Social Media is Leading to Rethinking

In an article on Pew Research Center, the author Monica Anderson describes how social media users occasionally change their minds about political candidates and issues due to the exposure to the range of new ideas and viewpoints that they encounter. The article explains, "overall, 20 percent of social media users say they've modified their stance on social or political issue because of material they saw on social media, and 17 percent say social media has helped to change their views about a specific political candidates." The research shows that liberal democrats in particular are a bit more likely to say they have ever modified their views on political issue compared to republicans.

In addition, the survey described in the article also asked respondents to tell them in their own words about a recent time that they had rethought an issue/idea due to social media in which they found a number of distinct themes that emerged. The most common theme mentioned by respondents was the major presidential candidates as the "political or social issue" they changed their minds on. Around 1-in-5 users mentions either Donald Trump (18%) or Hillary Clinton (21%), and around 1-in-10 referenced Bernie Sanders. A lot of times, the people who said they changed their minds on a candidate revealed that social media pointed their opinion in a negative dictation on that candidate.  Respondents who indicated they had changed their minds about Clinton were more than three times as likely to say that their opinion changed in a negative and respondents who mentioned Trump were nearly five times as likely to say that their opinion became more negative.

 Although, the research does show that only SOME have been swayed by the information the social media sites. The majority of users said they never modified their views on a particular  candidate (82% of respondents) and also they never changed their views on political issue (79% of respondents) based on things they say on social media. 

*News Article: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/07/social-media-causes-some-users-to-rethink-their-views-on-an-issue/