Political discourse on social networking sites: Sentiment, in-group/out-group orientation and rationality

Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work &Amp; Social Computing

et al. 2014

Self Cite

An increasing number of people are using microblogs to broadcast their thoughts in real time as they watch televised political events. Microblogging social network sites (SNSs) such as Twitter generate a parallel stream of information and opinion. It is presumed that the additional content enhances the viewing experience, but our experiment explores the validity of this assumption. We studied how tweeting, or passively observing Twitter during a debate, influenced affect, recall and vote decision. For most measures, participants' average feeling and recall toward the candidates did not depend on Twitter activity, but Twitter activity did matter for vote choice. People who actively tweeted changed their voting choice to reflect the majority sentiment on Twitter. Results are discussed in terms of the possibility that active tweeting leads to greater engagement but that it may also make people more susceptible to social influence.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hybrid media consumption

Maruyama

Robertson

Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work &Amp; Social Computing

et al. 2014

Self Cite

“…This extended beyond the usual cheerleading [28,29] comments of general support such as "I'm voting for you!" or "Go DuPree!".…”

Section: Community Supportmentioning

confidence: 94%

Politics and young adults

Proceedings of the 15th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research

Maruyama

Semaan

et al. 2014

Self Cite

An increasing number of people are turning to social media to find political information and discuss politics, including the technologically savvy Millennial generation. Our study looks at how young voters use social media to evaluate political candidates. Subjects were shown the Facebook walls of two U.S. politicians running for the seat of governor in the 2011 Mississippi election. Exposure was followed by semi-structured interviews to discover what knowledge they found salient. Content analysis found evidence that the knowledge they gained from Facebook influenced their evaluation of the candidates. Further, we contrast this to a control group that was exposed to related news articles without a social media component. We found that social media produced the additional voting criterion of community, which extends beyond the traditional criteria in political science literature of issues and character. Community interaction influences the vote decision.

“…Whereas some individuals were receiving campaign updates from politicians' pages, they often commented on how the information that was made public did not help them with respect to the deliberation process as they could only receive "trivial updates". People also felt that politicians' pages were homogenous [33].…”

Section: From Serendipity To Organized Information Acquisitionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…With respect to the public spaces devoted to the discussion of politics, like politician Facebook pages or the public discussions that take place in the comments sections of YouTube and online media like CNN, the majority of our informants described the discussions in these public spaces February 15-19, 2014, Baltimore, MD, USA as being highly polarized and filled with messages of flaming or support [33]. As such, many did not frequent these interaction spaces because they did not facilitate healthy, constructive interaction as there existed a misalignment in people's values.…”

Section: Respectful and Reasoned Political Engagement With Diverse Aumentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thirty percent of respondents said that their friends post occasionally about politics and 25% said that they have become more involved politically as the result of information in their social networking feeds. Other recent work has explored the emergence of the public sphere in online spaces devoted to political discussion like political blogs [1,13,41], political discussion forums [31], political videos posted on YouTube [24,25], and political and media accounts on SNSs [17,33,42,44].…”

Section: Social Media and Political Public Spheresmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Social media supporting political deliberation across multiple public spheres

Semaan

Robertson

Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work &Amp; Social Computing

et al. 2014

Self Cite

This paper reports on a qualitative study of social media use for political deliberation by 21 U.S. citizens. In observing people's interactions in the "sprawling public sphere" across multiple social media tools in both political and nonpolitical spaces, we found that social media supported the interactional dimensions of deliberative democracy-the interaction with media and the interaction between people. People used multiple tools through which they: were serendipitously exposed to diverse political information, constructed diverse information feeds, disseminated diverse information, and engaged in respectful and reasoned political discussions with diverse audiences. When people's civic agency was inhibited when using a tool, they often adopted, or switched to, alternative media that could afford what they were trying to achieve. Contrary to the polarization perspective, we find that people were purposefully seeking diverse information and discussants. Some individuals altered their views as a result of the interactions they were having in the online public sphere.