Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Social Media: Understanding the Relationship Between Facebook, Twitter, and Political Understanding

Abstract

Social media is ubiquitous and holds a significant place in modern society. Social media feeds are inundated with political content and are used by politicians and citizens alike to post political commentary. Neither mass media nor politics are new areas of study in sociology, but the entanglement of the two is proving to be of interest, as some scholarship argues that social media is driving changes in how politics works in the United States. We must consider how the citizenry consumes and processes political information in the modern era in view of the interplay between social media and current events. This study examines how membership and/or regular use of Facebook, and membership and/or regular use of Twitter affects perceived political understanding. I propose that, respectively, Facebook and Twitter use will increase perception of political understanding. Analysis of data from the 2016 General Social Survey reveals that Twitter membership and/or regular use is correlated with political understanding; meaning that those who use Twitter are more likely to believe they have an understanding of the political issues facing our country. The data confirms that the relationship between social media and political understanding must be taken seriously, and warrants deeper exploration. There is a need for future research that explores the kinds of content individuals consume on social media and the time they spend on these sites in order to develop a more robust understanding of exactly how social media use affects political understanding

A Survey on Computational Politics

“…Different social mediums and social networks offer different kinds of opportunities for users to interact and share their thoughts. In a study published in 2018, Siegel [156] discusses the role of social networks in users' political understanding. The study finds, using statistical analysis on survey data, that Twitter users find themselves to have a better political understanding as that of Facebook users.…”

Citizens' Attitude towards Political Corruption and the Impact of Social Media

“…There is a wide agreement among scholars in pointing out that political awareness is a salient factor in explaining citizens' attitude towards corruption. Siegel (2018) highlighted how democracy depends on citizens' political awareness, being necessary to become educated politically. Bode (2016) underlined that a basic tenet of democracy theory is that voters' political choices must be based on informed thinking about political issues.…”

“…Focusing on the topic of this thesis, social media is a new tool in political communication and it is used by an increasing number of politicians and citizens to critique and advocate for policies, candidates and protests (Siegel, 2018).…”

“…On one side, social media has noticeably changed the way politics work (Dimitrova and Bystrom 2013). Politicians use social media to disseminate information and connect with voters (Siegel, 2018). It represents a new communication channel which allows politics to be more accessible (Koc-Michalska et al, 2016).…”

“…For instance, this platform has been actively used during political events as the elections in Iran, Spain or USA (Vallina-Rodriguez et al, 2012). In particular, it has been found how it increases the use of Twitter during political debates (Siegel, 2018;Bruns and Burgess, 2011). Jennings et al (2017) underlined that Twitter shows, in real time, not only the salience of political issues, but also the successes or failures of public sphere arguments.…”