Effects of Social Media on Political Awareness and Participation

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Effects of Social Media on Political Awareness
and Participation

• A Study on Students and Politics
• By Kristina Walker, Alex Englehart, Kathleen
  Riley, and Suzannah Davidson

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Purpose

• Primarily to see if social media is a viable
  method to reach college age voters.

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Purpose

• Can social media increase the political activism
  of its users?

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Literature Review

• "The Rise of Non-Traditional Site Use for
  Political Information", by John H. Parmalee, John
  Davies, and Carolyn A. McMahan
• "Social Media and the 2008 U.S. Presidential
  Election" by A. Maruggi and E. Metzga

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Literature Review

• Does Political Knowledge Increase Turnout?
  Evidence from the 1997 British General Election
  by Valentino Larcinese

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Research Questions

• RQ1 Are students using social media?

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Research Questions

• RQ2 Are students using social media for news
  gathering?

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Research Questions

• RQ3 Does the use of social media affect the
  political awareness of students?

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Methodology

• Survey
• Online Qualtrics survey generator
• 15 questions
• Closed ended and a few open ended
• Participants
• College students
• UNC-Chapel Hill students

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Methodology

• Reaching possible participants
• Posting survey to Facebook/Twitter
• Interception of participants around campus
• ONLY reaching out to college students

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Methodology

• Recognizing that this is a convenience sample
• Reducing the "convenience" in our sample
• Listervs from different departments
• Stationed at different place around campus

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Results Demographics

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Results Newsgathering and Social Media
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Results News Organizations and Social Media
71 follow news organizations 43 follow
politicians or political organizations
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Results Political Awareness
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Conclusion

• Quantitative research allowed us to see exactly
  how many of our respondents used Facebook,
  Twitter, or both to interact with politicians and
  news outlets, indicating their interest in
  politics and thus voting.

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Conclusion

• Qualitative research allowed us to gain a better
  understanding of how students use social media to
  interact with politicians and news outlets to
  further their knowledge of politics. It also
  supported our theory that social media does play
  a role in the political awareness of college age
  students.

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Recommendations

• Recommendation 1
• Establishing a social media presence is an
  effective way to reach the college age
  demographic.

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Recommendations

• Recommendation 2
• When going through social media, publish through
  news organizations
• Reaching more people with this association
• Users are more likely to see these profiles
  compared to

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Recommendations

• Recommendation 3
• Utilize Twitter and Facebook to brand politicians
  as tech savy on a national level.