SOURCE: Flickr/withgalen
Like television during the Nixon-Kennedy debates, there’s no denying that social media has rocked today’s political landscape. Both presidential candidates have profiles on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and even Google+. And this year, for the first time, national conventions were available on mobile devices and anyone with an Internet connection could watch the presidential debates live.
According to a recent Pew survey, 60 percent of Americans use social networking sites, like Facebook or Twitter. Two-thirds of those users—or 39 percent of all Americans—have completed “at least one of eight civic or political activities with social media.” While 73 percent of the population believes discussing political issues via social media is insignificant, politically-related content on social networking sites actually does have an impact on its readers.
During the Republican National Convention, the GOP spared no efforts while improving social media use, broadcasting content across a variety of social platforms.
But Democrats still have a social media edge. According to a study by Pew Internet & American Life Project, Democrats are more inclined to consider social networking to be significant in the political race.
However, social media’s power to connect can equal its power to undermine serious campaign issues. TV news is often criticized for treating politics like a horserace, but social media “amplifies the peanut gallery.” Fox News’s Juan Williams observed that, in the 2012 debates, the “instantaneous scoring distorted the reality of the debates for the journalists and the surrogates in the spin room.”
Paul Booth, a DePaul professor of technology and new media, has said he believes social networking sites are essential to “viewpoints interacting together, making a truly multi-ideological viewpoint.”
“Live tweeting opened doors to new conversations,” Booth said. “When we tweet we often forget that we have followers with a lot of different beliefs and viewpoints.”
What’s more, it also opens doors for younger voters to discuss their perspectives with a wider audience.
The rise of social media has helped many young voters find their voice. While online chatter can cloud the real issues, these sites create a space where young Americans can discuss the issues they care about. And given that campaigns obsessively monitor trends in those discussions, we should know that the people in power are listening.
