electoral processes or
process what are the key benefits of
using social media and political
campaigns you definitely should have an
answer now for this I I've mentioned it
four or five times already give me them
all three it's faster it's more targeted
it's more cost effective just off the
top of my head let's see what we wrote
down the key benefits include enhanced
voter engagement that's fine and the
ability to disseminate campaign
messaging quickly and broadly
additionally social media fa facilitates
realtime feedback allowing campaign to
adapt dynamically so the real time
feedback is what I was telling you
before it's like okay which topic is
more important for the electorate for
the people who are going to vote is it
the NHS the National Health Service in
the UK for example or the potholes the
quality of the roads in the
UK so
however this argument facilitates
realtime feedback
allowing campaigns to adapt dynamically
it's a solid argument but it's quite
difficult to
explain that's why when I answered the
question before I was like the speed the
higher level of
targeting
and I can't remember the third one which
I said but anyway the three I gave you
were simple you got them immediately
whereas the real time feedback needs
explanation needs explanation and we all
know in I writing test 2 it's not the
quality of your ideas it's the quality
of your communication that's why I
always encourage my students to go for
simple ideas that are easier to explain
rather than sophisticated ideas and
complex ideas that take longer to
explain that absolutely rely on the
explanation otherwise they don't make
any sense and and this can get you going
down a whole Rabbit Hole of
problems penultimate question how has
social media changed the relationship
between politicians and
voters social media has transformed this
relationship by making communication
more direct and
personal it is this direct interaction
that has diminished the barriers once
posed by traditional media channels such
as television
or roadside
adverts Billboards next to the road
roadside we could
say final question is social media
considered a reliable source for
political information in your country
trick you on this in my country while
many use social media for political
information it reliability is often
questioned due to concerns about
misinformation therefore many still turn
to traditional media for more in depth
analysis and
verification that's a great point to
finish this tutorial on traditional
media um I know the BBC is not perfect
it's far from perfect it usually has a
certain angle a certain
narrative um however for the sake of I
it's got the information you need you
know just put BBC fake media and you'll
find a load of articles there BBC social
media political campaigns you'll find a
load of Articles and it's good enough
it's good enough to get your head full
of ideas which will help you in your
preparation especially if you're a
student who whose mind goes
blank right then so I hope you enjoyed
this tutorial I hope you got a load of
value from this if you did all I ask in
return is that you share it with your
friends maybe post it on social
media how ironic posted on social
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have a beautiful day all the best and
keep going with your ielt preparation I
know it's tough um I know it's difficult
and I know it can be really
frustrating um the only way forward is
just to you know one step after the next
step and slowly just keep chipping away
at this get a routine going um you know
get your preparation organized assign it
to a calendar every morning 7 till 8:
I'm just going to read El's essays don't
be scared about just starting off slow
get that routine established and then
start building it up so the next week
you're writing essays and you will get
there you will reach it in the end have
a great day and good luck with your
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