User:Kyle.chan201/sandbox

Article Additions Potential
In the Social Media Use in Politics article, it talks about how politics uses social media and how social media affects politics. For the article, it primarily focuses on the social media effects on foreign groups and nations such as terrorist organizations and countries that utilized social media for a revolution. Thus, I would write more directly about the effects of social media on politics and the election in the United States more directly. I would go through how certain social media platforms affect certain groups.

Potential Items to Add:

1. Talk more about the effects of social media on US elections, beyond US election interference via malice intentions. Instead talk about social media is used by politicians via ads, posts, and trends to sway voters and how social media itself puts less control out of the hands of politicians. Furthermore, look at the effects of each social media platform to see which demographics and groups are affected the most by each platform. I would also like to then potentially compare social media use in different countries within the EU to see how politicians use social media to their advantage. I would also like to compare social media use to other countries with censorship rules.

https://academic.oup.com/joc/article/69/6/650/5681988

https://news.wsu.edu/2019/12/11/wsu-political-scientist-investigates-effects-social-media-uk-politics-bbc/

https://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1050&context=ur

https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/81616

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6436681/

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-economics-081919-050239

Social Media's Effects on Elections
Social media has a profound effects on elections. Often times, social media compounds with the mass media networks such as cable television. For many individuals, cable television serves as the basis and first contact for where many get their information and sources. Cable television also has commentary that creates partisanship and builds on to people's predispositions to certain parties. Social media takes mass media's messages and often times amplifies and reinforces such messages and perpetuates partisan divides. In an article by the Journal of Communication, they concluded that social media does not have a strong effect on people's views or votes, but social media does not also have a minimal effect on their views. Instead, social media creates a bandwagon effect when a candidate in an election commits an error or a great success, then users on social media will amplify the effect of such failure or success greatly.

The Pew Research Center finds that nearly one fourth of Americans learn something about the candidates through an internet source such as Facebook. Nearly a fifth of America uses social media with two thirds of those Americans being youth ages of 18-29. The youth's presence on social media often inspires rallies and creates movements. For instance, in the 2008 presidential election, a Facebook group of 62,000 members was created that sponsored the election of President Obama and within days universities across the countries held rallies in the thousands. Rallies and movements such as these are often coined the "Facebook Effect." However, social media can often have the opposite effect and take a toll on many users. The Pew Research Center in a poll found that nearly 55 percent of social media users in the US indicate that they are "worn out" by the amount of political posts on social media. With the rise of technology and social media continuing, that number increased by nearly 16 percent since the 2016 presidential election. Nearly 70 percent of individuals say that talking about politics on social media with people on the opposite side is often "stressful and frustrating" compared to 56 percent in 2016. Consequently, the number of people who find these discussions as "interesting and informative" decreased from 35% to 26% since 2016.

In terms of social media's effect on the youth vote, it is quite substantial. In the 2018 elections, nearly 31 percent of the youth voted compared to just 21 percent in 2014. Social media use among the youth continue to grow as around 90 percent of the youth use at least one social media platform. Of the 90 percent, 47 percent received information about the 2018 elections via a social media platform. The messages shared on the social media platform often include messages to register to vote and actually carrying out their vote; this is in contrast to receiving the message from the candidate's campaign itself. Subsequently, of the first time youth voters in the 2018 election, 68 percent relied on social media to get their information about voting. This is in comparison to the traditional methods of being notified to vote of just 23 percent first time voters. Furthermore, just 22 percent of youth who did not hear about an election via social media or traditional means were very likely to vote; however, 54 percent of youth who found out about the election via social media or traditional ways were very likely to vote. However, the youth are becoming distrustful of the content they read on social media as Forbes notes that there has been a decline in public trust due to many political groups and foreign nations creating fake accounts to spread a great amount of misinformation with the aim of dividing the country.

Social media often filters what information individuals see. Since 2008, the number of individuals who get their news via social media has increased to 62 percent. On these social media sites, there are many algorithms run that filter what information individual users see. The algorithms understand a users favorites and dislikes, they then begin to cater their feed to their likes. Consequently, this creates an echo chamber. For instance, black social media users were more likely to see race related news and in 2016 the Trump campaign used Facebook and other platforms to target Hillary Clinton's supporters to drive them out of the election and taking advantage of such algorithms. Whether or not these algorithms have an effect on people's vote and their views is mixed. Iowa State University finds that for older individuals, even though their access to social media is far lower than the youth, their political views were far more likely to change from the 1996-2012 time periods, which indicates that there are a myriad of other factors that impact political views. They further that based upon other literature, Google has a liberal bias in their search results. Consequently, these biased search results can affect an individual's voting preferences by nearly 20 percent. In addition, 23 percent of an individual's Facebook friends are of an opposing political view and nearly 29 percent of the news they receive on the platform is also in opposition of their political ideology, which indicates that the algorithms on these new platforms do not completely create echochambers.

Washington State University political science professor Travis Ridout explains that in the United Kingdom the popular social media platforms of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are beginning to play a significant role in campaigns and elections. Contrary to the United States which allows television ads, in the United Kingdom television ads are banned and thus campaigns are now launching huge efforts on social media platforms. Ridout furthers that the social media ads have gotten in many cases offensive and in attack formation at many politicians. Social media is able to provide many individuals with a sense of anonymity that enables them to get away with such aggressive acts. For example, ethnic minority women politicians are often the targets of such attacks. Furthermore, in the United States, many of the youth conservative voices are often reduced. For instance, PragerU, a conservative organization, often has their videos taken down. On a different level, social media can also hamper many political candidates. Media and social media often publish stories about news that are controversial and popular and will ultimately drive more traffic. A key example is President Donald Trump whose controversial statements in 2016 often brought the attention of many individuals and thereby increased his popularity while shunning out other candidates.

Response to Peer Reviews
I feel that you can add more examples to support the global scale effect of social media (maybe a section at the beginning before going in depth to the US). - Good point that my article is too centered on the US and I need to find more evidence about the effect of social media in other countries in order to get a global reach.

I think you explained the effects on the youth very good, but maybe a part about the elder or middle aged population would be nice. Even if you find that there is no effect, you may mention that as well. - Yep, agree here as my article mainly talks about the effects of social media on the youth vote, but the middle age and elders also use social media as well - to a lesser extent though.

I also believe that your article could have a well-rounded perspective if you include more examples from countries other than the U.S., U.K., and Canada. - Yep similar to the comment above, will definitely include a more global perspective on the effects of social media on elections.

There are also some minor grammatical errors that I noticed in the article. A quick Grammarly check would be helpful. - Thanks, will run it through grammarly and fix the grammar mistakes

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