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The Role of Social Media in American Politics essays
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Today’s society has become a tech savvy world. Many people in society depend on social media. There are many different types of social media like Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, but recently Twitter has been the most productive social media site. With Twitter you can express yourself, share opinions with others, and follow any Twitter account user. Twitter was invented in 2006, and now has over 500 million registered Twitter users around the world. Today, Twitter is the most popular social media site that allows you to stay in the loop. Through youth engagement in politics, communicating, and campaigning, politicians use Twitter to their advantage. Politicians can benefit from the use of Twitter if it is used effectively.
Typically youths and young adults use Twitter to communicate with other Twitter users or follow the latest trend. Politicians should use Twitter more effectively to involve the youth Twitter users.
According to the article Joining the Conversation: Twitter as a Tool for Student Political Engagement, it states that in “1971, when the voting age was lowered by the 26th Amendment” many American youths did not seem to be too engaged in politics. Later research has found that “younger Americans…display more characteristics of civic apathy and are less knowledgeable about political issues than older citizens.” In 2008, American youths voted at a higher rate than in previous elections. Researchers also found that educated youths from “middle-to-upper income households were more civically engaged than those of lower-income households who had little to no post-secondary education.” To get youths involved and engaged with politics, it must be presented in an interesting way. Tea...
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...ively affected politics. It is your turn to get involved!
Works Cited
Adamsa, Amelia, and Tina McCorkindaleb. "Dialogue and transparency: A content analysis of how the 2012 presidential candidates used twitter." Public Relations Review 39.4 (2013): 357-359. Print.
Elmer, Greg. "Live research: Twittering an election debate." New Media & Society 15.1 (2013): 18-30. Print.
Journell, Wayne, and Cheryl A. Ayers. "Joining the Conversation: Twitter as a Tool for Student Political Engagement." The Educational Forum 77.4 (2013): 466-480. Print.
McGoveran, Catherine. "http://ojs.library.dal.ca/djim/article/view/370/0." Dalhousie Journal of Interdisciplinary Management 8.2 (2012): 1-14. Print.
Park, Chang Sup. "Does Twitter motivate involvement in politics? Tweeting, opinion leadership, and political engagement." Computers in Human Behavior 29.4 (2013): 1641-1648. Print.
In Nicholas Carr’s article “How Social Media Is Ruining Politics”, Carr writes about the effects that social media has on politics. In his article, Carr focuses more on the negative effect that social media has when it comes to politics. Some points that he makes about social media include specific examples like the recent presidential campaigns, how other technological advances over the years have effected politics, and the effectiveness that social media has on politics
The purpose of this article is to persuade the reader that social media is the new alternative to mainstream big money ads for politicians. Cary’s intended audience is politicians, political campaign managers and politically engaged citizens. The tone of this article is informative but slightly opinionated. While Cary does back up her claims with notable quotes and statistics the main support for her argument is her professional opinion. Cary was formerly the
Political commentators often label American students not as liberals or conservatives, but simply as apathetic citizens unconcerned with political issues. The number of students venturing to the polls continues to be depressing to any advocate of a democratic form of government. Outside of political science classrooms, few students seem to be knowledgeable of simple political events and personalities.
When analyzing the voting turn out in this nation is becomes evident that the youth of America tends to be less active compared to their elders. Written in the book "Is Voting for Young People" by Martin P. Wattenberg he breaks down the key components connecting the youth of America to voting in order to come to the conclusion of how active the youth is in politics, and ways to make them more involved.
In the current time, it seems like one cannot go a day without using at least one social media website. This might be especially true among groups of teenagers and young adults. Social media became a vital part of daily life that feeds people with several types of information constantly. Political news is a type of information that can reach the people through the means of social media. Since presidents are constantly seeking new strategies to increase their communication with the public in order to spread their political message, they utilize the different social media websites. Hence, social media became a platform to spread political message. It is not surprising that now the majority of political officials and candidates have social media accounts more than ever before, such as a Twitter account.
Presently, two hundred million users send upward of 140 million messages per day, 140-character musings studded with misspellings, slang, and abbreviations. Moreover, it includes harsh truths, memes and also lies. But it has become the most important public sphere for a global, inclusive audience. Therefore, social media sphere like twitter that has often been discredited or not valued as real public engagement has actually transformed itself into the most global, inclusive public sphere where the public is able to engage — whether truthfully or not — and to become more aware and reflective. The public informs the state and especially in a situation where the public is as polarized as in the case of the 2016 American elections, social media especially twitter can be a tool by which the public can still engage with each other to be better
Digrazia, J, Mckelvey, K, Bollen, J, Rojas, F & Martinez, LM . (2013). More Tweets, More Votes: Social Media as a Quantitative Indicator of Political Behavior. PLoS ONE, 8 (11), [1-5].
The need to embrace, understand and utilize social media has come from the top down, literally. President Obama won the election largely due to money raised from grassroots donations and by reaching people through social media. Additionally, the President signed the “Open Government Directive” which makes transparency in government a requirement on all levels. This directive has a handful of unprecedented benefits. For the first time ever, all federal agencies were required to have two way communication with citizens. Additionally, citizens could make suggestions, vote up or down others’ ideas, and have an active voice in government through Twitter or replying to blog posts which was previously seen as near impossible.
Levy, Ariel. “Trial by Twitter.” The New Yorker 89.23 (2013): 38-49. Ebsco Host. Web. 15 Apr.
Social media is a revolution, which we are currently experiencing. It has changed the way people communicate and interact with one another, and opens up many more avenues to share news, information, and just general chit chat. Social media is relatively quiet young, but is here to stay for the foreseeable future. We are now at a point where online, we can share, read and react to lots of individual information being posted on microblogging websites, such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr and more. Twitter in particular has been widely embraced, and will centre most of the discussion.
While this initial stance kept politicians on the defensive, enough time has passed that individual politicians and even entire governments are starting to use social media to connect with their communities in new, open ways (Sniderman, 2011). However, as these social platforms are becoming more pervasive in society, studies of their influence on our lives has grown but have not kept pace with the use in government. Because social media is a relatively recent phenomenon, research on social media use in government is limited. Literature on the effectiveness of social media and government has increased but only in some areas. The purpose of this review is to understand governance through citizen engagement and provide a working context of the term social media. The literature review will provide a basis for what is known about the use of social media by government, in particular at the local level.
The changes in social media implied that many people got in touch with the political candidates either directly or indirectly. The people watched their potential leaders of the nation and were able to question them (Mutz 2001).
Orenstein, Peggy. “I Tweet, Therefore I Am.” What Matters In America. Third Edition.Gary Goshgarian and Kathryn Goodfellow. New Jersey: Pearson, 2012. 40-43. Print.
Social media including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Flicker, internet websites, and blogs are becoming mainstream attracting a younger more technology savvy voter. Many candidates in the last elections learned to use these mediums so not to overlook tech savvy voters and learned how to use these to their advantage. Candidates took to the internet to raise awareness, state views, and even successfully raised donations. Social media was able to provide instant feedback on the standing of a candidate often days or weeks sooner than a more traditional poll.
"How Obama Won the Social Media Battle in the 2012 Presidential Campaign." Pamela Rutledge Media Psychology Blog. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.