Sophie Schwartz The age of information, and specifically digital information, has dramatically shaped countless features of our modern lives. Social media, in particular, has seemingly infiltrated a number of our behaviors and subsequently shaped our real-world actions. Given the power that digital information spheres have, it seems of paramount importance to inquire into the ways in which our political action may be affected by this phenomenon. My primary interest is in understanding how this trend might affect the political behavior of college students; most of which happen to be the first generation raised within this digital information age. My hypotheses are as follows: Null hypothesis: There is no correlation between "get out the vote" posts/messages on social media and increased voter turnout among college students. Alternative hypothesis: There is a correlation between "get out the vote" posts/messages on social media and increased voter turnout among college students. Review of the Literature The questions surrounding the political impacts of social media are hardly new. In 2010, a group of academics sought to answer just such questions, and thus the formative article, "A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization" was born (Bond et al., 2012). This experiment constitutes a seminal piece of work that draws conclusions about messages on social media and its effects on voter turnout. By using public voting data, two treatment groups and a control group that totaled 61 million subjects, messages on Facebook (of two kinds) were sent to the treatment groups respectively. The study finds that messages encouraging those to vote, while also showing them which friends/family had already reported voting (social message group), were significantly effective in boosting voter turnout. Those who received no message (control group) and those who received a general message encouraging them to vote not linked to their friends/family (informational message group), had lower turnout than the social message treatment group (Bond et al., 2012). A similar attempt to understand the relationship between social media and voting behavior was studied by Teresi and Michelson in their article, "Wired to mobilize: The effect of social networking messages on voter turnout" (2015). This study focused, once again, on social messages sent to a treatment group through Facebook, encouraging subjects to vote. This study used impersonal messages (messages not from or associated with friends/family) and it was conducted on strictly undergraduates. The results yielded a substantial increase in voter turnout for those individuals exposed to the "get out the vote" messages (Teresi & Michelson, 2015). Both studies are highly similar to my project and research, insofar as they seek to measure the relationship between "get out the" vote posts on social media and voter turnout primarily. Before explaining my variables and methods in more depth, I'd like to say a word on the important implications of my hypothesis. This hypothesis test is important for understanding some potential solutions to low voter turnout, especially within the FLC student community. It is also helpful to the FLC Engagement Collaborative in judging how effective some of their social media tactics might be and how responsive our student population might be. Lastly, this project has the potential to be illuminating in regards to understanding the different ways college students might participate in the democratic process via their digital spheres. Methods I'll now turn to explaining the variables I used in my research and my methods. My independent variable is identified as "get out the vote" posts/messages on social media, represented as "SMVote". This is defined in my project as posts or messages on social media that encouraged respondents to register to vote or to vote. My dependent variable is voter turnout which was measured in a "yes" or "no" binary and represented as "Vote2020YN". To measure my independent variable, a question was asked (with a total of 160 respondents) which read, "Leading up to the election, how frequently did you come across posts on social media that encouraged you to register to vote or to vote?" and the corresponding answers were a 1 to 5 scale - 1 being "Never" and 5 being "Very Often". This variable, then, is a scalar, numeric measure on the frequency at which respondents self-report seeing "get out the vote" posts. My dependent variable on voter turnout was measured through a question asked (with 160 respondents) about turning out to vote, which read, "Now we'd like to ask you about the elections to be held on November 3. Have you voted or do you intend to vote in those elections?" The response options were "Yes, I have already voted"; "Yes, I plan to vote"; "No, I do not plan on voting"; "I’m not sure / don’t know". This was boiled down into a dichotomous variable in which "Yes" were those who had reported already voting or intent to vote. "No" were those respondents who did not intend to vote or were unsure. This numeric, nominal variable is the most helpful in a "yes" or "no" configuration to most effectively measure "voter turnout" for the purposes of my hypothesis test. Lastly, one other independent variable was measured that was not related to "get out the vote" posts strictly, but was a measure of total social media use, and is represented as "TotalSMSource". This variable was identified by asking (with a total of 175 respondents), "Which social media sites do you use? (Check all that apply)". The response options were "Facebook", "Instagram", "Twitter", "Snapchat", "TikTok", "YouTube", "Don't Use Social Media" with an "Other" response option that generated two additional options, "Discord" and "Reddit". Each respondent was then assigned a numeric value for the total number of responses checked, with the lowest possible number being "0" and the highest possible number being "8". Results A Pearson Correlation test was used to test my hypothesis, looking at the variables of voter turnout and frequency of "get out the vote" posts. The Pearson Correlation test suggests that there is a very small positive correlation between voter turnout and frequency of seeing "get out the vote" posts, at only 0.017. The p-value at 0.827 is much larger than 0.05, meaning that this test is not statistically significant. Therefore, I fail to reject the null hypothesis. It is likely, due to self-reporting and the repetitive nature of "get out the vote" posts, that those surveyed feel as if "get out the vote" posts are moot in the grand scheme of their own voting behavior. The high reported mean suggests that "get out the vote" posts could be excessive, overdone and therefore not actually effective. To visualize my findings, I have created the following bar graph. This graph illustrates the mean frequency of respondents seeing "get out the vote" posts, categorized by voters (1) and non-voters (0). The mean frequency of seeing "get out the vote" posts is roughly the same for both groups: Another Pearson Correlation test was run on the variables of voter turnout and total social media use: This test suggests another small, positive correlation of 0.188 between voter turnout and total social media use, so not a strong correlation by any means. Though, the p-value of 0.017 is highly statistically significant. So, this test suggests that at least social media use in the aggregate may be more effective in impacting voting behavior. To visualize this finding, I generated another bar graph that shows the mean of total social media sources, categorized by voters (1) and non-voters (0): This graph elucidates the difference between social media use of voters and non-voters; namely the fact that voters use more social media than non-voters.
Concluding Thoughts While the results of my research showed there was no correlation between "get out the vote" posts and increased voter turnout among college students, there is still potential to explore the more significant effect that social media use in total might have on voter turnout among college students. Further research in this area, especially within the demographic that I have proposed, may have some powerful implications for our understanding of democratic processes in the digital information age. References Bond, Robert M.; Fariss, Christopher J.; Jones. “A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization.” Biology Digest, September 13, 2012. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsnbk&AN=14322C34E3A6A9C8&site=eds-live&scope=site Teresi, Holly, and Melissa R. Michelson. 2015. “Wired to Mobilize: The Effect of Social Networking Messages on Voter Turnout.” The Social Science Journal 52 (2): 195–204. doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2014.09.004.
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