This question asks whether social media now shapes people's views and behaviour more than politicians do, or whether the two have become so intertwined that the comparison no longer makes sense.
Question type: Consider the view
An ETG General Paper original study guide to the 2019 A-Level GP Paper 1 essay on media & communication. Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, UCLES, Cambridge Assessment or SEAB. A study aid, not an official answer.
The question pits social media against politicians as competitors, when in practice politicians wield social media and social media shapes who becomes a politician, so the cleaner question is over which kind of influence each holds.
domain: social media dominates the domain of attention and narrative, politicians retain the domain of binding state power, so the answer turns on which kind of influence is meant.
How to approach it. Examine the claim that social media outweighs politicians, defining 'influence' and resisting the false contest, since the two now operate through each other rather than against each other.
Social media has more influence over the domain of attention, mood and narrative, but politicians retain decisive influence over the domain that translates opinion into law and force, so the claim is true about who shapes what we think and false about who controls what is actually done.
Electoral success increasingly depends on online reach, so the platform arguably sits upstream of the politician, selecting and constraining who can win and what they can say, which would make it the deeper power. This is a serious point and the direction of travel supports it. But it cuts the other way too: politicians who master these platforms gain enormous reach, and the state can regulate, tax and even ban them, so social media shapes the contest for power without holding power itself, which keeps the influence distinct rather than simply greater.
Social media has more influence over what the public sees, feels and talks about, and that is no small thing, but politicians retain the influence that turns opinion into law and force; the view is therefore half right, and its error is treating two different kinds of power as if they sat on a single scale.
The view rests on a false opposition, because social media and politicians are no longer rivals but a single fused system in which each amplifies and depends on the other, so the meaningful question is not who has more influence but who controls the system they now share, and the answer is that neither fully does.
Even a fused system can have a centre of gravity, and one could argue that whoever shapes the platform's design, or whoever holds the law, is effectively dominant, so refusing to rank them dodges the question. There is force in this. But the evidence is that dominance shifts with the actor and the moment, a regulator one day, a viral movement the next, which is precisely why the static comparison fails: the influence is real but it is distributed and contingent, not a fixed hierarchy with social media or politicians permanently on top.
Asking whether social media or politicians has more influence is like asking whether the road or the driver matters more, because they now operate as one system; the sharper truth is that influence belongs to whoever masters that system, that the state still writes its rules, and that an engagement-driven logic steers all of them more than any of them admits.
Option A accepts the comparison and splits it by domain, granting social media narrative power and politicians state power. Option B rejects the comparison itself, arguing the two are a fused system whose influence belongs to whoever masters it. Both are defensible: A is the disciplined 'consider the view' answer that specifies which influence is meant; B is the premise-rejecting move that reads as more analytical if the entanglement and the algorithmic logic are held throughout.
These outlines are free to read. Book a trial lesson to have your own GP essays marked against the band descriptors, the way ETG teaches General Paper from the exam backwards.