Effects of Social Media on Political Awareness and Participation - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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

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

Can social media increase the political activism of its users?

• "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

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

RQ1: Are students using social media?

RQ2: Are students using social media for news gathering?

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

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

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

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

71% follow news organizations

43% follow politicians or political organizations

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.

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.

Recommendation #1

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

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

Recommendation #3

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