1 / 20

Effects of Social Media on Political Awareness and Participation

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

Lucy
Download Presentation

Effects of Social Media on Political Awareness and Participation

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. 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

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

  3. Purpose Can social media increase the political activism of its users?

  4. Literature Review • "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

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

  6. Research Questions RQ1: Are students using social media?

  7. Research Questions RQ2: Are students using social media for news gathering?

  8. Research Questions RQ3: Does the use of social media affect the political awareness of students?

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

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

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

  12. Results: Demographics

  13. Results: Newsgathering and Social Media

  14. Results: News Organizations and Social Media 71% follow news organizations 43% follow politicians or political organizations

  15. Results: Political Awareness

  16. Conclusion 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.

  17. Conclusion 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.

  18. Recommendations Recommendation #1 • Establishing a social media presence is an effective way to reach the college age demographic.

  19. Recommendations 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

  20. Recommendations Recommendation #3 • Utilize Twitter and Facebook to brand politicians as tech savy on a national level.

More Related