Positive And Negative Effects Of Social Media On Presidential Elections

624 Words2 Pages

Living in the Digital Era the media is more prevalent in our daily lives than it has ever been before. This rise in new media can bring positive and negative effects. The internet manages to disperse information faster than ever before. The media is used as a campaign platform and serves as a way to increase interaction between voters and candidates. However, because the United States is polarized in political views there are always going to be two sides or more to every story. This lack of unbiased information can cause people to have skewed information and therefore create inaccurate opinions about candidates or certain political policies. According to the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy “Only 11 percent of coverage …show more content…

The media also helps bring attention to suspicious activity that could serve of relative importance to an election or at least used to portray a candidate in a better or worse light. The emergence of social media also has allowed voters, especially people who don’t normally follow the elections, to be informed on the latest news. According to a Pew Research Center survey as of June 2016 at least “24% of [U.S. adults] took to social media as their main source of information”. Social media however only allows people to see a small glimpse of the presidential race since so many sites and posts only focus on the best or worst point of the story depending on which candidate they side with. In this upcoming election in particular it can be seen how involved the media has become. A frontline web article said the “ The media’s tendency to allocate coverage based on winning and losing affects voters’ decisions.” A Nieman Lab article explained that the more media attention a candidate gets the more their standing in the polls increase. This

Open Document