How SOCIAL is MEDIA in Elections?
Most people spend an average of two hours a day on social media. It is the newest and most frequently updated news source and increasing numbers of people are using it to get most of their information. As a result, the 2016 election has felt the influence of social media more than any other before it.
In past elections, social media was just another method of communication, but in 2016, more and more people are using social media as their primary news source. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center found that, as of early 2015, 63% of Facebook and Twitter users get news on their respective sites. This is up substantially from 2013, when about half of each social network’s users (47% for Facebook and 52% for Twitter) reported getting news there. Now, candidates can relay their message on social media and sit back while supporters spread the word. Access to people is at their fingertips. Republican party political strategist Patrick Ruffini says that “this election is the first I’ve seen (where) candidates realize social media is their direct pipeline into mainstream media coverage and to voters.”
Social media has become a tool that political strategists can use to seek out audiences and feed them information that is directed toward their interests. It generates free publicity for the candidates. The social platforms we flock to also send information that is filtered through our friends, searches and likes. Often, users trust news from social media more than other sources of news, because it is recommended or shared by their friends. A recent study by Echelon Insights and Hart Research found that “adults ages 18 to 49 trust news and political information shared from friends more than news delivered from other sources.” People are also more likely to pay attention to the news if their friends are recommending it. A study during the 2010 midterm elections found that participation is contagious, and knowing that your friends are involved makes a difference. If people’s friends are adamant about being politically involved on the internet, those people are more likely to become involved.
In theory, social media has the potential to expose people to different views. Communicating with many different people should allow for greater diversity in ideas. In practice, however, this is not the case. According to Karen North, a professor at the University of Southern California, “people tend to be part of environments where their political opinions are constantly reinforced.” This reinforcement creates a sort of ‘echo chamber’, which causes users to form polarized groups and resist information that doesn’t match their beliefs. Users that belong to different communities frequently choose not to interact and instead connect only with “like-minded” friends. This creates closed, non-interacting groups. In one investigation, social scientists Walter Quattrociocchi, Antonio Scala, and Cass Sunstein studied the spread of information through different social groups on Facebook. They found that “Users tended to seek out information that strengthened their preferred narratives and to reject information that undermined it. Alarmingly, when deliberately false information was introduced into these echo chambers, it was absorbed and viewed as credible as long as it conformed with the primary narrative. And even when when more truthful information was introduced to correct or “debunk” falsehoods, either it was ignored or it reinforced the user’s’ false beliefs.” Algorithms used by Facebook and other social media sites try to increase user engagement with the platform by steering users towards articles that reflect their own ideological preferences, and this creates an unfortunate situation in which users are never exposed to other ideas and viewpoints.
Recently, a study by the world economic forum explored the question of which candidate is winning on twitter. Here’s what they found:
Candidate’s overall popularity on Twitter:
- As of July this year, @realDonaldTrump had 10,267,655 followers, placing him in 177th position among the global Twitterati. If elected tomorrow, he would be the third most followed world leader. (Pope Francis has 30 million followers and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has 20 million.)
- With her 7,765,519 followers @HillaryClinton is in 275th position worldwide and would be the fourth most followed world leader.
- Trump: average of 30,574 new followers per day
- Clinton: average of 22,086 new followers per day.
Candidate’s efficiency on Twitter:
- His tweets have been retweeted a total of 12 million times — twice as many as Clinton’s, which have been retweeted 5.5 million times.
- Trump has also received 33 million likes for his tweets, almost three times as many as Clinton, who has a total of 12 million likes. Trump averages 5,639 retweets per tweet, compared with 2,154 retweets per tweet for Clinton.
The Pew Research Center study found that although all three candidates posted with equal frequency on Facebook and Twitter, “In every measurable category of user attention — Facebook shares, comments, and reactions, as well as Twitter retweets — the public responded to Donald Trump’s social media updates more frequently on average than to either of the other candidates’ posts.” Trump’s Facebook posts, for example, received 8,000 shares, on average, compared to 6,000 for Sanders and 2,000 for Clinton. People give Trump more attention. Trump also tends to be more focused on the words of ordinary people on social media as opposed to other candidates, which may have increased his popularity. Seventy-eight percent of his retweets were from members of the public — “people who were not famous and had no discernible ties to news media, government or other organizations,” in the researcher’s’ words — compared to 2 percent of Sanders’ and 0 percent of Clinton’s.
Social Media has become one of the primary platforms for news in this election; it has the ability to influence voters now more than ever. Newsfeeds are filled with ‘news’, but are not always unbiased or well represented across the spectrum. Candidates are taking publicity into their own hands, mostly through twitter and Facebook, allowing voters 24/7 “access”. As elections change, politics change and America transitions into a Trump presidency, will social media become the new media constant? If so, voters need to be aware of the ‘echo chamber’ sites like Facebook can create. In order to be well informed Americans, they need to learn to balance out their news intake through other sources, because social media dependence just won’t cut it.
