How does social media use influence political participation and civic engagement? A metaanalysis
Academic research has consistently found that people Blank I consume more news media have a greater probability of being civically and politically engaged across a variety of measures. In an era whenthe public’s time and attention is increasingly directed toward platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, scholars are seeking to evaluate the stillemerging relationship between social media use and public engagement. The Obama presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012 and the Arab Spring in 2011 catalyzed interest in networked digital connectivity and political action, but the data remain far from conclusive.
The largest and perhaps bestknown inquiry into this issue so far is a 2012 study published in the journal Nature, “A 61MillionPersonExperiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization,” whichsuggested that messages on users’ Facebook feeds could significantly influence voting patterns.
The study data — analyzed in collaboration with Facebook data scientists — suggested that certain messages promoted by friends “increased turnout directly by about 60,000 voters and indirectly through social contagion by another 280,000 voters, for a total of 340,000 additional votes.” Close friends with realworld ties were found to be much more influential than casual online acquaintances. (Following the study, concerns were raised about the potential manipulation of users and “digital gerrymandering.”)
There are now thousands of studies on the effects of social networking sites (SNS) on offline behavior, but isolating common themes is not easy. Researchers often use unique datasets, ask different questions and measure a range of outcomes. However, a 2015 meta study in the journal Information, Communication & Society, “Social Media Use and Participation: A Meta analysis of Current Research.” analyzes 36 studies on the relationship between SNS use and everything from civic engagement broadly speaking to tangibleactions such as voting and protesting. Some focus on youth populations, others on SNS use in countries outside the United States. Within these 36 studies, there were 170 separate “coefficients” — different factors potentially correlated with SNS use. The author, Shelley Boulianne of Grant MacEwan University (Canada), notes that the studies are all based on selfreported surveys, with the number of respondents ranging from 250 to more than 1,500. Twenty studies were conducted between 2008 and 2011, while eight were from 20122013.
http://journalistsresource.org/studies/politics/digitaldemocracy/ socialmediainfluencepoliticsparticipationengagementmetaanalysis. Accessed on 05/03/2016
The study published in the journal Nature affirms that:
