Blog 27: Revisions

Derrick Robinson

Professor Chandler

Research Essay

 

Introducing Research

                With the turn of the century and technology being more and more of a need, there are many utilizations of it. From the times you had to be stationary to use the internet, now we can go anywhere with our phones or tablets and do anything virtually possible over the internet with our technology. From days where we had to use house phones or mail to keep in touch with friends and family, we now have social networking through the internet that keeps in contact with these same people no matter where they go. Now in this day and age, the possibilities are limitless with our technology and one can only wonder how does it influence certain aspects of our society.

A main aspect that is being researched for this paper is technology and its influence in the political perspective. With social networking being a powerhouse and different organizations can advertise their items, this opens many opportunities for many people to get their word across. With this being said one could say opportunities can be opened up for politicians who want a seat in office. It is evident that politicians know how social networking is impacting society and the many things it could do to help ones future in this line of business. Campaign strategies over the years have been based online by building web-sites and even making pages on different sites like Facebook and Twitter. With millions of people online every day, it is a good strategy to put themselves into the traffic and make themselves known. With all this, we must not forget that in these millions of users there are a percentage of them that are voters.

Considering these factors we have to wonder if such a big new wave in technology contributes to the political aspect of our society. These social network sites connect people and inform people on a casual level, but what does it do when it comes to political attendance? Instead of just being a tool to connect people and their community, but can it also build a bridge dealing with the varying values and ideals between friends? Concerning the political perspective, author Weiwu Zhang talked about this in an excerpt out of his academic journal concerning the question previously brought up. Zhang wrote “Although social networking sites may not appear to be a source of news because of their focus on connecting friends, 40% of all social networking users have used MySpace and Facebook for political information, with 20% using them to discover the political interests of their friends and 22% seeking campaign information from social networking sites. (Zhang pg.80)”

            With moments happening in political history during the technology era; there has seen a lot of political topics brought up over the internet, but more importantly social networking sites. Advertisements along with pages made by a campaign team for a specific political figure could be seen all over famous sites while also receiving a lot of likes or followers. Political persons even made Facebook or Twitter sites, making statuses and also gaining attention as well. Pages like these receive more of the same during election races as campaigning can be seen from the time it starts to the time it is over and a candidate has been chosen to run his office.

So What Is The Question?

            So a question has been raised that has motivated my research-is the social networking sites helping candidates get more influences of votes since it does have a lot of traffic throughout each site? If campaigning on sites does not influence votes in any way; does it individually affect society in some manner? I decided to research this because of how influential social networking sites may have on people by giving people views, likes, or took them to stardom. With the subliminal power that these sites have in society at this time, to wonder how this affects society on a political scale would not be considered a hypothetical falsie.

            For this research paper I will answer the question if political campaigns on social networking sites do influence votes. By reading academic journals I will get answers for the mass populace. After reading and researching these journals I will delve into more research with individual person by interviewing them and see their experiences in social networking and how past or current election campaigning strategies on social networks influenced them in any way.

 By gathering references containing the academic journal “Social networks in political campaigns: Facebook and the congressional elections of 2006 and 2008.”, and an interview from a subject, I can break down many variables within the question and give more insight into the world of social network campaigning and its influence.

What Did I Read? By the way…What is Your Method?

An academic journal that was read is “The Revolution Will be Networked: The Influence of Social Networking Sites on Political Attitudes and Behavior”by Weiwu Zhang. In this research article, telephone surveys were held to find out how much social networking media aids in the political involvement and influence of its users. According to the text and the results of the telephone surveys, it was shown that the conclusion was that social networking media did help community non-governmental topics but did not help the political involvement or its influence on voters. The majority of the populace that was interviewed was middle-aged females. This was a very important finding in my research. The reason I feel that this is important to research as well as writing studies is that Zhang’s research only gets results from one specific demographic to answer the question about a specific topic inside of a technological discourse community. For me, I feel in order to get a broader, more general answer for my proposed research question, I have to step outside of the contained survey results and study another demographic to prove if or if not social network do influence voters. Gathering an answer from one demographic does not answer the question in a whole.

Zhang in his journal also states that within the social networking world, its primary use is to connect and bridge social capital to bring about change in a certain situation. It is more of building a community within the community between existing friends and others in the same idea. Constant exchange of information and instant messages builds a society within the World Wide Web. This creates a civilization or more of a web of communities connected together. In some sort, social networks can influence the favor of a specific group of citizens or a certain genre of community. The only thing is is that this influence only reaches a certain level which is influence to do something in the community.

With the results from the journal being stated, I decided to get more in depth with answering the question on social networks’ influence. The method I took was to interview a subject who was of a different demographic than who was surveyed. What is also beneficial to this is that concerning my subject, J (who’s name is shortened for privacy purposes) is also an avid Facebook user and a political science undergraduate at Kean University.