Social Media as a Quantitative Indicator of Political Behavior

1. USE APA STYLE REFERENCING TO PROVIDE DETAILS OF YOUR ARTICLE HERE (2 MARKS):

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].

2. DESCRIBE THE MAIN PURPOSE OR PROBLEM PRESENTED IN THIS ARTICLE (5 MARKS):

The main purpose of this article is to examine the correlation between how often a politician’s name appears on social media and the subsequent electoral results. The article looks at 542,969 tweets mentioning electoral candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2010 and 2012 elections, and compares this data to the candidates’ electoral performance.

The researchers present findings that indicate that a politician’s popularity in the voting booth may be related to the frequency with which the candidate is talked about on social media. The researchers goes on to discuss how further research may conclude that social media has a bigger impact on voting outcomes than traditional forms of media, and how that could potentially shape the future of voting.

3. LIST THE HYPOTHESES OR RESEARCH QUESTIONS (5 MARKS):

The primary hypothesis here is that the greater number of times an electoral candidate’s name appears on social media, the more votes that candidate will receive. The researcher proposes that there will be a positive relationship found between statistics on the number of times a congressional candidate’s name appears on Twitter and the percentage of votes the candidate receives in the election, and that the same results will occur across two separate elections. If these findings are correct, it may indicate that social media could be a predictor or influencer of...

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...has so much power. The findings of this research could be used by campaigners in an attempt to swing an election in their favour, creating an unfair bias in parliament and denigrating the ideals of democracy.

In terms of the research itself, I feel that the sample was appropriately selected; however the results may change if posts from other social media sites were included. Also, it would be interesting to see if further research in to other elections, not just those for the United States congress, would produce the same results.

RESOURCES

Shaffir, W. (1986). In the Field: An Introduction to Field Research/Ethnographic Research: A Guide to General Conduct (Book). Sociology of Health & Illness, 8 (2).

Tunnell, GB & Hernstein, R. . (1977). Three dimensions of naturalness: An expanded definition of field research. Psychological Bulletin, 84 (3), 426-437