Assess The Impact Of Web-Based Communication On Public Attitudes And Political Policy Making

Technology has changed our lives in more ways than we can possibly write down. It has changed our lives more than we have even realized. The biggest impact that technology has had on the power of the presidency is the way the information spreads. Social media sites have made politics more accessible for many Americans to voice their own thoughts, whether negative or positive. The internet has had an huge impact on the presidential campaigns as well. The social networking sites have always played a powerful role in politics. The candidates can use social media sites as an advantage in order to speak to their voters by direct message. Social media tools including Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and the television have dramatically changed how political campaigns are run and how Americans react to election offices.

    In today’s modern time, social media has a huge impact on political environment. How the World Changed Social Media claims, “ Such political activity as there is on social media is usually at a national level and is conducted mainly by supporters…” (Miller 142,143). Social media presents a national level bias. During the last ten years, politics has gained much traction on these sites.  For example, campaigns for national

In fact “ nearly 4 in 10 people have taken steps to block or minimize the political content they see from other users.” This shows that people modify what things they see on social media and proves that political opinions have become much more popular to share on a personal profile. The shocking thing is that “overall 20% of social media users said they have modified their stance on a political issue because of material they saw on social media and 17% say social media has helped change their views about a specific candidate.” Pew Research Center goes on to say that people who have changed their political views on an issue stated that social media pointed their views in a more negative direction. This is important to acknowledge because knowing that the ideas that changed people’s mind on how they thought about a specific candidate were negative can lead to the assumption that the news they were reading could have been fake. Since these numbers are so low it can be hard to argue that the news people receive on social media is considerable enough to influence people’s opinions

In the past ten years the way we as a people communicate has changed greatly. No longer is it uncommon for conversations to not be face to face and now more so than ever conversations take place through text. As with any change there will be and is push back to it. The conflict over the consequences of the social media dependent society have now intensified as a result of social media playing ever greater roles in how politics is seen and even conducted. This has been a major societal question since the presidential election of 2008 and the debate has been written about, discussed, and argued by thousands of different politicians,

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, what do they mutually have in common? They are all social media websites. Social Media has become the number one way to communicate with other people from around the world. It has been beneficial and helpful to many, on the contrary harmful to some. People use social networks to catch up with a childhood friend, endorse their business, or develop news faster. Other people use it to steal identities, cyberbully, and abuse others. It has stated that social media’s are “websites and other online means of communication that are used by large groups of people to share information and to develop social and professional contacts” (“social media.”) With this in mind, how has social media influenced

Congress, 80% of our representatives use social media to engage with constituents. That has never been done before and is changing how politicians respond. We even see some votes in Congress made based on their Facebook feedback.”(The Economic) The Internet is like being there in the whole scene. Missing out information is impossible, a simply Google search, all the information is stored. When computers came out, it cost thousands, now it’s cheaper and faster. There’s tablets and phones with the opportunity to surf the web. More than half the candidates have some type of social media, either them or a fan.

The candidates, especially Donald Trump, said nasty, childish, and very unpresidential things on social media to one another. The tweets and posts that the candidates posted created many arguments between voters as well. Sanders goes on to explain that when people argued about politics on social media, the topics very rarely had to do with the policies that the candidates promoted. The conversation topics are always about the scandals of each candidate, not their beliefs. The CEO of Talkwalker which is a social media analytics company said that, “‘Social media may have played a role in creating a kind of scandal-driven, as opposed to issue-driven, campaign…” (Sanders). The three most common political conversations on social media, according to Talkwalker, were regarding Trump’s comments about women, Clinton’s emails, and Trump not releasing his tax returns. Sanders states that we, as a society, are much more concerned with the scandals of our candidates rather than their political ideas and opinions. That combined with the overwhelming presence of candidates like Trump on social media made for an overpowering election

Social media has given the human race an unprecedented amount of access to news and information. However, the validity and vetting of this information is often questionable at best. The emergence of websites such as Breitbart, Occupy Democrats, and TheBlaze have given way to a constant stream of partisan

In fact, the 2008 presidential election has even been coined as the “Facebook Election”. Although the concept of social media was still on the rise, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube were not completely unaware of their role/leverage in American electoral politics. In fact, during the presidential campaign, each site found their own way to encourage users to discuss the election or issues contained

Propaganda is just as reverent today as it was during the 1930’s, persuasive techniques are regularly applied by politicians, journalists, advertisers, radio hosts, and others who are interested in persuading people to their side of the room. Propagandistic statements are used to achieve constructive societal advancements such as campaigning to reduce drunk driving, or used to succeed in political elections. Along with the advancement of the Internet, the outpouring of persuasive information has been greatly increased (Delwiche). For the first time in history the public can participate in uncensored discussions with their neighbors from around the world. The Internet phenomenon has two-part consequence attached. The development of fast and wide range information is an excellent advancement, but has driven society into network overload.

People realized the dangerous of living in filter bubbles, so they want to test the effects that political polarization on facebook. Recently, A research asks ten voters to look at the opposite side of their opinion. They ask five liberals to look the “right wing” news resource and five conservatives to look the “left wing” news resource. The result of bursting those Facebook bubble and let ten voters touches the opposite view information is quilt interesting.

As technology continues to advance over time, political parties are able to further advance their operations. The use of social media on politics in our society has impacted all Americans; regardless of their party. One of these impacts is that technology has created a fundamental flow of communication, which, as a result, makes it easier for the candidates to persuade their party. An example of this communication would be things such as, but not limited to: newspapers, television and even twitter. During this election year, if a viewer is watching television, they are guaranteed to see at least one commercial promoting a candidates belief, in order for viewers to gain knowledge and opinion on the stance of each party.

They might instead flock to internet news sources such as social media simply because they place more trust in the news shared by their friends that might also be more to their preferred partisan position (Iengar, pg.135)

Over the years the media has made citizens major role players in politics. Ross Perot opened eyes by putting the 1992 Election in the media and thereby allowing voters to become directly involved in politics. The Internet, the new form of mass media “has turned into a major political and media industry” (Grossman 16). Because of the rise the Internet has taken, the idea of direct democracy has risen. The foundation of direct democracy is in self-government. The claim is that the presence of the Internet will increase citizens’ involvement in political issues by allowing them access to more information. This is significant because it takes a look at the impact of technology on society and politics, as well by

Social media has grown at phenomenal rates over the past decade, with its rise being easily visible in several fields such as publishing, business, and activism, among others. The rise of its use in the field of politics is well known by those who are on and off social media, as a result of increasing number of politicians using this global platform to their maximum advantage.