Running head: HOW SOCIAL MEDIA DICTATES VOTING BEHAVIOR 1.
How Social Media Exposure and Consumption Dictates Voting Behavior
Authors Name
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HOW SOCIAL MEDIA DICTATES VOTING BEHAVIOR 2.
Abstract
It has been noted that social media plays a major role when I comes to elections. In the recent past people are becoming more reliant on internet as a source of news compared to when people only consumed news from TV, Radio or newspapers, nowadays, there are blogs and social media which bring an aspect of interactivity. It has been noted all over the world that a candidate who uses social media well to capture the attention of voters will is likely to win an election compared to the one who does not care about their social media. Internet has become the second most popular source of news for most people coming second to television which is the most popular source of news. This is according to a survey carried out by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research on “SETUPS: Voting Behavior: The 2012 Election”. With the increased access of internet across the country, it has become inevitable for people to depend for news on the internet especially the news on presidential elections. Throughout this study we have tried to identify and explain how the proliferation of social media has affected the voting patterns of the population and in particular, with the presidential elections.
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Introduction
According to a survey conducted in the year 2012 by the Inter-university Consortium for
Political and Social Research on “SETUPS: Voting Behavior: The 2012 Election”, the percentage of American adults who frequently get their news via internet is 33.1%. That is in six out of seven days in a week. This is only second to television which has a frequency rate of 36.6% percent of the people watching news on television six out of seven days in a week. The survey also shows that 33.3% of the people learned about elections on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook compared to the 9.4% who learned about the elections from blogs. Among younger age Groups, 18-29 and 30-49, online news consumption actually exceeds TV news consumption.
According to Maggie Dalton-Hoffman-The Effect of Social Media in the 2012 Presidential
Election, “Online news has taken over politics and has allowed every voter the chance to become a political analyst.” Hence Social media has made it possible for people to keep in constant touch with each other and from anywhere in the world. This has now opened up a new window where audiences can connect and interact with politicians from anywhere in the country. They can now engage these candidates about issues affecting them. This has in turn opened up a new connection with politicians which was not previously there. People are always searching for political and other news and updates online so this means that during elections, campaigns can never be completely “Shut off.” Politicians have gone ahead and taken advantage of this knowing that, how they portray themselves on social media can positively or negatively impact their target audience and that their perception by the intended audience can be changed through social media. Candidates try to make themselves relatable to the people by posting pictures of
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themselves, their families and trivial things around them, probably just to show that they are ordinary human beings and they understand the situation. They also take selfies with fans during campaign stops and snapshots of their daily lives posting them on social media showing how it is in their ordinary day.
This in the overall means that people who depend heavily on presidential news from online sources are likely to participate more on the elections due to their exposure and high frequency of presidential news consumption compared to people consuming presidential news from other media sources other than television.
Digital tools including social media platforms are being used by presidential candidates to communicate directly with voters thereby bypassing the filtering by traditional media like TV and radio where editors play a big role as gatekeepers. Through the many views, responses, comments, retweets and shares, a candidate becomes more endeared to the public than a candidate who does not pay much attention to social media. According to a research by PEW Research Centre for Journalism and Media conducted on the 2012 US presidential election,
“… Digital technology allows leaders to engage in a new level of “conversation” with voters, transforming campaigning into something more dynamic, more of a dialogue, than it was in the 20th century. For the most part, however, the presidential candidates are using their direct messaging mainly as a way to push their messages out.”
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Among the study’s findings; Obama’s campaign had made far more use of direct digital messaging than Romney’s across platforms. That is, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Though neither candidate made much use of the social aspect of social media – that is of actively engaging with the audience rather than just pushing their agenda directly to the voters – Obama’s online campaign was more successful than Romney’s.
Literature review
If the advent of television in campaigns took political races from a personal level to a more interactive one, the adaption of social media has incorporated the interactive, states Professor Clay Clemens, Chancellor Professor of Government at The College of William and Mary.
“Social media… are most useful when they are integrated into other things like getting people out to vote, getting face-to-face contact – television is an alternative to that,” Clemens says.
Due to this interactive capability, social media is more likely to influence if and how people vote than traditional politicking.
The major focus of this study is to explicate the fact that, that people who depend heavily on presidential news from online sources are likely to participate more on the elections due to their exposure and high frequency of presidential news consumption compared to people consuming presidential news from other media sources.
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In Aindrila Biswas, Nikhil Ingle and Mousumi Roy (2014), “For a politician, the coming lok sabha election is not about getting elected; it is about getting socially elected. Social media has changed the way people think, write and react but political pundits believe it has also influence the way people vote.” This shows the fundamental role social media had to play in India’s lok sabha election, through the interactive capability of social media leaders can now appeal to voters directly and persuade them to vote in their favor.
According to Valentino Larcinesey & Luke Minerze (2017) “The use of internet censorship in countries like China, for example, must be based on the presumption that free access to some of the content available online can have political consequences.” They continue to say that across the world dictatorships are now under threat of being bought down as discontented citizens mobilize themselves on social media and create influential campaigns and protests on Facebook and Twitter just as it happened during the Arab Spring.
Through social media, one can reach a large number of audiences and directly pass their message at little costs and high benefits (Gibson and McAllister 2012). In sum this means that social media reaches large numbers of people and messages pass across fast due to the ripple effect. People also react to the messages and this in turn makes a topic to “trend” therefore reaching many people over a short period of time. These topics makes the audiences make a preferential vote to a particular candidate due to interaction being made and the real usage of social media.
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Method Section
Based upon 5,767 valid cases out of 5,914 total cases studied in the survey conducted in the year 2012 by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research on “SETUPS: Voting Behavior: The 2012 Election”, 33% of the people (1967) admitted to use social media such as Twitter or Facebook to learn about the election for President. This was a third of the 5767 cases recorded. It was also noted that more than 50% of the 5854 valid cases in this research were below 54 years of age thus social media was more appealing to the younger generation.
The procedure for carrying out this study was done through collecting information through interviews, questionnaires whereby face to face interrogations were carried out while recording the responses as well as providing close-ended questionnaires for filling by the target population.
Questionnaire
1. What is your age? ________________
2. How many days do you watch news on the internet in a week? ______________
3. How many hours are you logged into social media in a day? ____________________
4. How many days do you watch news on the TV in a week? __________________
5. How many hours do you watch TV in a day?
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Results
The data was then interpreted to come up with meaningful information. Here, the behavior and opinion of our sample was described by analyzing the impact of social media exposure to voter participation. There were indications that the younger generation is more exposed to social media and that they were more participatory than senior citizens.
Compared to the 36.6% of the people who depend on TV to watch news, 33.3% learned about elections on social media thus showing a small degree of difference between people who consume news from TV and those depend on social media. According to the study, the more exposed a person is to presidential election news; the more engaged they will be and the more they will participate. This is also evident in previous elections for example in the year 2008 when Barrack Obama won the presidential seat and in 2016 where Donald Trump used social media to gain heavy influence on voters.
Discussion
While social media is constantly updated and filled with current events, studies have shown that algorithms are used to present articles to social media accounts to distort facts and biases. These algorithms control which articles are presented to which social media accounts based on the reactive behaviors of the account users such that when you click on an article, information is stored about what you react to.
This means that there will be attentional bias whereby if we see only similar political articles in our social media and do not pursue other means of acquiring information, we may not perceive properly the political climate of the world. It is inevitable for us to be drawn into believing the assumptions and opinions of the articles presented to us.
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Conclusions and Future Study
This is one of the major ways social media has been used to influence politically the behavior of social media users and to a larger extend become a source of false or misleading information. It has also shown how one uses social media can be of a large extent have positive or detrimental effects for instance the topics one decides to focus on-are they popular with the people?, Does a candidate interact with their followers by either commenting retweeting etcetera. This could increase a candidates rating by showing their responsiveness.
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References
PEW Research Center: Journalism and Media Staff (2012). How the Presidential Candidates Use the Web and Social Media.
Maggie Dalton-Hoffman (2012). The Effect of Social Media in the 2012 Presidential
Election.
Katie Kennedy (2103). Use it or Lose it: Social Media in the 2012 US Election
Aindrila Biswas, Nikhil Ingle and Mousumi Roy (2014). Influence of Social Media on Voting Behavior.
Valentino Larcinesey & Luke Minerze (2017). The Political Impact of the Internet in US
Presidential Elections.
Niels Spierings, Kristof Jacobs. Getting Personal? The Impact of Social Media on Preferential Voting
Gibson and McAllister (2012). Online Social Ties and Political Engagement.
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research on “SETUPS: Voting Behavior: The 2012 Election
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Appendix A
This research project has involved a number of studies intended to look at the effects of social exposure and consumption to voter engagement and participation. Within the past few years, the explosion of social networking has also proven to be an area that is of concern and can be a game changer in regards to political elections. Candidates can use social media for or against their advantage since criticism is very high on social media.
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Appendix B