Facebook

My newsfeed on my Facebook has been going crazy these last couple weeks with comments, statuses, picture postings, etc about politics and the election.  Basically anything and everything that has to do with the election is being broadcasted by my friends on my newsfeed.  It is funny to me that Facebook has really evolved into a public forum for people to post their opinions on political and social issues.  It is no longer a place just for people to connect and post pictures and updates on their lives; it has become a means of social activism, a soapbox for everyone to share their views with their Facebook friends.  You name it, one of my friends on Facebook has probably posted a status about it.  To be honest, it gets quite annoying to be constantly inundated with uneducated (majority of the time, at least) opinions about politicians, political views and statements, essentially anything that relates to the election.  But it is their right to be able to post whatever they want on Facebook... that is freedom of speech for you!  No matter what your views or how much knowledge or lack of knowledge you may have on a subject, it is your right as an American to be able to post as much as you want on Facebook about said views and beliefs.  It is just my opinion that typically these posts are written by people who are not educated on the topic and are speaking simply from a place of emotion and using words that they may have heard their parents say or something that they read online. 

A perfect example would be my roommate from my sophomore year of college.  During the 2008 election, she was all for Obama and his preachings about change and new hope.  She did not know anything about his political views or what it makes a Democrat or a Republican, but she saw people talking about how great Obama was on different social media websites like Twitter and Facebook and she was suddenly a Democrat and a huge supporter of Obama.  And then one day, her dad saw one of her Facebook statuses about Obama and the great changes he was going to be making for this country and was not pleased with his daughters uneducated Facebook statuses.  Her father is a Republican and is educated on political issues and needless to say, he put my roommate in her place and educated her about what Obama's election would mean for his company and how it would effect her personally.  She instantly changed her views and became super anti-Obama.  She voted for McCain in the 2008 election.  Four years later, I can't help but wonder who her vote will go to?

  

I feel like this is a classic case of how Facebook has become a way for people, who do not really know much about politics, to rant and rave about their political opinions.  There are, of course, people on Facebook who ARE educated about politics and the government, but I feel like they are not really the ones posting their views.  It is the people who hear something on TV or see another Facebook post that seems educated and correct in it's political statement and these people, in turn, feel like they need to post it as well to prove that they are politically savvy.   Those people who understand politics rarely post, in my opinion, because they don't want to get into a long diatribe over Facebook with the idiots who pretend to know what is going on.  It may be a harsh opinion, but it is mine.

Facebook has also become a perfect way for political parties to sway and get the vote from the younger generation who are using Facebook.  I think a huge reason why my roommate became all about Obama in 2008 was because she was constantly seeing the posts about him and thought, "Wow, he must be a great candidate if so many people are posting information about him!".  I have "liked" both the Obama and Romney pages of Facebook in order to see what they are posting about and it is a constant stream of pictures and short quotes from the politicians, all trying to win the favor of the younger voters.  Below is a chart that I have found that illustrates how the different parties use social network sites.  It seems to be pretty much even across the board as to who uses these websites more.  All parties are using social networks to their advantage and it appears to be working.