As the Internet plays a larger role in governance, campaigns
and activism, the debate continues about how social and digital media are
changing politics. Ongoing research is addressing topics such as whether or not
the Internet is leading to increased political polarization — the tendency of
like-minded individuals to cluster even closer together in their habits and
viewpoints.Although there is increasing skepticism about the real meaning of
large-scale social media behavior in terms of its tangible impact for
campaigns, some critics point out that journalists are not sufficiently keeping
up with new, effective campaign tactics. Of course, the Obama-Romney race
offers the latest case study in how politicians are deploying digital strategy
and the consequences. Despite media narratives suggesting digital strategy in
the 2012 reelection campaign of Pres. Obama proved decisive, some political
scientists are already revising and challenging this interpretation. Below are
studies that bring a scholarly, data-driven perspective to questions within
this area of inquiry. Special credit to George Washington University’s Henry
Farrell, whose article in the Annual Review of Political Science, “The
Consequences of the Internet for Politics,” usefully highlights some of the
papers listed. “Birds of a Feather Tweet Together: Integrating Network and
Content Analyses to Examine Cross-Ideology Exposure on Twitter”Findings: The
data show that “on Twitter, political talk is highly partisan, where users’
clusters are characterized by homogeneous views and are linked to information
sources….” These dynamics likely “reinforce in-group and out-group
affiliations, as literally, users form separate political groups on Twitter.”
The more the tweets in a cluster reflected a political perspective, the more
ideologically one-sided its content tended to be. “Politically active voices,
particularly younger voters, who use the Internet to express their opinions are
moving away from neutral news sites in favor of those that match their own
political views.”“A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and
Political Mobilization”Nature, 2012 Findings: The data “suggest that the
Facebook social message increased turnout directly by about 60,000 voters and
indirectly through social contagion by another 280,000 voters, for a total of
340,000 additional votes.” Further, “To put these results in context, it is
important to note that turnout has been steadily increasing in recent U.S.
midterm elections, from 36.3% of the voting-age population in 2002 to 37.2% in
2006, and to 37.8% in 2010.” The 340,000 additional votes attributed to
Facebook messages represents “0.14% of the voting age population of about 236
million in 2010. It is possible that more of the 0.60% growth in turnout
between 2006 and 2010 might have been caused by a single message on Facebook.”
“Social Media and Political Engagement” Pew Internet & American Life
Project, October 2012Abstract: “The use of social media is becoming a feature
of political and civic engagement for many Americans. Some 60% of American
adults use either social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, and a new
survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project finds
that 66% of those social media users—or 39% of all American adults—have done at
least one of eight civic or political activities with social media. 66% of
social media users have employed the platforms to post their thoughts about
civic and political issues, react to others’ postings, press friends to act on
issues and vote, follow candidates, ‘like’ and link to others’ content, and
belong to groups formed on social networking sites.”
“The Personalization of Politics: Political Identity, Social
Media, and Changing Patterns of Participation”The Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, 2012 Abstract: “Social fragmentation
and the decline of group loyalties have given rise to an era of personalized
politics in which individually expressive personal action frames displace
collective action frames in many protest causes. This trend can be spotted in
the rise of large-scale, rapidly forming political participation aimed at a
variety of targets, ranging from parties and candidates, to corporations,
brands, and transnational organizations. The group-based ‘identity politics’ of
the ‘new social movements’ that arose after the 1960s still exist, but the
recent period has seen more diverse mobilizations in which individuals are
mobilized around personal lifestyle values to engage with multiple causes such
as economic justice (fair trade, inequality, and development policies),
environmental protection, and worker and human rights.”
“Social Networking Sites and Politics”
Pew Research Center, March 2012 Findings: “Postings on
social networking sites reveal surprises for many users when it comes to the
political views of their friends. Nearly four in ten users discovered through
postings by friends that their political beliefs were different than they
thought. A small percentage of users blocked, unfriended or [hid] someone on the
site because their postings were too frequent or they disagreed with them.
Three-quarters of social networking site users say their friends post at least
some content related to politics on the sites from time to time. They amount to
40% of the entire adult population.”
“Presenting Diverse Political Opinions: How and How Much?”
Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems, 2011Findings: “We examine the relationship
between the numbers of supporting and challenging items in a collection of
political opinion items and readers’ satisfaction, and then evaluate whether
simple presentation techniques such as highlighting agreeable items or showing
them first can increase satisfaction when fewer agreeable items are present. We
find individual differences: Some people are diversity-seeking while others are
challenge-averse. For challenge-averse readers, highlighting appears to make
satisfaction with sets of mostly agreeable items more extreme, but does not
increase satisfaction overall, and sorting agreeable content first appears to
decrease satisfaction rather than increasing it.”
