Social media and political communication in the United States
Through the use of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch, politicians can take advantage of financial resources such as crowdfunding.
[7] Democrat Howard Dean, who served as the Governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2003 and ran for president in the 2004 United States presidential election, is credited with being the first politician to use the Internet for political purposes.
[10] The website also measured several online metrics of success, including hits on his homepage, weblogs, campaign sign-ups, house parties, and meetups.
[11] Additionally, Dean encouraged the use of the website Meetup for his upstart presidential campaign in 2002 to make it easy for people "with a common interest to find each other and arrange to meet, face-to-face.
[15] An example of what can be done on Facebook is, "an individual creates multimedia content like a video on the cognitive level", which allows for mass interaction between hundreds of people.
The creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, served as a field organizer for Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.
Following his departure, Hughes worked on Obama's Facebook page and used his knowledge of content management and new developments to outpace other candidates' online presence.
[22][23] Barack Obama was the first to use the Internet to organize supporters, advertise, and communicate with individuals in a way that had been impossible in previous elections.
[22] Obama's supporters led McCain voters in all categories of online political activism, which was considered by some to be a major factor in his victory.
President Barack Obama emailed a video to 13 million users when he announced his intention to run for re-election, and Mitt Romney sent out a tweet.
[30] Research suggests, however, that merely following Obama or Romney on social media sites like Facebook may have had little influence on voter behavior.
[43] During the 2020 election, Andrew Yang used social media as his primary way of campaigning due to the fact that his demographic of voters was younger individuals.
Celebrities such as LeBron James, Taylor Swift, and Beyonce made statements supporting democratic candidate Joe Biden.
Celebrities such as Stacey Dash, Kid Rock, and Kirstie Alley came out with statements in support of Republican candidate Donald Trump.
A report from the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust stated, "In the absence of competition, Facebook’s quality has deteriorated over time, resulting in worse privacy protections for its users and a dramatic rise in misinformation on its platform.
Although all the lawsuits were unsuccessful, Donald Trump's social media campaign and Stop The Steal initiative during this period is perceived by many to have culminated in the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol.
According to a study by Miguel del Fresno García, Alan J. Daly, and Sagrario Segado Sánchez-Cabezudo, regular friends and followers have more influence on social media than blogs and campaign pages.
[53] Andrea Calderaro wrote that social media allows online knowledge to spread easily ‘giving space to unqualified voices’.
[55] The political astroturfing approach defined by Jacob Ratkiewicz is a system that allows unqualified voices to gain influence through social media.
[56] Here, political campaign spams are disguised as grassroots behavior, when, in reality, the information is being spread by a single person or organization.
This makes it easier for like-minded citizens to form filter bubbles which essentially isolate them from opposing contrary perspectives.
In recent decades, scandals relating to the Internet and social media have increased and which are less about illegal or corrupt activities than about what used to be private misdeeds.
The Oversight Committee is dedicated to ensuring that Americans are informed about how their tax money is used and how much Washington takes from them for the intended purposes.
Critics in mainstream media claimed the accessibility and how Obamacare was labeled as affordable was concealed and the money taken from taxpayers was not implemented for the commonwealth.
[63] Meg Whitman, a Republican candidate in California, was embarrassed by a tweet sent by her press secretary that included a YouTube video of a cross-dressed musician.
[65] There is broad agreement that Russians working for the Internet Research Agency used a variety of social media platforms to attempt to influence election outcomes.
[69] This effect refers to the “highly fragmented, customized, and niche-oriented” nature of social media and how the algorithm caters to one's beliefs.
[70] This echoing effect is contributing to the levels of extremism and polarization we see in social media and makes it so we see less of moderate views on these platforms.
A Pew Research study found that 64% of Americans felt confused about “basic facts.”[71] Fake news stories such as pizza-gate have blown up in recent years.
On October 26, 2018, Facebook announced it had deleted eighty-two accounts, created in Iran, that included posts advocating extreme positions on issues such as race, immigration, and U.S. President Donald Trump, just before U.S. congressional elections on November 6, 2020.
