Could Social Media play a more meaningful role in S.A politics?

A few years back when the now US President Barack Obama campaigned for the first time to be president; effective use of social media was attributed as one of the key drivers that led to his winning favour of the majority voters. Obama's campaigns used online activity to boost fundraising efforts, recruit volunteers & look for indications of whether they've been successful at voter persuasion. In South Africa, a large number of voters are between the ages of 20yrs - 39yrs (according to hrsc.az.za). Individuals in this age group are technologically savvy and have access to the internet. If these figures are a true reflection of the South African voter, would it be sensible to reach this market using social media? I do not doubt the ability of social media to reach this market, they usually use digital platforms to reach read news about different political party's news and manifestos. However, the question that remains unclear is the effectiveness of social media to persuade voters to follow, or end-up voting for a particular political party. Bear in mind that, in South Africa, not so many organisations, businesses or corporates have embraced the effective use of social media. Except for the First National Bank which went of to win the Best Global Innovative Bank. There are quite a number of organisations that have now started using social media as one of the channels of communication, but there are yet results to be shown on the achievements that reflect rewards that can be attributed to social media. Many politicians tweet on their own personal capacity about issues that relate to the political party they follow, however, official political party twitter handles are still not the source of information to the ordinary citizen. One may argue that official political party twitter handles do provide information, which is true and I agree, but, those twitter pages have not reached a point where they become the main platform of engagement to the point that the particular political organisation trends on twitter. And when I mean trend, I do not mean were people take the conversation any direction they want as we have often seen. What we are talking about, is a situation, were the political party in actually steering the conversation with responses and on-going engagements with ordinary citizens. Now coming back to the question at hand, could social media play a more meaningful role in S.A politics? YES, IT CAN. The ordinary citizen will feel like they are more informed about what the particular political party is doing. What is currently being discussed? Citizens will feel that their concerns and issues are being given the necessary attention. And more importantly, the ordinary citizen will feel a part of the discussion as they receive responses to their tweets. The citizen will then go on and share their story with the next person of how they received communication from the political party. In doing that, word of mouth spreads regarding the political party that is the subject matters. Unaware, the political party increases its political reach and footprint without being present physically, but, digitally.