Do your Facebook posts change minds
According to this article from the Washinton Post, it is more than you may think. The article reports that data collected by the Pew Research Center "found that 20% of Survey respondents say social media has altered their position on a political issue and 17 percent say it has changed their view of a specific candidate." (Overly, 2016) This statistic surprised me, most of the time when I have observed political "debates" on Facebook they are often people digging in their heels and defending their party or candidate by any means necessary, often resulting in personal insults and un-civil discourse. To this observation, the article reports that "More respondents said social media posts made their impressions of the candidates more negative rather than more positive." (Overly, 2016) This observation is reflected in the article "Everyone is a Media Outlet" When Shirky says that "The same idea, published in dozens or hundreds of places, can have an amplifying effect that outweighs the verdict." (Shirky) So how are people's minds changed when "40% of respondents have blocked or unfriended someone for political reasons" (Overly, 2016)
It is a hard question for me to answer, I am guilty of blocking people from my news feed on Facebook because I found that their political views were so far from mine that it was hard to see their posts and not become angry. Before social media, this was not an issue so is this a good aspect of social media or a bad one?
Here is a link to the article called Your Political posts on social media are actually changing minds - somethimes
Hi Jennifer,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your blog post about Facebook, and also found it surprising that people have changed their minds over social media. The Pew finding at (20%) still shocks me, because I see people arguing back-and-forth on Facebook without any hesitation or change.