About Me (tab 1)

Hello! My name is Hayley Reynolds, and I am researching social media and its
effects on Political elections. In other words: how do things like Facebook and twitter,
effect the way citizens vote for presidential nominees? Hello Readers! My name is
Hayley, and I am a political science major and the University of North Carolina at
Charlotte. As any individual born in the millennial generation, I use technology as a part
of my daily life and this includes things such as twitter and Facebook. Being a political
science major and having ambitions to become a political campaign manager, I question
what effect the use of social media has on the way people vote. There are two things in
the United States of America that will ever vanish; politics and the use of technology and
social media.
Facts and Figures
What is a millennial?

What is called the millennial is can also be known as Generation Y, and there is
not exact date that this generation starts. It is said that the birth year ranges from
the early 1980s to the early 2000s. This generation is known for being
technologically savvy, and how social media and technology plays into their every
day lives.

What is Social Media?

Social media consists of websites that allows its users to create a profile that they
then create and share content of their thoughts or events of their daily lives. This
allows them to have a social network through the Internet, and easily access

friends from all over the world.

What does it mean to vote?

To vote means that an individual is allowed to put forward their choice, and in my
presentation and context the term vote will mean to vote for the president of the
United States. The action of voting is expressed by putting your personal choice
down on a ballot and then ballots are counted to choose a winner of the election.

25% of voters heard about a presidential candidate via twitter. Thats 25% of
voters who might not had voted if family and friends had not contacted them and
urged them to vote.

o About 45% of voters who were encouraged to vote by family and friends
via social media were apart of the Millennial generation, and 29% of those
voters announced their vote via social media. This means that social media
is a huge factor in the voter turnout. Social media MATTERS in the
political world, particularly when it comes to voting.
Voters use of Twitter and Face book (tab 3)
In 2012 the United States held the Presidential election, sadly I was only 15 at the
time and was unable to vote, but that did not keep me from being an active part in the
campaign it's self. The GOP in Wilmington was seeking help for citizens to participate in
canvasing. I volunteered for four hours, but that did not fulfill my growing need to
express my views and the platform for which I supported. I myself used twitter to follow
several political groups such as the GOP, Mitt Romney, and even our president Barak
Obama. The reason I did this was to stay connected to what was going on and to try to
personally connect to what they had to say. When I took to social media, Facebook

mainly and I started sharing my political views, and tried to get my friends to become
more involved.
I once read a scholarly article Understanding Generation Y and There Use of
Social Media: a Review and Research Agenda, written by Dr Ruth N. Bolton who is a
professor of Marketing at Arizona State University and was the Executive Director of the
Marketing Science Institute (2009-2011) and was the Editor of the Journal of Marketing
(2002-2005). In this article it states that people between the ages of 18 and 34 years old
are more likely to value other's opinion on social media. Also they feel more valued when
they provide feedback about a certain post, brands, and or products that they have used.
Which seems valid even from where I stand, because when my friends post something
about something that intrigues them I tend to be intrigued too. Does this mean that, since
people post on social media about which president they will vote for during election
season that and individual may become more active because the their friends are?
Yes it does!
There have also been several studies done to see what teenagers do with their
technology. For example, the survey done by Michael Xenos of the University of
Wisconsin, Ariadne Vromen of the University of Sydney, and Brian D. Loader of the
University of York studied political engagement among young people in the United
States, Australia and Great Britain. They surveyed a representative sample of people aged
16 to 29 in each country, asking about social media use and the relations to civic and
political engagement. This does not include asking about voting. In their study published
in Information, Communication & Society, they write, We find a strong, significant, and
robust positive relationship between social media use and political engagement. This

correlation interests me, because this is my generation, and I believe that technology can
be used by teenagers for more than what it has been used for in past. Almost 50 percent
of social network users between the ages of 18 and 29 polled by Pew declared they had
used social media to discover their friends' political interests or affiliations, to receive
campaign information, to sign up as a "friend" of a candidate, or to join or start a political
group, claims Matthew R. Auer who is Dean of the Hutton Honors College and
Professor of Public and Environmental Affairs at the School of Public and Environmental
Affairs at Indiana University. This statistic means that this generation uses social media to
be informed not just socially but politically.
Does social media enhance an individuals connection to the political world in the
millennial generation? According to Bogdan Patrut a There are 1.6 billion Facebook users
and approximately 65% of those individuals use Facebook to speak publically about their
political views. A case study done by S. McClelland a political scientist and contributor to
the book Facebook Use in the 2012 USA Presidential Campaign, shows that in 2012 that
politicians used the data from social networking sites to persuade voters in one direction
or another. Almost in the same way I used my Facebook post to get people to vote for
Mitt Romney since I could not. During the 2012 election Mitt Romney the Republican
presidential candidate said Twitter bites to create a firsthand, immediate experience for
the audience that takes out the middlemanthe media... Romney reminded readers of the
situation while also guiding his readers to his specific policy plans and stances on social
issues
Meanwhile both candidates used Facebook as a huge communication source, and
used it post their platform. Data was also presented, and it showed that in the 2011

election Mitt Romney used a lot more attack methods than Barack Obama did, and the
negativity could have been his down fall. Mitt Romney could be seen as that high school
girl who always had something negative to post about girls she didn't like. But what
happens to girls like this? No one wants to be there friends, and that is the situation Mitt
Romney put himself in. Then after ballots were casted, Obama ultimately receive more
votes them Romney. There is a correlation in the use of social media and the way the
Millennial Generation votes.
Social media effects the votes that Generation Y votes in two specific ways. My
generations use of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter allow us to see the way
our presidential candidates act and portray themselves to the public, and the way our
peers, friends, and families view and vote for candidates. At this age we are
impressionable of the people surrounding us, so if there is a twitter post saying
(hypothetically) Vote Jeb Bush, he wants to give us the right to bare arms, people
reading this will be more likely persuaded to vote for Jeb Bush just because their friends
want them to. If an individual from this Millennial Generation is more politically active
they will still be influence by social media because of the ads and social media post of the
particular candidates. Whether posts are positive or negatively directed at their
opponents, it will sway my generations votes. Just like how Obamas ads were more
positive and focused on his platform, so this allowed us to see what he was planning to do
with Americas future. It also made people see him having better morals than Romney
who was bashing Obama left and right, so people thought more highly of him and voted
that way. For Mitt Romney, the people who despised Obama might have liked his ads and
voted for him that reason or he could have turned them away. Social media doesnt just

make an individual vote one way it also pushes them away from a particular candidate.

Work cited
Auer, M. R. The Policy Sciences of Social Media. Policy Studies Journal 2011: 709
-736.
Bolten, Ruth and et al. "Understanding Generation Y and Their Use of Social Media: a
Review and Research Agenda, Mar. 2013: 245-267.
Gainous, Jason, and Kevin M. Wagner. Tweeting to Power: The Social Media Revolution
in American Politics. Oxford Scholarship, 2013. Print.
Grofman, Bernard and et al. The Internet and Democracy in Global Perspective: Voters,
Candidates, Parties, and Social Movements. Springer, 2014.
Grynbaum, Michael M. "Mayor Warns of the Pitfalls in Social Media." The New York
Times. The New York Times, 21 Mar. 2012. Web. 01 Mar. 2015.
Patrut, Bogdan, and Monica Patrut. Social Media in Politics: Case Studies on the
Political Power of Social Media., 2014.
Pew Research Center. Social Media and Voting. 2012. Jpeg.
Pew Research Center. No partisan differences in what people are hearing from family
and friends. 2012. Jpeg.

Rainie, Lee. "Social Media and Voting." Pew Research Centers Internet American Life
Project. Pew, 05 Nov. 2012. Web. 04 Feb. 2015.