User:Maliacouser/Social media and political communication in the United States

Malia:

'''I will be taking the 2016 presidential election section and I will be adding in missing citations. There seems to be some information that does not have a citation. I also am going to add a part about who got more engagement on Twitter. Also, my small edit could be used but it is in a higher section that nobody else is doing called "Political origins of Facebook". Then if we have troubling finding things in our section, we will use the "Limitations and constraints" section as the overflow section.'''

 Bold is what I am going to add such as citations or added section 

'''The 2016 presidential election saw heavy use of social media by all candidates. The top three candidates were Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders (the runners-up in the Democratic primary). Trump has posted over triple the tweets as Clinton at 32,800 tweets while Clinton has just 7,260 tweets.''' The Pew Research Center reported that "in January 2016, 44% of U.S. adults reported having learned about the 2016 presidential election in the past week from social media." Roughly "24% say they have turned to the social media posts" for information regarding the election.[35]

In the 2016 election, Twitter was the main platform for both Trump and Clinton, the two major-party nominees. Trump had higher number of Twitter followers at 11.9 million compared to Clinton's 9.3 million. The candidates used social media differently. While Trump's posts focused on links to news sources—such as Fox News or The New York Times, to get their attention—Clinton and Sanders focused on "highlighting official campaign communities" and promoting their own campaigns.[35][36]

On Twitter, Trump also tended to retweet tweets from the general public, whereas Clinton and Sanders mainly retweeted tweets about their campaigns.[35] Trump and Clinton tweeted about each other several times. Clinton used the "@" feature of Twitter, linking users to Trump's page. Trump referred to Clinton several times, but he rarely used the "@" feature.[35] Im going to talk about who got more engagemnt on platforms like their most popular twitter.

Some of Clinton's and Sanders' posts were written in Spanish.[35] The two Democratic candidates actively reached out to the Hispanic community, while Trump made no posts in Spanish.[35] Trump yielded 29% of latino voters while Clintons received 65%.

Of the three candidates, Trump had a greater response from users compared to the two Democratic candidates, which is likely because Trump already had more followers at the beginning of the campaign.

Ella Hall

'''I will be focusing on the 2020 election section. Just like Malia I will be adding missing citations, and adding more information about the candidates involved.'''

Bold is what I am adding.

During the 2020 presidential election, the use of social media by candidates, campaigns, and other stakeholders was considerable, playing an even larger role than in previous presidential races. The two main candidates in this election were Donald Trump Republican Candidate and Joe Biden Democratic Candidate. The Trump campaign spent $48.7 million and the Biden campaign spent $45.4 million on Facebook ads alone. Other candidates, such as Kanye West and Democrat Andrew Yang also generated large amounts of buzz on social media. I am going to add the specific "buzz" both Kanye West and Andrew Yang created I have been looking at the following websites for information (both not original citation)  '''. Also going to talk about the candidates that ran during the primaries on both sides. Also the impacts of the 2020 election from another one of original sources'''.

Facebook and Twitter, however, are facing intense criticism from lawmakers for their roles in politics, a criticism that is tied to antitrust concerns. A report from the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust stated, "In the absence of competition, Facebook’s quality has deteriorated over time, resulting in worse privacy protections for its users and a dramatic rise in misinformation on its platform." In response to these issues, Facebook has taken action and announced that it will not run any political ads in North America. - From one of my original citations I will add information about the "concerns" from the changes of social media had during the 2020 election.

After the election was formally called for Biden by media agencies ranging from CNN to Fox News, Donald Trump proceeded to contest the 2020 election results' authenticity, using social media platforms, while also contesting it via multiple lawsuits. Although all the lawsuits were unsuccessful, Donald Trump's social media campaign and Stop The Steal initiative during this period is perceived by many to have culminated in the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol. This ultimately led to Trump's Twitter account being shut down by Twitter, which cited a breach of their usage policy

Siri:

The scandal section has content leading up to 2018 and a lot has happened since. There are also notable scandals that happened prior that are not highlighted on this Wikipedia page.

Tsfati, Yariv et al. “Causes and Consequences of Mainstream Media Dissemination of Fake News: Literature Review and Synthesis.” Annals of the International Communication Association 44.2 (2020): 157–173. Web

I will use this article to add information about mainstream media and the ways they communicate the following events; Trump's indictment and Obamacare.

Congressional Investigation of the Trump Indictment (LSB10950) [2023]. N.p., 2023. Print.

I will use this article to add a paragraph about the events surrounding Trump's Indictment because there is no content about it in the scandal section. '''In June 2023 Trump was indicted after taking classified national defense documents from the White House after leaving office. Congressional subpoenas were issued seeking those presidential documents, but Trump resisted those government attempts to retrieve them. Congressional investigation charged Trump with “conspiracy” on multiple accounts.'''

Examining Obamacare Transparency Failures : Hearing before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representatives, One Hundred Thirteenth Congress, Second Session, December 9, 2014. Washington: U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2017. Print.

I will be using this book to add a part to the scandals section about the Obamacare scandal. '''The Affordable Care Act (ACA), most commonly known as Obamacare faced criticism due to transparency discrepancies. The Oversight Committee is dedicated to ensuring that Americans are informed about how their tax money is used and how much Washington takes from them for the intended purposes. The committee holds the government accountable to taxpayers to ensure transparency. Critics in mainstream media claimed the accessibility and how Obamacare was labeled as affordable was concealed and the money taken from taxpayers was not implemented for the commonwealth.'''

Victoria:

'''I will be focusing on the scandals section. I will be adding information about how social media has contributed to increased polarization, and fake news scandals effects on American confusion.'''

The bold is what I will add.

The last paragraph of the scandal references bipartisan politics in the United States, I will expand more on how social media creates this gap within partisanship. When politicians use social media platforms like Twitter, they are more likely to be circulated and attract attention if they have extremist views, this is known as the "echoing effect". This effect refers to the “highly fragmented, customized, and niche-oriented” nature of social media and how the algorithm caters to one's beliefs.

I will then expand on how this echoing effect is contributing to the levels of extremism and polarization we see in social media and makes it, so we see less of moderate views on these platforms. An example of this is Trump's presidency, he used social media “as a method of fighting back” against so-called fake news stories. His extreme messages on Twitter contributed to him accumulating 14 million followers.

Finally, I will explain how fake news has left Americans feeling confused about the political atmosphere. A Pew Research study found that 64% of Americans felt confused about “basic facts.” Fake news stories such as pizza-gate have blown up in recent years. In the case of pizza-gate, it led a man to walk into a Washington D.C pizza shop with a gun to look for a child predator ring. Overall, I will mention how it creates confusion and can even be dangerous.