Research proposal
Possible title: Role of Social Media in Political decision making – How does Facebook, Twitter etc. Influence voting behaviour?
What:
This project will analyse the influence of social media platforms on voting behaviour. Precisely, I intend to find out how much influence social media content has on political decision making of a country’s electorate in particular age groups.
Why:
There are various studies which confirm the widely debated assumption that a higher social media interaction results in more votes, this is argued in Robin Effing, Jos van Hillegersberg, and Theo Huibers project on Social media and Participation. Their paper in fact shows a positive correlation between politicians with a higher social media interaction and the relative higher number of votes received within a particular party. Unlike this study, I will focus on the electorate, in particular two different age groups, and their formulation of political ideals and political decision based on social media content. The project will look at the 2018 general elections in Brazil, where social media is used as a news source by more than 60% of Brazilians according to 2018 Reuters Institute Digital News Report. My aim is to find out and hopefully loosely determine the effect that social media content related to both populist Jair Bolsonaro, who is now President and his opposition Fernando Haddad member of the workers party has affected voting behaviour between two distinct age groups. The relevance of the two different age groups 18-35 years and 35 years plus will help me identify if political strategies implemented has had a similar or different impact in political decision making of these groups. It is relevant to consider the difference in psychology, ability to critically filter information, cultural morals and political values between these two distinct age groups, which are not often explored in other projects I encountered. Therefore, I expect to see the engagement in social media platforms to be higher of the 18-25 years age group however for dissemination of fake news, memes, and satire to have less of an influence in political decision making in the same group. I also intend to find out with the help of my results whether the influence in political decisions through social media in fact give rise to a more ideologically polarized or a more well-informed electorate.
How:
This study will be completed mainly through a carefully thought out questionnaire, aimed at Brazilian members of the electorate. The questionnaire will require the age of the person, general questions about what they observe on social media regarding political matters, whether they believe, or question validity of news posted on these platforms. There is always the issue of people not answering honestly or simply not being able to understand the influence political posts and news has had on their political decisions, therefore a neutral yet focused set of questions is required for the purposes of this project.
Second Assignment: Research Design
Role of social media in political decision making – How does Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp etc. Influence voting behaviour between 2 distinct age groups?
Short introduction:
Social media has become increasingly predominant in the last few years. Particularly, Social Media has been significantly used for political purposes in crucial political elections around the world, consequently causing an increasing interest in studies analysing the effects of social media usage on election results. Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms are considered efficient tools for political campaigning, given its engaging nature (McGregor, 2017), and its extensive reach of individuals.
This study will focus on the Brazilian electorate during the 2018 Presidential Election, where the rise of Bolsonaro was made possible by a combination of factors, including his strategic use of social media (Hunter & Power, 2019). I intent to find out how social media has influenced the Brazilian electorate in making their final decisions at the polling stations on election day. Furthermore, I will be looking at two different age groups and analyse whether social media exposure to political content has more of an impact on voters between 18 to 35 years of age or voters who are 35 years old or more.
Literature Review:
This section of the project will explore existing literature significant to my research question, these will be divided into two sections, schools of thought and theories related to voting behaviour and literature surrounding age as a factor of voter turnout.
Schools of Thought:
The first school of thought highly relevant to this project is the sociological model, also known as School of Columbia. Lazarsfeld (1944) and one of his main objectives was to study how voters reach their decision and what role media has in the process, he hypothesised that voting was an individual act and which was affected mainly by the individual’s personality and their exposure to the media. However, his results proved that media has a rather minimal effect, and the social group to which the voter belonged to be the decisive element. It was then believed that sociological factors had a very significant impact on an individual voting behaviour.
The psychosocial model, also known as the School of Michigan, which focuses on party identification (Campbell, 1960) a psychological affinity, a form of social identification to a particular party. Partisanship shows that voters who identify with parties in this emotional sense tend to vote habitually, as Campbell et al. (1960) describes partisanship is a perceptual filter, where voters value what is positive to the orientation of the party and ignore what is negative.
Theory:
A theory that also explains voting behaviour is Anthony Downs Theory of rational choice (1957). Where voters aim to maximize the utility of their vote, therefore voters act according to their own interests, and vote for parties which generally match their preferences.
Literature:
Young voters are far less likely to participate in elections for a variety of reasons. In fact, 18-24-year olds has the lowest possible voter turnout out of all the age groups in the study “In Who Votes” (Rosenstone & Hansen, 1993). As political elites focuses significantly more into mobilizing older voters. Citizens of an older age are far more attractive to campaigns as the likelihood of their votes are much higher and they are thought to have stronger ties to the community. Young voters on the other hand, may feel disconnected to campaigns, and lack personal connection with candidates, as they build a campaign aimed towards older citizens. Consequently, campaigners who focuses on youth mobilization often experiences a significant increase in the youth vote (Leighley & Nagler, 2014).
Similarly, young users of social media platforms are subject to be more influenced from social pressure, resulting in a higher probability of voting compared to older users. (Bryan, 2018).
Bibliography
Hunter, Wendy and Timothy J. Power. “Bolsonaro and Brazil’s Illiberal Backlash.” Journal of Democracy, vol. 30 no. 1, 2019, p. 68-82. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/jod.2019.0005.
McGregor, S.C., 2018. ‘Personalization, social media, and voting: Effects of candidate selfpersonalization on vote intention’. new media & society, 20(3), pp.1139-1160
Campbell, A., Converse, P., Miller, W. and Stokes, D.E., 1960. The American Voter. University of Michigan Press.
Downs, A., 1957. ‘An economic theory of political action in a democracy’. Journal of political economy, 65(2), pp.135-150.
Lazarsfeld, P.F., Gaudet, H. and Berelson, B., 1944. The People’s Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign.[2d Ed.]. Columbia University Press
Rosenstone, Steven J. and Hansen, John Mark. 1993. Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America. New York: Macmillan.
Leighley, Jan E. and Nagler, Jonathan. 2014. Who Votes Now?: Demographics, Issues, Inequality, and Turnout in the United States. Princeton University Press
Bryan, R.M., 2018. The Consequences of Digital Socialization: Examining the Effect of Age Cohort Norms and Facebook Use on Voter Turnout.