Saad Amer Mobilizes Voters With Celebrities and Instagram Filters
Saudi Arabia’s campaign for the kingdom’s first elections under its new electoral law has made use of a new digital strategy to mobilize its electoral base.
On Monday the kingdom held its first parliamentary elections since the introduction of the law that stipulates that candidates have to have at least 12 months in the country’s judiciary. The elections saw candidates from 20 of the kingdom’s 33 provinces as well as the royal city of Riyadh compete in front of over 20,000 poll watchers and thousands of voters.
While it is still unknown how the results of the elections will be presented and presented, social media has been a key tool for the new campaign to mobilize voters. One of the first campaigns used Instagram filters from stars such as Miley Cyrus, Rihanna and Justin Bieber to show voters the candidates in their native languages or even in a humorous way.
Saudi Arabia election leader Prince Bandar bin Sultan is also on Instagram, showing his own political ads with his own face placed in them.
In total, 13 major campaigns were displayed on Instagram. It is no secret that the vast majority of Saudis have access to the internet.
The election campaign has allowed Saudi Arabia to showcase its modernity and its values to the international media. During the four years since the introduction of the new electoral law, Saudi Arabia has hosted several major international conferences as well as the first edition of the World Economic Forum, the WEF, in April. Prince Turki bin Abdullah al-Saud, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, has even met with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon in New York.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, said: “Today’s election campaign is part of a new and meaningful way of promoting the kingdom’s image abroad. As the kingdom’s deputy minister of information and culture, I have shown the value of the social media campaign and hope to continue its use. The kingdom was one of the first countries to introduce the use of social media, and I hope future campaigns will do so.”
Al-Saleh Al-Yassen praised the use of the new campaign and said he was happy that the kingdom was