Ian Muir-Coachrane, Government and Politics lecturer, said, ‘politics influence every part of a person’s life’. The comment was self-explanatory in itself, and I did not need to think about it twice. I am in the second year of the Broadcast and Digital Journalism course at the University of West London. I can not stop thinking about politics and the so many ways that they are influencing my life, my finances, my leisure, my love life, my credit score and my sleep. It is 2023, and the double-digit inflation in the UK has been normalised. I am part of the student population, and although I have a part-time job and I am a mature student, I am facing the fear and struggles of the wider student population.

I am unhappy to announce that I am officially looking for a flat in the middle of my studies. Flat hunting is not ideal at any time of the year, but the current inflation scenario in the UK has pushed my landlady to sell the house. My landlady is a proper businesswoman and diligent in fixing any problem. She put the house on sale because the government offers little support to landlords and landladies who provide people with a place to live. The decisions of Rishi Sunak’s government impact my monthly budget, my commute to and from university, and the process of looking for an internship directly.

I want to acknowledge the importance of politics in the daily life of a UK citizen. At the same time, I want to embrace the new ways people consume information – TIKTOK is the most recent and popular source of news for people. Politics is a dry topic and might never attract the same number of views as the latest Rihanna’s Apple Music Super Bowl LVII Halftime show. I am a journalist interested in food, lifestyle, culture and travel. I want to develop a style of talking about politics which attract readers from all background and platforms, including Tik Tok. I might also consider becoming an essay writer for a publication like The New Statesman.

Netflix released a few weeks ago the documentary MH370: The Plane That Disappeared. It has three episodes connected to the theories created by Jeff Wise, an aviation journalist, and the third theory by Florence De Changy, author and investigative journalist. The work of these journalists is impressive, and it connects with the importance of being aware of the world of politics. Jeff Wise connects the dots between the different events that might have led to the disappearance of the MH370, and it pointed to the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014. Wise says the Russians wanted to distract the International press from their activities by plotting the disappearance of the Malaysian aeroplane. After watching the second episode of the Netflix documentary, it came back to my mind the words of Ian Muir-Cochrane, and I wanted to reflect briefly on the influences of politics in our life.

I recently read a chapter from the book Reporting Elections by Stephen Cushion. Chapter 4 talks about the influence of Twitter in the 2016 American elections and the use of ‘post-truth’ to understand the use of misleading statistics in the UK referendum. The influence of politics in people’s daily life has been magnified by the use of the Internet – email, blogs, newsletters and websites – and the popularity of social media. The next general elections for the UK Parliament are in January 2025. People should start thinking about how social media is going to impact their voting decision and the type of change they want to see in the UK Parliament.

Politics are not easy to understand, at least not in the same way that someone will understand a food menu or an advert on the Internet. Still, the influence of local and global politics can touch the lives of so many in the UK, Europe and around the globe. I have presented the impact of politics on my finances, the possible impact on the lives of people flying in the MH370 commercial flight, and the conditioning of people’s voting decisions via social media. I see an opportunity to reshape how politics are covered by the media, make it accessible and attract it to people of different paths of life.