Blog 29: Fianl Paper

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 My 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. Zhang had support to this statement in his journal by saying, “Recent work on civic participation (e.g., Davis,Elin, & Reeher, 2004) concluded that the Internet’s greatest impact lied in social and civic but not on the electoral or governmental arena. (Zhang pg. 78)

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 (whose name is shortened for privacy purposes) is also an avid Facebook user and a political science undergraduate at Kean University. Acquiring this subject was very helpful when building my interview due to the knowledge that he already had concerning social networks and political campaign strategies. Basing my survey off of the academic journal I would gain the conclusion as to whether campaign strategies do influence the voters that use it or is it just giving the people information and learning more without an influence to sway to another side.

Analyze This!!

            While my method involves a younger subject, we have to take into account how young people use social networking sites on a political level. This time in society, everyone is constantly moving whether it is work, school, or another deed. Technology is now at the fore-front of needs and it makes everything a lot easier dealing with the mobile standpoint. Gaining some knowledge on this, also what must be talked about is the decline of hard news (Newspapers, News Channels, Etc.) among the younger generation. Given the factors between mobility and decline in the news, different approaches have been taken keep the younger generation knowledgeable. One approach that will be dissected is the social network approach. As I brought up in my introduction how opportunities can be made over the social networks by attracting crowds; there can also be an informational side to it. News groups and specifically politicians place pages and information for users on the go. Liking news or politician pages instantly places anything the administrator posts onto your news feed which you will see as you scroll down it. The relevance this has to the political lives of young voters is that considering young voters like to keep their social network page up to date and know what’s going on in their own cyber world. It would be easier to like a page and check it for updates. It can also give you little bits of information while you are on the move.

Turning my interview into a transcript and reviewing the answers that J gave, I was able to get clear insight to answer my research question. Stepping into another demographic, my thoughts were that possibly another answer would be stated.  Being as how Zhang’s journal already concluded that the answer was that there was no influence in these at all, hopefully choosing a different individual of different gender and age will support or thus go against Zhang’s conclusion.

            I started the interview by asking the miniscule questions about how long has he used social networking sites and what does he do. His tone followed by quick answering of these getting-to know-questions showed his confidence in the fact the he was tech-savvy. His experience of using social network sites for three years is pretty recent concerning the constant change technology, but aids me as he knows the ins and outs of the sites. J’s exploration of the vast amount of pages is contained only to his friends and family. With some hesitation, J does state that he also is involved with  the community pages, but not as much as he would like to be involved in them.   

Slowly but surely working my way up to the ultimate question, I asked him about his involvement in politics. A brief excerpt of the transcript shown that he was widely involved with politics and even did things with his specific local government:

D:Since you said you love politics; I am guessing you have a pretty deep involvement.

J: I really do, uh, I plan to make politics my career in the near future. I aim to be a voice to the people and help any way I can.

D: Now since you said this, how much involved in politics are you?

J: I make observations based on situations contact local officials as well as federal legislators with suggestions for political discussions. I understand that they do not take citizen opinions seriously, but I hope they take the opinions of the public seriously.

D: So you would like to be a politician as a career.

J: Yeah, that’s the reason I took the major I did. I love it.

            With this excerpt from the transcript, there was many signs of confidence and a bit of assumed affection when it came to this part of the interview. The word ‘Love’ was a very big indicator when it came to the topic of politics. Also considering the passion in his voice when he explained that he wanted politics to be his career, I could see that J really enjoyed talking about politics and that this interview would be easier than expected. For me, J’s passion concerning politics would help a lot in my research because his involvement and intermediate use of Facebook are great tools in finding out social networks’ influence.

            My next set of questions concerned the usage of social networking sites as a reference. Facebook and other sites have means to have statuses for socializing and keeping in touch with friends, but also contains news posted by different organizations and even news channels. Seeing as how J likes to use Facebook, I wanted to see if he checked the news on politics on Facebook or used it as a reference in any manner. Followed by this, I asked him about the last presidential election and his Facebook usage at that time.

            D: Now, considering social networks have a  lot of news on them. Do you personally use Facebook as a political reference at all?

J: (Laughs) Not at all. I take my news from CNN, MSNBC, Huff-Post, and liberal biased media networks. Sometimes I’ll look at posts on facebook for news.

D: Think about the last presidential election. Did you have activity on facebook at all?

J:I only use it to voice my opinions off of news channels and what I saw during debates. That was about it.

D:Did you use social networks as a political reference during the last election?

J:Being as how I study politics and also research my local politicians and country’s politicians during debates and meetings, I believe I was informed without having to look at my facebook as a reference. I wouldn’t even consider that a reference.

D: For the elections, did you check out the candidates campaign pages?

J: No, not really. I was already informed about them and considering I do my research on an unbiased statute, I really wouldn’t check a campaign page on a social network.

D: Why is that?

J: The campaign sites talk about what they plan to do or what they have done that was great, but I want to know everything about them. Not just the good stuff they did.  It’s like jumping into a relationship blind. If you don’t know the person but believe all the good things they give you at face value, you will never know that person truly. Just my opinion.

D: Have you seen the pages at least?

J: Yes, just to see what they were dealing with. It didn’t impress me. It was no more than someone putting up a page about a car dealership and advertising that this car has great mileage. You won’t know anything if you don’t see the carfax (Laughs jokingly)

            J made sure I understood that he did not respect Facebook as a reference in the political aspect. Basing off of his statement in the excerpt,  line 9 explains the reasoning for his not considering a social network campaign a reference. As we think about it, most of the pages are biased to sway to one’s favor. Campaign strategies are meant to be attract voters to one side with information about the politician or group and future endeavors they will do.  What interested me is how J compared a campaign page to a blind date or seeing a car advertisement. What this showed is that subject J thinks that campaigns on a social network site are nothing more than advertisements. They are pages that show face value about candidates or organizations, which has been interpreted as such.

            Breaking down the excerpts and analyzing J’s answers about the topic at hand brings together the support for Zhang’s survey results-social networks do not influence voters. Throughout the interview was a tense situation concerning the questions I asked. It was unnerving trying to talk to J about this situation because with him, political pages were advertisements based off of information the page administrator wanted you to see. Gaining information would be difficult considering the biased way that campaign pages operate. All in all the answer was pretty clear as I asked him my final set of questions that ultimately gave the answer as to whether social networks can be influential in the political aspect. Asking the final set of questions was pointless, but to conclude my interview I needed a definite answer to my research question. The last excerpt stated:

D: So this leads me to my final question. Do you believe that campaign strategies involving social networks influence voters at all.

J: I feel like it is another advertisement trying to sell someone into office. It doesn’t influence votes, it just re-iterates what the politician probably have said on t.v. or in a newspaper. It is just another campaign except in print.

            This last answer re-iterates all that was said during the other questions. At the end of this interview I saw that tension was still brought up as I asked him questions that were asinine to him. Every time I tried connecting politics to social networking throughout this interview, I saw how much he did not like the connection. By playing off my questions by adding comments relating campaign pages to advertisements or car dealership pages, it was apparent that he wanted to downplay my questions, but still showed annoyance as I asked the questions to get a result. Decoding the language while also reading the transcript gives the answer to my research question-social networking does not influence voters, but more or less advertises the campaign more over a word-wide program that sees a lot of traffic on a daily basis.

Conclusion to End It All!!!!...Ready?

            All in all, Zhang’s results proved to be adequate as my research found the answers to support the answer already stated in the academic journal by Weiwu Zhang. Stepping out of the demographic the was surveyed in the academic journal, I took my own method and decided to find an answer in another group of people. Still, it all wound up to the same conclusion that still supported the same answer. To follow up my work, a larger survey could be studied to get a full and complete answer as one subject was interviewed. Considering the questions that I gave J, if a larger survey was done, it would  need more intricate questions the span across the board between politics and social networks. By taking the questions from the lit review that Zhang did and combining them with my questions along with others of course, one could delve deep into this research and find a clearer answer.

            What my research has done is take an academic journal and dissect to find an answer and did research to find out if there is support outside of the median that the author took. By interviewing a subject that was not a middle-woman gave a broader spectrum to what I was researching, thus giving me an answer that supported the academic journal all along. Maybe a more broader search could be done to fully find the answer to this question of social networks and the influence it has politically. For now, the research shows the there is no influence when combing politics and social networking sites.

Works Cited

            Zhang, Weiwu. "The Revolution Will Be Networked: The Influence of Social Networking on Politcal Behavior." Social Science Computer Review (2009): 75-91. Print.